A few weeks ago, Audrey from the CevVan company got in touch with us and suggested that we tested one of their vintage Volkswagen vans for a roadtrip in the Cévennes (South of France). It didn’t take much more than just browsing through their website for us to have a crush on their concept and their values that are so similar to ours. Based in Saint Mathieu de Tréviers, this young company was created a little over a year ago by 3 friends, 2 Oliviers and Erwan, helped out by Audrey for the feminine touch. Those travel passionates love the Cévennes and they decided to launch this vintage vans rental company along with road books that would help the road-trippers figuring out their very own itinerary.

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Scooby, our van

The beautiful bright orange Yellowstone van caught our eye at first but we ended up renting the cute green Scooby. Directly imported from the United States, the van was then refurbished with great ingenuity by the Westfalia company. It includes a sink connected to a non-drinkable water tank, a gas cooker and a small fridge. Keep in mind that the latter is only plugged on 12 volts and is therefore not very cold, avoid heat sensitive products such as butter or milk. An excuse to spend your mornings at the nearby farmers market! The back seat is actually a sofa bed and you can fold-out the roof to reveal its berth. The van can accommodate up to 4 adults, perfect for organizing a weekend with pals! Equipped with many storage space, the van is pretty functional and it was very nice to see the extent of equipment supplied by CevVan (pans, plates, glasses, cutlery, corkscrew, cutting board, camping table, camping stools, ceiling light, solar shower and even olive oil, salt and pepper!) which allowed us to only take the essential. However, do not forget to take drinkable water as well as cushions, a blanket and/or sleeping bags. To go grocery shopping before leaving, easy: there is an Intermarché store (supermarket) located just a few minutes from CevVan!

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Still, keep in mind that this van, although spruced up, dates back from 1979 and is not brand new. Unfortunately we had some inconvenience during our trip (turn signals and headlights working half the time, no car radio, driver’s belt unscrewed once, water leaked under the steering wheel near electrical stuff, right rear-view mirror regularly switched down or the trunk lock got broken) which we had to deal with. We shared all our remarks to Erwan and Audrey who assured us that adequate repairs would be performed ASAP.

Our itinerary

In addition to renting your van, the CevVan team offers road books filled with many roadtrip suggestions for you to establish your own personalized itinerary. We chose to try out the 3-day “Vallée française” (French Valley) road book which perfectly matched our needs. It’s filled with pretty handy infos like swimming spots, fun activities, points of interests, but also places you can park your van for the night, very convenient! The hardest part will be to chose! After doing some research on our side and speaking with Erwan, we opted for a pretty easy and relaxed route through Corconne, Saint Hippolyte du Fort, Anduze and Saint Bauzille de Putois, allowing us to take the time to enjoy the beautiful scenery without stressing out about timing. A very important factor to consider is the traveling time between each step. Knowing that the van hardly exceeds 50km/h (31 mph) and tops out at about 70km/h (43 mph), you should double the time indicated by Google Maps for your travels so you won’t have to spend your time riveted on your watch. We have also decided to incorporate one of the sports activities offered by Aupalya, one of CevVan partners. They have created packages combining van rental and sports activity on which we strongly advise you to go take a look!

The end note

To sum up, to plan your road trip, you will need: good friends, a good sense of direction, a little organization, a lot of good humor, a nice blanket and especially a great playlist! In the next blog post, we’ll share with you our very own roadtrip approuved playlist that we put together with the help of our beloved followers!

This article was written as part of a partnership with the CevVan company. Nevertheless, any opinion expressed here are our own and has not been subjected to any influence from the brand.