Me and my girlfriend have rented the VW Belter van for 13 days to travel around the west coast of Scotland. We started with the Isle of Mull, and then proceeded to Isle of Skye, finishing our trip with the coast towards Ullapool, before driving via Inverness back to Glasgow.
Mark & Lynne were a very warm & friendly host! The handover with Mark was very friendly and casual, and Lynne was available & very responsive for all the questions we had. Mark & Lynne were also flexible and allowed us to return the van at a later time than required, which required some arrangement on their end as well - very appreciate that!
The van was great for 2 people. It is a new car that is serviced really well, so we had zero driving-related issues - everything was great. The van was also perfect for the lot of the single-track roads we have encountered on the islands. Mark has some stiff insurance on the van, and really maintains it well.
Regarding van's living facilities, we had a misfortune that the main van's water tank was being repared, so Mark installed a smaller, 10L water tank into the van. This was not ideal as we were spending most of our time off-grid (we visited a campsite 2-3 times in 13 days, if I remember correctly), but it was easy to compensate with a bunch of store-bought 5L bottles, so it was not much of a problem.
With regards to our off-grid living, I would also like to point out that the van's leisure battery is in brilliant state! We never charged our van via 220V sockets, only relying on the generator while driving to replenish the power, and the battery never fell below 3/5, allowing us to have refrigerator on all the time. I often had bad experience with leisure batteries, but this one was top notch.
Personally, we would find it hard for the van to accommodate 3-4 people, as the mattress on the top is quite thin, and sleeping on the top of the van results in a very hard sleeping surface. But for two people, it is perfect. We simply used the top mattress to "soften" the bottom bed even more. Mark & Lynne also provided us with warm bedding for the cold(ish) Scottish nights.
Maybe one thing that's relatively minor, but would be useful on some of the locations where we slept, would be a pair of wheel levellers/chocks, which the van doesn't include (as far as we know). We saw some campervans use these to good effect on not-straight parking slots, that's why I'm writing this feedback here.
Anyway - we would warmly recommend this van for both the friendliness of the owners, as well as for the state of the van. We had a really great vacation!
August 2024
Response from Mark
Thank you very much for your review it is very my appreciated. We have taken notes of your rents.
Thanks Lynne and Mark.