voice-over: this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines for you at the top of the hour, which is straight after this programme. there is nothing quite like slinging your bag into the back of the camper van and heading off for the weekend. hello! always makes everyone smile — especially when it's bright yellow. i'm rob bell, broadcaster, engineer and massive carfan, but for me, all the fun is to be had in the lower gears. they're not all that manoeuvrable. you can't overtake, and getting from zero to 60 takes the best part of a weekend. but despite all that, i just love these things. ever since i drove an rv through america in my 20s, i've had quite a thing for motorhomes of all shapes and sizes. and for enthusiasts like me, this is a landmark year.

the grandaddy of them all, the vw transporter, is turning 75. also known as the camper, the combi, or the bus, it became a symbol of freedom and exploration when it was famously adopted by the hippie movement in the �*60s. it inspired generations of travellers to take to the road, and to this day, partly thanks to the covid pandemic, more of us are doing it than ever before. and in all kinds of vehicles. sojoin me as i take a look under the bonnet to find out what makes this way of life so appealing for so many. i can honestly say that i think removing the stress helped with, you know, conceiving our second child. it is the best decision we've ever made. meeting the glamorous forebear of today's modern campers. she's up and away.

poor old soul — hasn't been out for a while, yeah. and starting a mammoth european journey in a beautiful, old rust bucket. conscious that we've got a crane sticking out the front. it's like a narwhal. how many more kilometres do you reckon he's got in him? he's good for another million, i reckon. you reckon? he's already halfway there. it may be german by birth, but brits have really taken the vw camper to their hearts. this is busfest, an annual celebration of the vehicle in the worcestershire hills. so it's notjust new stuff you can buy for your van here. there's a load of old parts. because that's the thing with these old vehicles, they do break down a little bit. so you're constantly

looking out for parts that you can replace. look at all these bits of bodywork. i mean, you're right down to real, individual bits of component, bits of wiring. let's have a look. you know, with my engineering hat on, a lot of older campervans aren't that impressive under the bonnet, but that's not really the point. old distributor cap there. it's not the mechanics of these vehicles that makes them so, so seductive, really. he sings is it the intrigue? i'm checking out the market. yeah. for what — when something might go wrong? it will go wrong. mine's 1972. so that's what, 52 years old now? yeah! it's still going strong? yeah. it got here this weekend. good run! whether it gets home or not, it's a different matter, but it got here this weekend. in 1950, the first transporter went on sale as a commercial vehicle. but it really became an icon

when the hippies took it to their hearts more than a decade later. cheap to run and easy to fix, they became a common feature on family campsites in the 19705 and �*80s. today, there's a whole community of people who worship these things. can i come and say hello? come have a little... may as well have a little look in. are you sure? yes. that's all right? you know, this is the real... 0h, you've got all the mod cons here! look! it's a bit untidy, but, yeah. it's a nice fit. making your coffee. you've got the ipads. is this always going to be a way of life now? oh, yeah. definitely. you reckon? yeah, yeah. what is it about it that you enjoy? it's just — you're on holiday. don't matter where. we're eight miles from home. but we're on holiday. whether we're 200 miles away or the other side of spain or wherever. yeah. it's still on holiday. brilliant. we look forward to fridays. where are you guys from? erm, germany. not so far from frankfurt. how is the mechanics? does it run over well?

yeah. there is a new engine. a new engine. man mumbles built for us. but we have some breakdowns. both: it's an old car. but now it's very reliable. we have a new engine and... and he knows what to do, so... yes, i hope so — the next 100,000 of kilometres is no problem. and maybe more. both: maybe more! laughter people who love campervans seem to really love camperva ns. and it's notjust the vintage kind. in britain alone, registrations of new motorhomes have gone up by about a third in the last ten years. social media might be one of the reasons for its recent popularity. an instagram search for vanlife brings up about 17 million posts, featuring vehicles big, small, and everything in between. hello!

