Impromptu Jerba Tour

Mrs B and I managed to find a fantastic holiday apartment overlooking the cricket pitch in Bamburgh, Northumberland for the 2018/2019 New Year.  Why I should write about an apartment in a blog designed to focus on campervans will be revealed shortly, but if you have never been to this part of the world, put it on your "to-do" list.  The beaches are glorious, castles that scatter the coast spectacular and all backed by the Cheviot hills that are worth an explore too.

Bamburgh Castle - New Year's Day

When the festivities were over we decided to take a trip down memory lane by visiting Gullane and North Berwick, just over an hour's drive away.  We would never pass up the opportunity to cross the border and both places were childhood haunts for Mrs B so a little bit of New Year nostalgia seemed just right.  After a great day walking on the beach at Gullane and exploring North Berwick we headed back to Bamburgh, stopping for a coffee/tea at an amazing cliff-top cafe just past North Berwick called Drift - https://www.facebook.com/DRIFTeatdrinkrelax/?locale2=en_GB .  Created by joining several shipping containers together and replacing one side with floor to ceiling windows, Drift has a fabulous view out over Bass Rock and the eastern Firth of Forth.  It also served a grand coffee.

Bass Rock and a cup of tea at "Drift"

It was whilst checking the map on my phone to orientate myself at Drift that I noticed just how close we were to the campervan builder, Jerba Campervans - https://www.jerbacampervans.co.uk/.  They were only a few minutes from here.  We were at the back end of the afternoon, but I thought it worth a phone call to see if they were open.  They were and said that we were welcome to come and take a look at the production facility and the vans that were there.

We were shown around by David Miller, who did a great job of illustrating the different layouts that are available and how a bare van works its way through the production process.  I remembered part way round our little tour that in Scotland, there are two days national holiday at New Year and that this therefore would have been the first day back at work after the festivities.  They all did a very good job of covering the fact that they were probably not feeling at their best and likely not relishing having to sound erudite and polite to these impromptu latecomer visitors.

We had been researching options to buy a campervan for some time and having persuaded Mrs B that we could easily do without a shower I was homing in on one or two VW Transporter-based options.  Jerba had been high on my list and the tour convinced me, and fortunately Mrs B, that their Sanna model would be right for us.  We liked the designs, liked the innovation and liked the quality of the workmanship.  We like the people we met that day too and that evening and on our drive back south, we worked through the Jerba options list, fine tuning just exactly how we'd like our van to emerge from the workshops.

So that was it then - we were soon to be VW campervan owners.  I'd wanted one of these for as long as I could remember.  There was just the small matter of how we could possibly afford one without robbing a bank.