Meet Shirley

Let’s take a step in time from WWII to 2016 - quite the leap I know - and some bad news.Over the coming months Shirley puts her affairs in order and come August my dad’s organising the funeral. Clearing up the house, we come across a brand new, never stamped, never used passport, valid from 2015.Shirley had never been abroad.With Frank having been stationed in East Africa he had no more desire to go abroad and looking after relatives, Shirley had never made it across the water.

Photos in Far Away Places

Coming across a disposable camera, only a few photos in, left behind at the house, I took it with me on a work trip to San Francisco, knowing when I came back there would be the funeral.Ruminating on these events and finding myself with time to explore an unusually sunny SF on solo adventures, the quiet thoughts of wandering through forest parks, along sunny beaches.Returning and having attended the funeral, I had the disposable camera developed and looked through the photos (one of which you see had the top of this post).Life was for living, for adventure and for friendship - I think my dad was feeling the same way.Inheriting some money from Frank and Shirley, we were out having pizza when Dad started asking questions about the van conversion I had been talking about for over a year: obsessively pinning cool campers from Pinterest, following Facebook groups like Self-builder campers and my spread of spreadsheets.“Could you do it with £5000?”“Well I’d spend £2000-2500 on the van, then I’d tackle the rust…”And so the Wander Inn Project was born.