hi! nice to meet you. look at your van! thank you. this is amazing! thank you. jenna. yep. nice to meet you. lovely to meet you. cath. lovely to meet you. how are you doing? hi! who's this? shall we do it...? 0h, shall we shake hands? 0oh! that's very official! hi, bodhi. luna, shall we shake hands as well? is this your home? we live full—time! full—time in this van? yeah. is that right? jenna winterburn—hynd and her family sold their house and packed their lives into this van in 2022. they've been travelling ever since. when i'm doing the washing—up at home, i look out my window — it's the same every day. yeah. no difference. not for you guys. yeah. no. we've had beaches. we've had mountains, snow. forests. that's the joy. yeah! that is the joy, cath. luna, where's your bed? where do you sleep? up here! 0h, go on, then. let's have a look. so you get top bunk? yeah! what's it like up here? good. do you like sleeping up here? yeah.

yeah! you get the view across the whole van from up there, don't you? do you like my duvet? i love your duvet! - is there a favourite place that you've woken up in? france. i in france? what was the view when you woke up in france? beautiful. it was beautiful? and have you got a play area? is there an area that you play? yeah. - where's that? under here? yeah. oh, my gosh! i haven't even seen under there as well. more great storage under here, jenna. this actually makes a full king—size bed. come on. i know. ready? right. so if we pop these... yeah. you do that one. and then we're giving it a tug out. he chuckles oh, it actually fits all perfectly! this is great stuff. when you're closing up and getting everything to go, are you just making sure that everything's not going to be banging around. so, everything gets closed. yeah. and it gets locked away like this as well. this is our cutlery drawer, here. this has a lock. oh, yeah. and then we have a locking

system on all of these. we wanted to build it completely, totally like a home. we have hot water, we have heating, we have internet. we actually have a router in our van here. you've got your own router? yeah, we do. come on! there you go. give you the wi—fi code. so we built this bit as well. so we've got loads more storage at the front here. toothbrushes, general diy things, all the stuff that you need. see, now you get to see all of the stuff that we carry around. look at this! so this is where we put the kids' bikes, the scooters, the chairs. it's bigger than i thought. it goes... it obviously goes right back to the other side of the van. ah, this is so good. this is such efficient use of space, jenna. there's so much stuff in there as well. underneath here. yeah. underneath the mat in there is a whole trap door. it's about as big as this. because you've got more space under here, within the chassis itself? yeah. what was the original driver for you to move your life into four wheels and into these four walls?

we were living down in the new forest, and we had luna at the time, and i had carried luna. 0k. and we knew that we wanted a second child. we had agreed that cath was going to carry our second child. but we'd been trying for about a year and we had done iui and nf and it wasn't working. so obviously, there's a lot of emotional turmoil and everything that comes with that, and it's hard. anyone that's been through any kind of fertility thing, it's hard. cath was having a really bad time in herjob. she was really stressed in herjob. obviously, there was all this stress and everything that was coming as we were trying for a second child, and i rememberjust saying to her like, "this is silly. "like, we are paying so much money for this house." and i said, "there has to be more to life." there has to be, you know, there has to be something else. so i said, "do you know what? "let's go for a year." and then three months into living in the van up in scotland in a little beautiful car park in the forest in edinburgh, we got a positive pregnancy test. amazing! so only three months in, you know, removing all the stress kind of like,

just really like being present as a family and living together. i can honestly say that i think removing the stress helped with, you know, conceiving our second child. it's the best decision we've ever made. a lot of people probably have different pictures of what vanlife means, but it obviously works for cath and jenna and the kids. and when you see inside that van and you see how perfect it's been made for the lifestyle they want to live, you can understand why they enjoy it so much. vanlifers were doing their thing well before social media. they even predate the first vw campers back in 1950. evidence of one of the very first has brought me to scotland, to this anonymous—looking aircraft hangar in the grounds of perth airport. now, it may not look like much from the outside...

