Our new campervan was supposed to change our lives.

It did — just not in the way we planned.

My wife and I had spent years imagining it: a campervan, and finally the time to actually use it. We took out a loan, put our savings in, and worked with a specialist company — thanks Sue and Pat — to build exactly what we wanted.

It came out exactly right.

On the last day of our first week-long trip, I had a stroke.

What followed was a year of hospitals, rehab and physiotherapy. I’d lost movement in my right arm, hand and leg, and was told I might not drive a manual again.

I decided to prove otherwise.

The road stopped. The idea didn’t.

Getting my right hand working again meant relearning to type. I needed something worth the effort, so I started building the travel tool I wanted us to have when we finally got back on the road.

At first, it was about the journey: where should we go, how should we get there, how long should we stay, and how could I keep the whole trip straight without having pieces of it everywhere?

But sitting outside was the campervan we had borrowed and saved to build. It wasn’t just transport; it was a significant asset, and if we were going to depend on it, I wanted to understand it and look after it properly. So the servicing went in. The tyres. Maintenance. Documents. Everything I needed to know about the van and when something needed attention.

Then I discovered payloads, weights and inventories. Suddenly it wasn’t enough to know what gear we owned — I wanted to know what was actually in the van, what a particular trip needed, what we could safely carry, and whether we were properly prepared before we left the driveway.

And the same pattern kept appearing. Campsites in one app. Routes in another. Places saved on maps. Booking emails. Notes. Lists. Links. Screenshots. Costs. Things we wanted to remember for next time.

They all belonged to the same journey.

That was when Avandra stopped being a trip planner and started becoming what I actually wanted to build: one place for the whole thing.

What it became

One place for the whole life of a trip.

Before

Choose where to go. Build the trip. Check the van. Sort the packing.

During

Check the weather. Find what’s nearby. Track expenses. Use your checklists. Take on challenges. Keep the trip moving without spending the trip managing it.

After

Record the costs. Remember the places. Keep what you learned. Make the next trip better.

And then I hit the hardest problem.

Where do you actually go?

Planning gets easier once you know where you’re going.

Choosing where to go is harder.

~90

regions in France alone

A whole country is too much to understand as one destination. So Avandra breaks Europe into regions you can actually get your head around.

Each one gives you what matters when you’re deciding whether to go: what makes it different, when it’s worth visiting, what the weather really does month by month, where to stay, what to see, where to eat, what’s happening while you’re there, and what naturally sits before or after it on a longer trip.

You choose a region, not a country.

Everyone travelling can add what interests them.

What you all agree on becomes part of the trip.

Brittany

What makes it different

Corsairs, crêpes, standing stones

When to go

May · June · September

Where to stay

42 campsites in the region

Getting there

Ferry: Roscoff → Cork, Plymouth

What's on

Fête de la Coquille this month

Before / after

Normandy · the Loire

Two years on

Avandra has grown far beyond the thing I originally built for myself.

It has been shaped on real trips and by myself andother travellers who plan nothing like I do.

I’d never built a website before.

I learned because I wanted this one to exist.

— Kenneth, still planning trips.

Where it’s at

Avandra is in "proof of concept - private beta"— invite-only, opening to small groups at a time so we can see how it holds up on real trips and act on what people tell us.

Ireland, UK, France and Spain are essentially fully built. The rest of Europe is close behind. Germany, Italy, Portugal are next in line.

We’re opening Avandra more widely over the winter, so people can get settled into it before the 2027 touring season. All going well, we’ll continue expanding to more countries after that.