Frome Couple Swap Pub Life for Van Life

For the past two years, The Cornerhouse in Frome has been managed by Tom and Amy.

They have been the face of the pub and hotel, turning it into one of Frome’s most popular free music venues, introducing the award-winning Pieminister pies to the menu, and starting the town’s first Gin Club.

They said, “We have thoroughly enjoyed our time managing The Cornerhouse for Martin. We’ve given it our all, made some great friends and seen the pub continuously improve over the last two years. Now we’ve decided to make a change for ourselves and pursue a dream – to travel around the UK and Europe in a self converted campervan.”

Calling themselves the Van Monkeys, they converted their first van last year, and spent a month exploring France and the Pyrenees. They’ve caught the ‘van life’ bug, and are now going to do it all over again.

“We fell in love with the simpler way of life you get while travelling and living off grid in a van. You choose how long you want to stay in a place for, you wake up and go to sleep with the sun and you buy only what you need. But the best thing about it all is you’re surrounded by wildlife and nature. Instead of watching TV, we sit watching the birds at dusk, then see the stars come out.

“It seems to put everything into perspective. We live in a beautiful world, and we share this planet with some incredible creatures. Unfortunately in the western world it’s very easy to forget that and get wrapped up in the 9-5 grind and the negativity that’s thrown at us every day in the media. When you take a step back to really open your eyes and see the wonder around you, it really does enrich your life. We want to live for every day, not just for the weekend.”

They’ve got over 2,000 people following their journey on Instagram, and this year plan to create YouTube videos of their new van conversion.

“We want to give confidence to other people with the same dream as ours that with a bit of hard work and determination, it’s very much achievable. Amy could barely use a screwdriver before this, now she’s constructing cabinet doors and doing rust repairs. It took us 6 months to convert our van in between full time work, then we managed to have a few short trips over the summer in between work. Our month away exploring the Pyrenees really set in our minds that this is what we wanted to do.

“We are very excited to start our new lifestyle. We want to say a huge thank you to all the patrons who have supported us at The Cornerhouse. And to our great team we have to leave.”

You can follow Tom and Amy’s adventures on their instagram account: www. instagram.com/vanmonkeys Website: www.vanmonkeys.com