..but there's a bit of history inside this building. inside is a vast historic archive of almost 1,000 vehicles from around the world. it's not normally open to the public, but its owner, morris leslie, has agreed to let me in. gosh, there's all sorts in here! hey! it's a hobby that's got out of control, a bit. laughter but this is what we've come to see! wow! absolutely, yeah. yeah. it's a... it's a pontiac. ..pontiac. and it's from 1935. so, captain dunn... captain francis dunn, from bexhill in kent, who did a bit of caravanning back in the day. 0k. he decided he would like to move on to a motorhome. 0k. so he researched all the vehicles he could buy and the one that he thought would fit best for a motorhome was a pontiac. so they bought one in america. right—hand drive, had it shipped across. and then he got his

local coach—builder. so he worked with them and built the best possible body, which you can see has lasted the test of time very well. it's in amazing condition. can we have a little look? yeah, absolutely. 0n you go. yeah. i mean, all of this is beautiful handicraft work, isn't it? oh, yes, it is. it smells really lovely in here. yeah, it does. and that's your cooker, there. everything's been very well thought out. yeah, it really has. you know? it's got a small wc around the corner. there it is. oh, yeah, it is! it's a bit small, isn't it? but when you look around and you assess what you've got in here, it's everything that you've got in a modern camper van. that's right. there's the kind of bunk bed that folds out. yeah, lots of cupboard space. lots of cupboard space. yeah. always key. yeah. you've got your toilet and you've got your sink and cooker. all you need now is to drive. all you need now is to drive. i'll take the... i'll take the... i'll take the wheelchair. i'll take the wheelchair. 0h! 0h! right. right.

engine stalls engine stalls 0h! engine stalls engine ignites yes. she's up and away. speak to me. poor old soul — hasn't been out for a while, yeah. what's that like to drive? quite challenging, actually. yeah. it's... well, it's not that easy to see out... no. not much of a rear window, either. and... look at the size of that mirror! can you even see anything out of there? i can't. ijust hope it doesn't rain cos the wipers are far from being adequate. laughter and as far as you know, everything that's on here is still the original. is that right?

it does, yeah. and everything's very secure... yeah. ..out the back. all the cupboards are all configured, so nothing's rattling around. yeah. would have been totally amazing back in the day when they, you know, went on a journey in this. of course. people would really look at you and wonder what had happened. i'd love to know where captain dunn took this. 0r indeed, what his ambitions were. 0bviously, his life was cut short, but little did he know, back then, that it was the beginning of something very special. did these come with it? yeah. are they? captain's chairs. now, you've got to give it a good... like that. oh, that's down. as far as we know, then, morris, how unique is this motorhome here? well, i think i can sum it up by saying if you google "oldest camper van in the world", this features. is that right?

right. yeah. don't know whether that's true or not, but it's a good story anyway. it's a great story! it's a great story. i mean, you must have been a bit of a trailblazer, though, to have had the vision to have this created, right? yeah, absolutely. cos he was very much part of great britain — as we were at the time. right. yeah. and this is the sort of thing we did, wasn't it? if you look back, we invented so much. behind all this, though, is the element of fun, though, isn't it? fun and adventure. it is, yeah. well, holiday. holiday! holiday comes to mind. yeah. yeah, yeah. and then look what happened next — eventually, the volkswagen company brought out their camper van. yes. and look how that changed the world. captain dunn clearly had a visionary, build—it—yourself approach to life. and although the whole camper van industry is very different now, it's very advanced, there's plenty of that individual spirit that lives on. i'm heading to the seaside now, and to cornwall — to visit a celebrity around these parts.

