Therese Eriksson quit her role as a videographer, divorced her husband and decided to go off travelling in her 2007 Peugeot Boxer she had converted into a camper van
A woman divorced her husband, ditched her successful business and left all her possessions behind to travel around Europe in a van with her beloved cat.
Therese Eriksson earned a good living as a freelance videographer, allowing her and her then husband to rent a five-bedroom house and enjoy a good standard of living. Despite looking outwardly idealistic, the 33-year-old woman revealed that she was miserable and deeply unhappy with her life.
So in April 2023, she decided to ditch it all and travel around Europe with her four-and-a-half year old cat Tindra in a 2007 Peugeot Boxer that she bought and converted for £3,500. Speaking last night from near Malaga in southern Spain, she said: “The relationship wasn’t working so I decided within two weeks that I’m done with this.
“I said ‘take whatever you want, I don’t know when I’m going to come back. All I’m having is the cat’. I’m much happier now – life is much simpler. I am so grateful and happy for everything. I have stopped caring what people think.
“I don’t care about materialistic things. I’m much less worried about my appearance – I don’t always wear makeup and if my hair’s a mess I just put it in a bun. From the outside my old life was perfect. I had my company, I had a big house, it looked so nice.
“But I was never happy. There was so much pressure and focus on my career. Now my life is completely different – it’s like night and day. Then I was constantly seeing and comparing myself to other people in the rat race. Now I’m so shut off from that. I don’t look at the news and live in the moment.”
Therese is part of a growing trend of people converting vans to live in, according to firm specialist London moving services themanvan.co.uk.
Since leaving Sweden, she has driven around 50,000 miles, visiting Spain, France, Germany and Italy in the process. Her van is insulated and has a bed and batteries to charge her phone and laptop. But it has no running water or a toilet.
This is a far cry from the life she enjoyed in her £1,750-a-month house which overlooked the stunning Mälaren Lake in the Swedish city of Västerås. She also ran a successful videographer firm called Tuss Media which she had built up from scratch since finishing a degree in geoscience at the University of Uppsala in 2017.
She did this while filming content for her YouTube channel @ThereseEriksson – which she is chronicling her current travels on. Yet, deep down, she found none of this satisfying and decided that by indulging her love of solo travelling – a bug she picked up when she travelled alone aged 18 to Egypt in 2010 – would be the best remedy.
“The house cost €2,100-a-month (£1,750) just for rent. Now I spend €500-a-month (£415) for everything. I live so free. I can decide if I want a mountain view or the beach, if I want to be in a town or the countryside,” she said.
“I meet amazing people all the time. The difference is night and day. I have always been dreaming about being a TV representer for a travel show in Sweden.”
Therese continued: “I love travelling and being in front of the camera, it has been my biggest dream since I was 14. My YouTube channel and filmmaking skills allow me to travel and I have my own show and am living my dream.
“I was too scared to pursue it before because I didn’t know how I would go about it. And also people told me I couldn’t do it. That killed my dreams for so long but now I am alive to what is possible and am living the best life imaginable.”
Therese’s journey mirrors that of Kate Kennedy who, in April last year, walked out on her job and bought a £25,000 campervan to live in and work totally off grid. The 30-year-old, from Leeds, was denied annual leave, a “straw that broke the camel’s back”, and so she determinedly set off to travel the world.
