After a strenuous year of rules and regulations, it’s fair to say that the panny-d has caused a major cultural shift in the way we work. With 91% of Brits claiming that they’ve enjoyed avoiding the office completely, many have decided to fully step back from clammy office life and embrace the flexibility of working from home for some much-needed escapism. With travel abroad still out of reach for most of us, spending more time outdoors and staycationing has now become the new norm, and people are looking for new ways to keep up this sweet mindset around work and let it transcend the pandemic. Enter: van life.
That’s right – hitching up our homes and hitting the road has become an ambition for thousands of young people in the UK craving that Summer escape while holding down their regular job, with searches around #Vanlife continuously increasing by a whopping 200% YoY.
Fatigue from endless lockdowns paired with painfully unaffordable rent prices (average London rent stands at an eye-watering £1,583 a month – ouch!), makes it no surprise that hoards of the ‘generation rent’ are now engaged in the online Van Life community: it’s fast becoming an attractive nomadic style of living for many.
We spoke to Paid Media Executive and #vanlife advocate Tash Carlisle, who gave us the down-low on why van life is the best life. She says:
“The gift of van life is the freedom of travel and flexibility. Living in a van may seem crazy to many, but really it allows the spontaneity to explore the outdoors and save a lot of money, whilst still having the ability to live comfortably and earn an income from working on the road.
Van life has given me the chance to discover a lot of the country that would have taken me years to have reached and something that I would have usually had to have saved up for. The fact that one day I can choose to wake up and work by a stunning lake in the Lake District, a peaceful forest amongst nature in the Peaks or even a mountainside in Wales makes van life an absolute dream.”
Join the #Vanlife community like some of our favourite influencers
Sound like the lifestyle change you need? Well, you just might be in luck. Leading coconut water brand Vita Coco is offering one lucky person the chance to live and work from anywhere in the UK for a year with a state-of-the-art campervan that has been uniquely designed to create the most epic mobile office, fully loaded with the latest tech (super-fast wifi to ensure no awkward Zoom mishaps!), a fridge fully stocked with a year’s supply of Vita Coco Pressed coconut water (of course!) and tropical vibes – a working paradise on wheels that is simply impossible to hate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13T8kQPDGPo&t=35s
How do you win this year-long taste of the good life, you ask? As part of its Impossible to Hate competition, Vita Coco is asking applicants to record a short video explaining how they would use the van to make their work Impossible to Hate.
Upload your video here to be in with a chance of winning a year in a van of your very own coconutty-dreams
Full T&C’s and FAQ’s can be found here
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