someone i first saw on the news a few years ago. let me introduce you to cecil. cecil is a battered but beloved camper van, and has a fair, fair few miles on the clock. and of course, looking like that, you'd imagine, a story to tell. yeah, that is a van| with a story to tell. chuckling here he is! sorry. steve. hello, mate. hey! good to meet you. i'm sorry. i didn't mean to laugh when i saw cecil. what a machine! yeah, bless him. what a machine! my rusty old friend from a long time ago. let's have a look. how rusty are we talking here? yeah. there's little bit there. a little bit ragged round the edge. round the front. he's good underneath, though. he's good and strong underneath. cecil is owned by steve green, who uses his van to remove waste and washed—up plastic from nearby beaches. and he reckons it may have done more miles than any other vw camper in the world. and to be fair, it does

look quite well used. how many miles do you reckon he's done now, then? so he's done 1.37 million kilometres, which is about, somewhere around 900,000. 900,000 miles. another ten years... can i have a look inside? yeah, mate. another ten years, and it'll be the big million. oh, the big mil! the aussies call these a combi — short for combination. and that is exactly what he is. 0k. a combi of what, then? he's my everyday car. he's a people carrier — for running the family around. he's a camper van. the roof goes up, there's a bed up in there and stuff for the kids. yep. he's a land rover. he's a tow vehicle. he's got a tow hitch, pulls a three—and—a—half—tonne trailer. so all the beach—found rubbish we take to the recycling centre, cecil tows it all around. and he's also a crane, which might be a little unusual for a camper van. but that's what. .. hang on. 0n the front, here? yeah, that's what this mad contraption is. let's have a look at it, then. so this is something you've retrofitted? yeah. is it? it's just...

this whole — all this frame... this steel frame here? 0k. it's a proper working van. and what about the actual mechanics and the engine, how's that? yeah, that's the biggest... we're around here for that, aren't we? yeah, yeah. that's the biggest change. did love the old air—cooled engine. it was great. lovely and simple. really easy to fix in the middle of nowhere with virtually no tools. but i couldn't quite stomach the fuel economy anymore, and i wanted to move away from burning fossil fuels. so i've shoehorned a little french diesel engine in there. and that's what we've got here, is it? best thing is it runs on waste chip fat oil. pretty much. and you do that, do you? yeah. it gets given to us by the local pubs around here and the cafes just donate it to us. fantastic. and i just filter it. i don't do anything else other than pour it through a sieve and then straight into cecil. talk me through it, then. what have we got here? well, yeah. the round thing's normal.

yeah, that's fine. pedals are normal. you take that... yeah. that's a bit different. just dip the clutch a sec. so, you press that, you should see the voltmeter dip. if it doesn't work, we have to wiggle these wires. because that's. .. no, that's not working. do it again. cecil, like many of us who were born in the �*70s, has developed a few quirks as he enters his middle years. just keep him revving a little bit. he likes you! engine revving there we go! we're up and running. then reverse is somewhere over, down and back. do i push it down? yeah. over, and then down, and then back. and it's in there somewhere. hopefully. am i in there? i don't know. you might be. ha! it's... it's like stirring porridge. it's like, "oh, yeah you are, man!" found it. well done! first time. even performing a three—point turn in the boat yard takes a bit of practice. 0h, crikey! 0h! conscious that we've got a crane sticking out the front

like a narwhal. yeah. cranking it's quite hard to brake and, erm... laughs: i know. all right, let's try and find that again, then. i don't think i'm in there. he may not exactly purr like a kitten, but he does have a purpose. he helps steve and his team of volunteers attempt to keep the beaches around cornwall clean and rubbish—free. locally, he's laughingly known as our rapid response vehicle. if somebody is walking their dog or, you know, somebody spots something on the beach that's too big for them to deal with, like a big pile of fishing gear or something like that... yep. ..or a wrecked boat or something heavy, cecil nips over with his trailer and his winch, and we'll try and get it before the next tide comes to wash it back out to sea. ah. 0k.

