Our motorhome

It all started back in 2017 after telling my friends and family for about two years that I was going to buy myself a motorhome.

I had fond memories of caravanning trips as a child with my brothers and parents after my brother won a Sprite caravan in a Kellogg’s competition so, after telling everyone my plan, I thought I really ought to follow it through.

I set to work trawling through websites and the local classifieds searching for that Holy Grail: a one-owner, low mileage, mint condition and affordable motorhome. After seeing many online that were either affordable but a damp sodden ‘doer upper’ or in a great condition yet I’d need to sell a kidney to afford it, I had all but given up looking.

Then, one Sunday evening I came across an advert that made me take note. There on the screen was what at first glance looked like the automotive equivalent of a block of cheese.

All angular and beige. It was a 1989 Pilote R750 based on a 2.5-litre normally aspirated Talbot Express diesel and, although it didn’t have what I thought of at the time I was looking for (a U-shaped lounge), it was a one-owner, low