Land’s End, April 2026. The night Storm Dave met our brand new awning.
It’s 4am. I am fully dressed in a campervan bed that was never designed to hold three people, let alone three people and the emotional weight of a potentially airborne awning.
I’m wedged into the corner by the window, clutching my glasses in one hand and my phone in the other, as if either might offer protection. To my left, one teenage boy sleeps diagonally with elbows splayed, while the other snores in restless protest at the proximity of his brother.
Outside, Storm Dave is battering the van.
Not gently rocked. Not “a bit breezy.” Properly battered. The kind of wind that arrives in waves, a rising whistle through the telegraph wires followed by a full-bodied shove that makes the whole van shift just enough to remind you that you are, in fact, parked on the very edge of the country. The end of the Land. Land’s End.
Anchored to the side is our brand new, not insignificant investment: an inflatable awning.
We have been staunchly anti-awning until this point, almost smugly so. Our setup has always been minimalist, just the van, the pop roof, a utility tent, and a wind-out canopy if the sun ever bothered to appear. Maximum flexibility for life on the open road.
But then the boys grew at an alarming rate. And coupled with the typical UK bank holiday forecast of “raining with a chance of mizzle”, we finally caved and bought an inflatable extension.
To our surprise, the setup was blissfully simple. Years of camping together had apparently taught us something. We could follow instructions and communicate like functioning adults. Within half an hour we were sitting outside with cold beers, admiring our handiwork as the sun melted into the horizon. We had even decked it out as a full teen den, with the Nintendo projected cinema-style onto the canvas. The boys would sleep out there. Dan and I had the van. For a brief moment, it was perfect.
What we had not bargained for was the wind, gathering force as the evening wore on. Hour by hour the gusts grew more ferocious. Unidentifiable objects clanked and rattled outside, tiny straps whipped against the bike rack, and it became impossible to pinpoint and silence them all by groping around in the dark. So I lay there. Listening.
By 2am, the wind had found its rhythm. A high-pitched howl through the telegraph wires, followed by a gut punch of a gust that slammed into the van and blasted the fabric of the awning.
Then something changed. A new noise. One that suggested things were no longer fine. Something was pounding on the roof.
I slid open the door. The tunnel, the bit that connects the awning to the van, was under serious strain. One fixing had already gone. The rest were considering their options.
I grabbed hold of it instinctively and called to Dan. There is a particular kind of quiet urgency in those moments. No drama. Just two people, in the dark, holding onto something expensive and questioning every life choice that led them there. We worked quickly, shifting the cooking gear, the toilet, the shoes. Then we made the call. Detach it.
It felt like a gamble. Were we releasing it into the wild? Removing the only thing anchoring it to the earth? Or saving both it and the van from something worse?
There was no way I was sleeping with the boys out there. So we swapped. The boys piled into the van with me, and Dan took his chances in the awning, which by now was bending and bowing in a deferential manner.
Back in bed, I turned to my phone for reassurance. How much longer would this last? Was it easing or merely gathering strength? Every app, every forecast, every smug little weather icon insisted the wind was a 20mph fresh breeze. I lay there, quietly gaslit by technology, as the van rocked for all the wrong reasons.
We made the mutual decision, by text, to sit it out until first light and take it down at dawn. Which brings me back to 4am. Still awake. Still listening.
But now the sky has cleared. The wind is still doing its thing, but above it is the most beautiful starlit sky. Bright, sharp pinpricks of light that seem to disappear when you look directly at them. I watch satellites drift across the darkness and wonder if I am witnessing Artemis II’s historic return to Earth.
I text Dan. “The stars are pretty.”
By morning, everything is still there. A bit battered, but intact.
And on the drive home, somewhere between yawns and coffee stops, we retell it. Already smoothing the edges. Already laughing at the parts that, just hours earlier, felt far less funny.
Because these are the bits that stay. Not the perfect sunsets or the well-executed setups. But the 4am moments. The questionable decisions. The shared, silent understanding that this is slightly ridiculous, yet always completely worth it.
What we’d do differently
- Choose the hedge over the view. We pitched looking out towards Land’s End. In hindsight, the hedges blocking that view would also have given us shelter.
- Use a proper wind forecast. Our phones said 20mph. They were wrong. Check a fit-for-purpose app like Windy rather than relying on your phone’s built-in weather or the BBC.
- Know when not to pitch. When we told Vango the story, they said they wouldn’t advise having any awning up in wind like that. Even their strongest ones will struggle. If it’s forecast, leave it in the bag.
We’ve since become Vango ambassadors. The awning survived, obviously. If you’re weighing up an awning for a growing family, read campervan, motorhome, caravan or tent, and see what we pack in our family campervan kit list.