words by jonnyk
Ok well here goes.....
We bought Bertha a 1973 Westfalia at Vanfest 2004, having gone there for a look around! We had a bay Westy in 2000 which we brought as a project and had to tow it home, the van needed much more work than we first thought so we sold it for £300 (a tax exempt westy with interior!!).
When we got Bertha she was alpine white and Sumatra green (a colour that neither Al or I were fond of, but could live with until we could afford to have her painted). She was a totally standard 1600 complete with the original rear hatch fly screen and cab bunk.
We got bitten by the bug pretty quickly and went camping as much as possible, travelling to pretty much every show we could in 2005. We have fond memories of the "All Types" show that year in North Wales where our then 3 year old daughter Grace decided to draw the outline of a cat and
on the outside of the sliding door with a stone!! (We were so proud!!)
We had a good fortnights holiday in Cornwall in her in 2006, all four of us (Samuel being only 9 weeks old) camping.
Fistral Beach.
We tried a couple of different sets of wheels, a set of Design 90's
then at Vanfest 2006 we bought some Empi 5 spokes
It was apparent that she needed a little TLC over the winter 2006/2007 so we decided to take her off the road and have some welding done. She had screaped through the previous two MOT's on jacking points.
We removed the interior and all was not well
The simple amounts of welding that we thought were required escalated into a full strip down and rebuild, including a pair of cab doors, Australian sliding door, engine lid, wheel arches, rear corners, cargo floor, outriggers , jacking points, the list goes on...heres a few of the restoration photos
