The Anne’s Vans team decamped to Stourton Woods at the Bank Holiday at the beginning of May for a photoshoot. New images of the vans are long overdue and this was the perfect opportunity. We blocked out the weekend to new bookings and assembled a team of top photographers (ok ok some good mates Andy and Paul who had all the gear and the right idear) plus Richard the drone pilot who we found after a shoutout on Facebook and who was a great sport.
We left the depot at DC Automotive in convoy together with our son Joe who drove the support van containing the firepit and other stuff useful for camping out. The plan was a full day’s shooting followed by a BBQ and ease into the evening around the firepit.
We were lucky enough to be given free range of Stourton Woods, normally a fantastic venue for weddings. Although we were about a mile or so off the main road it felt as if we were totally in the middle of nowhere. To all intents and purposes we were.
I won’t bore you with the minutiae of the photoshoot itself – many of the images and videos on this site are the output of it. What I will say is that the vans excelled themselves as accommodation and all we really did was sleep in them. The rest of the time we spent outdoors enjoying the fantastic surroundings of Stourton Woods.
In all there were our three campervans, Betty, Bertie and Ruby, a motorhome called Brian that belongs to Dave our able mechanic and another more modern van that belongs to Will who came along as tech support. Will has every gadget you will ever need on safari or campervan weekend away including solar panels on his roof. I don’t think Will’s van has a name 🙂
That night we had sausages and burgers together with copious amount of beer and wine and finished off by breaking out the whisky around the fire pit as the sun went down over the woods to the West. We were really lucky with the weather and the clear night sky was a wonderful deep blue colour.
We are most grateful for Helen and Antony Strawson for the use of the venue. It is where the Beyond The Woods festival is held – something that everyone is excited at the prospects of going to this August. If you would like to chat to them about using the venue yourselves check out their Stourton Estates website.
