The story of our wagons was not really planned far in advance and happened a little by default, as do most things in our life!
I was in the fortunate position of having to fly frequently between Joburg and Durban. I love flying in any form, so to be on a plane always brings happiness to my heart.
Waiting at the airport however does not, so I went into the book store and found the book on the AirBNB founders. They had a business that was making waves around the world. They were real disrupters and brilliant entrepreneurs. The potential makings for an interesting read. I learnt that their business was more about cutting edge technology, than in was about accommodation and the hospitality industry. I will refer back to the tech part in another article. What stood out for me at the time, is they confirmed that travellers were looking for an experience. I could really relate to this. As family would chose an adventure over a hotel any day.
None of this was at all relevant to me, so I just filled in my unlabelled filling cabinet in my head.
The contract that I was working on came to an abrupt end, 2 months earlier than anticipated. Now what? An unusual place for me to be… no side hustle on the ready.. no plan B.
Not being a fan of social media, somehow I found my self on pintrest. What an incredible platform. The perfect place to scroll, get ideas – on anything and everything. Perfect place to top up my creative well. Now the thing with pintrest, is that you can be looking at cars – then art cars – then VW beetles – Then VW bugs – then bugs – then embroidery bugs! WTF I don’t even like embroidery. Start again. I really had no idea how the platform worked, but it was amazing to see the creativity out there. I was so inspired.
A couple of weeks later, I was scrolling and I saw the cutest red caravan ever. {see pic} I could so see myself designing and building a funky caravan. One with out the Christmas style flowers, probably more of a hippie boho type vibe. The more I looked, the more excited I got. Baaamm…. At 2 am that morning the Airbnb filing cabinet in my head flew open! Not only could I build a gorgeous caravan, I would rent it out as an Airbnb!! A new business was born in my head!
I gave Shane the heads up that a crazy idea was forming. He shook his head, as this was not the first time, nor would it be the last!
I bounced it off him. He was supportive as ever. Keen but not bowled over. That had never stopped me before, so I continued my research on design and the viability of the business. I must admit, I was not 100% sold on the idea, but it was a start. I had nothing else going on… so I carried on.
THEN I SAW IT!
A tiny red wooden Gypsy Wagon, in the snow next to a field. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. So much character. I would live in that in a heart beat. All searches changed to “Gypsy Wagons”. They were just magnificent.To this day, I cans still see this picture of the little red gypsy wagon. It will be engraved on my minds eye forever. That modest little gypsy wagon changed my trajectory. It helped me find this crazy path that I am on. This path that has turned out to me the most authentic thing that I have ever done.
I showed it to Shane. His eyes lit up! YES he said! That’s more like it. Yes lets do that!!
Time to get serious. First port of call for me the designer…. How do we get all mod cons for our modern day traveller to fit into this tiny gypsy wagon. What style of Gypsy Wagon or Gypsy Vardo did we want? Horses or no horses?
How the design of our wagon came about.
I wanted it as authentic as possible. Wooden. Hand carved. Queenie stove. Curved roof. Little chimney sticking out the top. What size should it be. Where do we put the bathroom?
For lack of any computer design skills, I cleared a space in my work room, and drew the layout on the floor in chalk. Ran to the bathroom to measure a bath and loo. How high should it be – high enough for 6.3 m tall Shane to stand in comfortably. How wide – wide enough for Shane to stretch his arms out wide and max width to fit on a truck. That is really how we designed the wagons.
Then we needed somewhere to park these wagons.
In my vision, they had to be parked in the country. Grass. Flowers. Under huge tress. In a peacefull, tranquil place. So many places in South Africa to choose from. We looked at many sites around the country, but chose to return to our happy place. Our favourite place in the world – Clarens. This tiny tourist village in the middle of the Free State Province.
We found a number of beautiful stands. Many shaded with trees. Only to discover that there was about a 2 year waiting period to get connected to the electricity supply. We were not deterred. We changed our search. We found this perfect piece of land. It was so over grown that we could not walk through it. It had the most magnificent giant oak trees. Wild flowers everywhere. Moss. It was perfect. Better yet it had electricity. The electricity was for the dilapidated house, that was on the same property. We changed our plan again… We now had huge piece of land, with trees, electricity and a house! Gypsy Guest house was born.
We renovated the guest house, while we were building the wagons in Joburg. An extensive renovation! The house was redesigned to fit in with our Gypsy Wagons. It is colourfull and eclectic. As fate would have it, caused by more challenges that were beyond our control, the house was ready before the wagons. That’s why we are also known as Gypsy Guest House Clarens. Most people seem to think that the house came first, but that was not the plan.
Red tape sorted, it was time to move the Wagons down to Clarens. They had been (not so) patiently waiting in Joburg in a storage yard.
The build. The move and installation of the wagons are other adventures deserving of a story in their own right…. Seeing 4 colourful gypsy wagons on top of superlinks driving down the freeway was a sight to behold!
As it so often happens in our life… who knew, that day, in 2017 when I was sitting waiting for my flight, that within a year, we would have built these amazing authentic gypsy wagons and built this insanely wonderful Gypsy Life!