It’s been an incredibly stressful three days of trading in the Adria for a 4WD Suncamper Sherwood. The Adria is a 2018 model and this is a 2017 Toyota Hilux, but we gain about 25,000kms as it’s only done half the 51,000kms of the Adria. I reported that we missed out because someone else signed a contract, but that person pulled out after the weekend and we were next on the list of about five.

The differences between a van and a motorhome are large and only our famility with the Winnie has made us at all confident of managing it. The overal build quality of cabinets, stove and sink are much better. On the other hand, the Adria had some lovely features, such as a variety of lighting for different occasions and so many nooks and crannies for storage.

We gain a rangehood and may be able to use our toaster without disabling the smoke alarm as we did in the Adria. That sounds risky, but the flow of air from the kitchen up to the skylight meant even light cooking would set it off.

The cabinets are quite deep, but with a larger sink and a very large stovetop we only gain a little bench space, unless using electrical appliances. Mind you, I’m looking forward to being able to have more than one pot on the stove.

Our first night in the Sherwood was in the dealer’s yard as it took ages to change over the batteries and related electrical components. The advert for this vehicle said it had a UHF radio, but it didn’t, so the dealer had a new one installed at their expense. We had to pay for the rest of the handover and for a new sirocco fan.

After driving out late from the dealer on Friday afternoon we went less than three kilometres to a caravan park and have spent most of the time trying to sort out our stuff. Oddly, this has far less storage than our van and at one point yesterday I was almost in tears at the enormity of the task of find places for everything. Stephen took charge and helped sort through things. A great deal of stuff went in the bin, even the poor wouldn’t have wanted it. We have a storage box on the rear, plus some room in a tunnel boot. He has performed a miracle of storage there and now wants to change everything that I put away inside. I’m happy with that.

Regardless of the sorting yesterday it’s still ‘hot mess’ inside at the moment, but we will gradually work things out, as we have in the past. However, it has really brought home to me that moving house is difficult, so much more if it is a real house and I’m glad that where we are living should suit us until we are really old. It would have been easier if we had been able to unpack one van at home, then bring the new one home and arrange the storage. Doing it whilst we are living in it has added so much to the stress.

We drove to a local shopping centre today as we had pretty much run out of fresh food. We had a list of items that we thought we might take back to the dealer tomorrow, but have been able to resolve them. I had our batteries and other electrical components moved into the Sherwood and find that I am getting some very odd readings at times. We are ‘dry camping’ to test everything out and find that if something doesn’t work it is user error. The Sherwood has it’s quirks, but then so did our Adria van, it was just that we were used to it’s quirks and now have to dig deep to work our way through things.

The bed is east/west, which means I sleep on the inside and have to ask Stephen to let me through if I want to get up in the night as we did with the Adria. The first night, which was spent in the dealer’s yard, I must have got up about 15 times. The ceiling is lower on my side but it appears higher than it is due to being glossy and reflective. We have the windows at each end and that is, of course, better than having two windows at the back because it allows air to flow across us.

Just the little I’ve driven it is so nice to be back in a car again. Driving here to the caravan park I didn’t notice much sway from the overhead cab, but when we went shopping it was very obvious. We realised that we had loaded up the bed with heavy things, as we did with the Adria, and those items must go on the floor for travel from now on. I remember this from driving the Winnie. We are hoping that the suspension will be a lot better. So many of the roads over here were damaged by the constant heavy rain and we were feeling every single bump in the Adria.