A night in a Camper Van — it’s not everyone’s cup of gas-heated tea.

There are plenty of people who associate sleeping in the car only with losing keys and/or a marital argument — people who will point out that, even though VW built its first Camper Van as long ago as 1950, this still means it post-dates by several hundred years the invention of the hotel.

Yet for thousands of happy hirers and owners (including, of late, Jamie Oliver, if that makes any difference to you), the legendary “Combi” or “Hippy Bus” continues to exert a magnetic pull: a counter- cultural motoring icon with a permanently footloose, bound-for-Glastonbury feel.

Wherever they park their car, that’s their home. By-laws permitting, of course.

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Children, certainly, are in thrall to the mobile Wendy House aspect of the Camp- er Van experience — bottomlessly amused by the thought that you might put on the kettle or get cereal out of a cupboard while still in the car. But perhaps there is something primal in it for their elders, too.

At the very least, it’s a kind of proving ground, or test of mettle. By camping in a van with his family, a man is demonstrating that, even if something cataclysmic happened to the world, and only the larger branches of Halfords were left standing, he would still be able to provide shelter and sustenance for his loved ones. Certainly for one night, anyway. Possibly for two, depending.

As a sceptical, not to say tent-averse, Camper Van novice, determined, in the name of journalism, to grit his teeth and run this rite of passage, I recently borrowed a van from Isle of Wight Camper Van Holidays, a company whose name in no way disguises its core mission.

Isle of Wight Camper Van Holidays does holidays in Camper Vans on the Isle of Wight.

And the Isle of Wight may be the perfect place to test this vehicle’s enduring resonance, being itself mildly time-warped, and providing a rare chance to travel, unharried, through an area of outstanding natural beauty, in the presence of hedgerows and in the absence of motorways.

Isle of Wight Camper Van Holidays had gone to a touching amount of trouble to awaken my inner snail. My navy blue van had hooded chrome eyelids over its headlamps and an accelerator pedal in the shape of a bare foot. The cupboards held jars of tea, coffee and sugar and a cake tin, containing cake.

The floor had been retro-fitted with a fetching black and white lino. The kitchen featured a gas-powered two-ring cooker, a fridge and a sink, drawing pumped water from a plastic canister. There were seats for four, and beds for three and a half — two canvas bunks suspended in the push-up roof and a fold-out, enhanced single down below.

(You’d better be intimate with the people you take into a Camper Van — or, be happy to become intimate with them very quickly.)

Yet, inevitably, it retained a hundred ways to baffle and exasperate the pampered modern driver, beginning with the famous, over-exerted whirr of its boot-mounted engine. A Camper Van under acceleration sounds like a hairdressers on a busy Saturday.

And, what — no remote-locking key fob? Separate keys for the doors and the ignition? Incredible, in 2009, but true. Synchromesh gears? I don’t think so.

Selecting the appropriate gear was like trying to jab a rat with a plank, and my early, furious struggles to find first on a hill in Sandown were long, embarrassing and actually dangerous, creating a tailback in the area that may only now have finished dispersing. Power steering?

Not so as you’d notice, breathlessly wrestling the bus driver’s wheel, mounted horizontally across your lap. And as for handling . . . put it this way: to meet a surprise corner in a Camper Van at any speed in excess of 26mph is to know knuckle-whitening terror in its purest form.

But then, you call it “primitive”; fans call it “personality”. And fair enough. I drove a VW California not long ago. This is VW’s contemporary take on the camper experience: an enhanced people carrier, fitted with beds, wardrobes, a kitchen, pop-out awnings and, for all I know, even its own scullery and wine cellar. (This car was so big there were whole rooms in it that I never went into.)

The California was sumptuously suspended and seductively easy to drive. You would have no problem finding first gear in it. Or any other gear, for that matter.

At the same time, there is no getting round the fact that the California is, to all intents and purposes, a large block of squared-off metal — a bread van with a sink. Where is the romance?

In the Camper Van, by contrast, you drive amid the characterful jingle of teacups and the endearing clatter of shifting saucepans. We parked up on some downland and brewed tea, prior to organising a quintessential British holiday moment: sitting on a slightly damp blanket and being not quite warm enough.

Then, as darkness gathered and a steady rain fell, we pulled into a 24-hour Tesco forecourt for essential supplies — milk and chocolate mini rolls — and began to seek our spot for the night. We drove at first on to a seaside campsite. Hulking, grey shapes loomed around us — gigantic articulated motor homes with vast and impregnable canvas extensions, possibly modelled on the Pentagon. But it didn’t feel right.

For one thing, there didn’t seem to be any free space into which we might nudge ourselves without running over some high-tech camper’s auxiliary supplies tent or personal electricity sub-station. For another, it dawned on us belatedly, as we toured those dark and rain-spattered alleys, that a campsite is fundamentally a rock festival without the rock.

Or the festival. Which is fine, of course, if that’s what you fancy. But if you’re seeking to spend a solitary night in search of the true, free spirit of the VW Camper, then you’re duty-bound, surely, to go with something a little more ad hoc and lacking a purpose-built shower block.

So instead we found a borderline legal position on a dark stretch of road adjacent to a sea wall and readied ourselves for bed. A set of blue, doll’s house curtains cosily obscured the windows all around.

Through the cracks, across the Solent, the lights of Portsmouth glittered — a comforting reminder of a not-too-distant world in which people were sleeping soundly in proper beds. A passing walker broke the silence to bid us a cheery “night night” — spooking us for the next half hour and inspiring me to recheck the locks on the doors.

But we eventually settled again and lay listening to the breaking waves of the incoming tide and the two-tone melody the rain plays on a Camper Van (the pattering on the canvas, the poinking on the metal).

I’ll confess, I’ve enjoyed easier nights. But, aloft in the canvas bunk, under the plastic roof, my son put in a solid seven hours — remarkable when you consider that he was, essentially, separated from the wind off the sea by a reinforced carrier bag.

After a hearty breakfast of chocolate mini rolls, and pausing only to demist the windscreen with the sleeve of my jumper, we drove through the teeming showers to Shanklin.

We were tired but proud, unwashed but smug. But, most of all, we were dry and warm, meaning a Camper Van beats a tent any day. It beats most bed and breakfasts, too, lacking a landlady. Everyone should camp in a van once. Possibly even twice.

Isle of Wight Camper Van Holidays: 01983 852089

Camper vans: a history

1947 Humble beginnings for the iconic vehicle. Needing transporters to move parts around the German factory, Volkswagen engineers build platforms on Beetle chassis — a prototype for the camper van.

1947-1949 Inspired by these transporters, Dutch businessman Ben Pon sketches a box van. After two years’ work on the aerodynamics, the Type 2 Transporter is launched.

1949-1954 Volkswagen develops 90 combinations, including refrigerated vans, ambulances and fire engines.

1957 Production of the Type 2 Transporter begins at Volkswagen do Brasil, fast-forwarding Brazil’s industrialisation process.

1960s-1970s The camper van enters its rebellious period as a countercultural symbol. Vans are hand-painted by owners to express anti-war sentiments. The VW logo is neatly replaced with a “ban the bomb” peace symbol.

1970s-present Not so humble now, the Type 2 van becomes a collector’s item, fetching anything up to £20,000.

Nadia Ghani

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