Welcome to Otis and Us – a UK vanlife and family travel blog, sharing road trips, campervan tips and hacks and places to stay to help you to plan your next adventure.
Otis and Us is our VW T5 converted campervan, and we are a family of five who love nothing more than an epic road trip in our campervan.
I am Katy, I am a wife to Paul, and together we have three beautiful children aged 12, 9 and 7.
We love to travel, and after we had our first child , we purchased our Camper van Otis. Otis is a VWT5. We have spent the last few years converting our van to a campervan we are now a family of five in a T5 camper. Last year we introduced a golden retriever into our family and now share our tips on vanlife with a dog (who loves exploring as much as us).
We live in Staffordshire in the UK, and love spending time outdoors, and exploring family friendly and dog friendly places at home and on our travels.
I hope to inspire your travels and adventures, by sharing our vanlife tips and hacks, road trips itineraries, camper van holidays and family travels!
Voted Number 1 UK vanlife blog by Feedspot in 2022.
Please do get in touch- we love to hear from you if you have any questions or if you would like to work with us!
Otis and Us is a free online resource. If you have enjoyed one of my posts, you can show your support in many ways:
- You can buy me a coffee here.
- Follow us on Instagram and share you family travel and vanlife.
- Use the affiliate links on my blog – this means I will earn a small commission from the products you buy, at no additional cost to you.
Also on the Otis and Us team
I wanted to take my blog to the next level, beyond just a ‘hobby’. So in 2023, I brought on my good friend and blogging-guru, Jenny Lynn.
Jenny manages the technical, back-end of the Otis and Us website, ensures that my blog posts are optimised for Google, and is always there to bounce ideas off, often over a glass of French red and cheeseboard.
Jenny is a full-time professional blogger, along with her husband, Jason Lynn, who also occasionally helps out too with his technical wizardry.
In 2016, Jenny launched her first blog, TraveLynn Family, which has become one of the leading adventure family travel blogs, where she shares her epic, overseas family adventures, including overlanding Africa in a Land Rover, living in Morocco, backpacking Southeast Asia, and living in India, all with kids in tow!
Based in the UK’s beautiful Peak District, Jenny also runs Peak District Kids, which is the go-to online resource for families adventuring in the UK’s oldest National Park, featuring over 80 step-by-step walking guides, traffic-free bikes rides, attractions, and lots more.
She also runs two other travel blogs, Explore Essaouira and On Penang, which are the top English-speaking, online travel guides for Essaouira (Morocco) and Penang (Malaysia) respectively.
I’m beyond excited and very honoured to join the Otis and Us team. Katy has built an incredible blog to inspire UK families to get outdoors and for years it has been the blog I recommend when families need advice on adventuring in their campervan. There have been so many family van life blogs and social media accounts launched since the pandemic, but Katy started way before that and offers the most real-life, honest, and up-to-date advice.
Jenny Lynn