Life in the slow lane
Graphic designer Matt Cobb has done what most of us dream of doing at least one point in our lives – he left his central London apartment to travel, live and work in a DIY campervan conversion
Meet the man who left his central London apartment to travel, live and work in a Defender 110 DIY camper
MOST OF us dream of quitting the rat race in search of freedom, individualism and minimalism, but sadly the reality of maintaining mortgages, relationships and other life responsibilities stop us. For 26-year-old Matt Cobb however, he was in the fortunate position to do something about his hectic and expensive lifestyle in Shoreditch, London, and with a laptop, a 40 GB 4G data contract and a DIY Land Rover camper he made life on the road work for him.
First off, I’m intrigued as to what Matt does to enable him to lead this lifestyle. “I’m Lead UI/UX Designer for a company that I co-founded called Reedsy, which helps authors to publish their books. It all began four years ago while I was studying architecture at university, which is obviously a slight departure from what I do now but something that I was passionate about. I was doing freelance design to help pay the bills and my work started getting noticed online. Some French business students spotted a few of my projects on Behance.net, which showcases work from online portfolios, and reached out to me with this idea. It all grew from there really and we now have 18 full-time employees from all over the world working for the business.”
As everyone who works for Reedsy are based remotely it meant that in theory Matt could work as he travelled. He takes up the story: “It was great living in London while it lasted, but I had done what I needed to do there. I was working from home so there was no tie and the fact that I could do this anywhere just kept bugging me. My tenancy had come up, and I was already living apart from my girlfriend who is doing her finals at Sheffield and
is thinking of joining me a little later anyway, so I thought it’s now or never.”
Matt has been obsessed with Land Rovers for as long as he can remember, and a few years ago he and a few mates rented a Defender in Iceland to go exploring for a few weeks. Since then he’s had his heart set on getting one – the basic nature of the interior lending itself perfectly for what Matt wanted. “It’s such a blank canvas, you can turn it into whatever you want – like my requirements were for an office and somewhere comfortable to live and sleep. I loved the idea that it would help me to get to places away from the crowds,” confesses Matt.
Prior to that, Matt also had a lot of campervan experience, having travelled the east coast of Australia, New Zealand and a lot of Europe, but his whirlwind tour of Iceland convinced him that only a Land Rover would do. “That trip was just so incredible; the amount of trust that we all bestowed in this Defender was astounding. It’s quite weird actually, the relationship one builds with a Land Rover,” he laughs.
After a few weeks of looking for Td5 110s, Matt managed to stumble across the perfect base vehicle on ebay with very low mileage in January 2017. It was ex-military and previously based in the Falklands, before being snapped up by a restorer in Bradford with the plan of doing it up for his father. Shortly after, he broke his pelvis and was unable to drive manual cars, so Matt ended up winning the auction and benefitting from a freshly-resprayed, fullyWaxoyled 2004 110.
The first thing Matt did was make a makeshift plywood bed, so that he could spend weekends travelling to different corners of the UK to get acquainted with his future home. However, after nearly getting frostbite during a brief stint in the Brecon Beacons, it became apparently clear that some further modifications were required if any serious living was to take place in the future. He also discovered that it leaked in a few places.
“I had no experience of working on cars, but my second
“I loved the idea that it would help me to get to places away from the crowds”
year project at university was to design and build a nursery school for a small rural village in South Africa, so that gave me experience in 3D design programs, as well as some hands-on woodwork skills. The father of one of my friends is a carpenter so I was lucky enough to have access to his garage and tools.”
With a team-building event in Chamonix in April of this year, Matt had three weeks to gut it, insulate it and kit out the interior – a pretty tough challenge given he was working full time so I could only dedicate evenings and weekends to it. “I think I did a fairly decent job but there was definitely some bodging! In terms of being able to work from it, the power supply has been more than adequate to charge up my phone and laptop and much to my delight and surprise I discovered that mobile 4G reception across much of Europe is incredible, especially around the Alps. In fact, I’m getting consistently better internet speeds than what I had in central London.”
There isn’t a great deal of space to play with, so Matt’s designed it to be adaptive. For example, the desk (1200 mm long and 600 mm deep) folds down on sprung hinges to create either a sofa or a full sleeping platform that reuses the foam cushions to form the bed. It’s all constructed from 9 mm, 12 mm and 15 mm thick sheets of birch plywood and finished in two coats of Osmo Polyx Oil to protect it from sunlight and water damage.
While it has seen him through three months of travelling the Swiss, French and Italian Alps, Matt came back to the UK in June for a few weeks to complete phase two of the project to make living in it much more viable. For instance, he wants a pull-out drawer that extends out of the back door to house a sink and a gas stove (currently he’s cooking outside on benches or on the ground), which by his own admission will be a real game changer! He also wants to change the power supply, which at the moment only consists of a portable battery and solar panel, as well as add a roof-mounted storage area and further storage behind the driver and passenger seats.
“I need to get power permanently on the roof and something to allow secondary battery charging while I’m not using the vehicle. I also need a system for drinking water and wastewater. I’ve been putting it off to be honest as these modifications require permanent changes to the exterior and a load of wiring, so even though I’ll do it myself I’ll be asking for advice.”
Living out his dream was the escape from London that Matt was craving. I will leave the last words to him. “I feel so lucky to be able to work and live in these locations – I am stoked with the outcome of my build and after a hard day’s work it’s so rewarding to be able to rock climb, swim, bike, ski or hike. I’m far from the first person to try out this lifestyle – Instagram is flooded with the vanlife hashtag, but I find most of the images are a bit staged. They don’t paint a trueto-life picture, like you never see photos of nights spent in supermarket car parks, or breakdowns.
“I want to show that being on the road is a totally feasible option for those of us who can work remotely — you just have to be willing to make some compromises along the way. My only constraint is having access to 4G and I use an app called Opensignal to check the signal strength before I go to a new country – Norway is next. Cooking on benches and sleeping up cold mountains isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and for most a pretty basic way of living, but there is nowhere else I’d rather be right now than in my 110.” If you wish to see more of Matt and his travels, follow him on Instagram @mattjohncobb.
ABOUT REEDSY
Reedsy is all about giving independent authors access to talented professionals, powerful tools and free educational content to create and market beautiful books. Since it was launched in November 2014, it now has over 120,000 authors signed up, and a pool of 1200 freelancers. To learn more go to reedsy.com.