how are we looking, then, steve? 0k. i'm getting my eye in now. you're spotting lots of small things i wouldn't have necessarily noticed at first. yeah. yeah, you'll see it. the tide washes everything up. it's usually in amongst all the organic stuff. so wherever there's seaweed and driftwood and stuff is where you'll spot... you're probably going to find plastics and rubbish. yeah, lots of stuff like this. and that rope here! yeah. you think of how many million bits of microplastic you've just stopped going in the ocean by picking that up? just picked up there, yeah. yeah, yeah. cos over time, that would just break up in the uv and the wave action and just be endless microplastics. i mean, that's a relatively short visit, and we've done all right. yeah, mate. there we go. so you reckon cecil�*s already done over a million kilometres, is that right? 13 times round the clock. yeah, 1.3 million. how many more kilometres do you reckon he's got in him? he's good for another million, i reckon. you reckon? surely! solid. already halfway there. solid. well, i have an idea, steve.

do you want to put that to the test? yeah, what do you mean? we're taking cecil all the way back to his birthplace in central germany. we'll take the eurotunnel to france. then driving through belgium and the netherlands, all the way to the vw autostadt in wolfsburg. and it's going to be one hell of a road trip, steve. steve chuckles it's a journey that will test the limits of steve's mechanical know—how and cecil�*s resilience. 0oh! not the first time, if i'm honest! it might have happened once or twice in the past. but we've got some treats lined up along the way, including the dutch hotel that thinks it's a campsite. oh, yeah. lovely! this is retro, man. this is fantastic. and what motorhoming might look like in a more sustainable world. this is what we're talking about! it's a solar—powered awning.

this is fantastic. storm eowyn's been bringing some extreme disruption to northern areas of the uk in terms of widespread power supply problems, and widespread transport disruption, too — a number of trees blown over by the strong winds. and talking about the winds, they peaked at 114 mph at mace head in the republic of ireland, which was the republic of ireland's strongest wind gust on record. the previous record set in 19115. and after this measurement was made at five in the morning friday morning, it went offline. we don't know what happened to it. maybe it got damaged in the winds. meanwhile, in killowen, the 92 mph gusts we had

here was northern ireland's strongest gust for over a quarter of a century. this is where eowyn is at the moment, it's drifting slowly northeastwards, slowly filling, slowly becoming a little bit less powerful. but still for northern scotland, we have an amber warning that's valid until six in the morning saturday, still with winds strong enough to blow down a few trees, so further blustery conditions here. we do have a band of squally rain pushing eastwards across england at the moment, and there are lots of showers for scotland and northern ireland, some of these coming through as sleet, a little bit of snow up over some of the highest hills as well. so that's the setup as we head into saturday. now, across the hebrides, it will still be blowing a gale here for here for saturday morning — very strong winds for orkney — slightly less strong in the far north in shetland. still plenty of showers around for scotland. otherwise, many areas having a dry morning with some sunshine. we do then have this band of heavy rain that works into northern ireland through saturday afternoon. some of that is going to be quite heavy, quite intense

for a short spell of time and accompanied by some gusty winds, too. that will move eastwards through saturday night, but into sunday we've got another area of low pressure on the cards — another named storm. this one has been named as storm herminia, which has been named by the spanish authorities. strong winds extend up through the irish sea — gusts of 60—70 mph. ok, it's not on the same scale as storm eowyn, it won't cause the same kind of damage and disruption, but it is going to be a windy day with some severe gales around and a band of heavy rain. this time it's the north of scotland that will have the driest and the brightest of the weather conditions. once that lot has eased through, into the early part of next week, the weather is going to stay unsettled with heavy rain at times. it will stay on the windy side as well.

live from london, this is bbc news. the senate being equally divided, the vice president votes in the affirmative and the nomination is confirmed. donald trump's divisive nominee for secretary of defence, pete hegseth, has been confirmed following a late night vote in the us senate. president trump visits california to survey some of the areas devastated by deadly wildfires that destroyed thousands of homes in los angeles. a powerful atlantic storm batters ireland and parts of the uk leaving nearly a million homes without power. four female israeli soldiers and 180 palestinian prisoners are expected to be freed later on saturday. hello, i'm anjana gadgil.