Budgie the Defender Camper

We purchased our new adventure wagon in October 2023 and we are now converting him into an off-road camper.  I'll keep this post updated as we progress with the conversion.

Budgie the 110 Defender

Our new vehicle is a 1993 Land Rover Defender 110 County Station Wagon with the 200Tdi (Turbo Diesel Injection) engine.  He was affectionately named Budgie by a previous owner's kids, apparently because he had a squeaky fan belt which chirped like a budgie!

Prior to our purchase, Budgie had an extensive renovation including a galvanised chassis and some serious rust repairs.  He even came with a photo book recording the work done.

We'd been looking for a Defender since we arrived back in the UK; Ridley was looking at newer models but Sarah spotted the advert for Budgie, who was just down the road from us.  The amount of work done meant that Budgie had already been 'future proofed', and we just couldn't resist.

Roof Tent

We'd been debating for a while whether to get one large family roof tent, two smaller roof tents, or a pop-top.  

We really enjoyed our time in the Yukon, where we hired a Jeep with a roof tent, but we found the soft cover a bit of a faff to pack away and we knew that the boys would soon outgrow the space available in most large roof tents.

We seriously considered an iKamper or TentBox hard shell tent, but even the largest models didn't seem big enough for long term sharing for the four of us.

We thought about fitting two smaller roof tents, but it would require a specially adapted roof rack, and would be a considerable amount of weight up high, and pretty expensive.

In the end we decided on the Icarus pop-top roof conversion from Alu-Cab.  While the roof will only sleep two, it is raised in seconds and packed away in only a couple of minutes.  The pop-top has the added advantage of giving us standing room inside the Land Rover.  We're currently planning a layout which will allow us to use the folded second row seats as beds for the boys.

The roof was fitted for us by Tuff-Trek, along with an Alu-Cab 270 degree awning which wraps around the Landy to give us some outdoor shelter.  Tuff-Trek did a great job, and we highly recommend them. 

Back in the UK!

Well it's almost two months since we moved back to the UK, and we're still kind of getting over the culture shock, but as usual we're making the most of things. The boys are enjoying lots of UK snacks that they had totally forgotten about (as is Sarah!) so every trip to the store is bigger than intended.....  It's been great to catch up with old friends and family, although we've still got lots more people to catch up with!

Exploring our new home has been fun, and we've managed to keep some of our Canadian traditions like pumpkin picking before Thanksgiving, this year joined by the boys' Uncle, Aunty and wee cousin - there are some advantages to the UK.  After a world of pain navigating the UK school application system the boys have settled into their new school and have restarted skating lessons, and joined a great local rugby club.

We're missing our outdoor gear, which we shipped over from Canada and should hopefully arrive in a few more weeks.  Being unable to camp, we had a great weekend in a Shepherd's Hut, just up the road from home in the South Downs National Park.  We booked through Hipcamp, which is a great website listing cool camping and glamping spots in both the UK and Canada (amongst other places).  Use the link above for £10/$10 off your first stay.

Our Canadian Land Rover has now gone to a loving new home, and we just picked up another Defender last week - he came already named 'Budgie' so we are sticking with that - welcome to Team E Budgie!  We've already had a great proving run from Portsmouth to Edinburgh (about 450mi / 725km), and we're booked in to have a new pop-top roof fitted next month which will be the first stage in creating our new camping adventure wagon!

I'm sure there's lots more adventures to come, so stay tuned!