We recently sold our house, quit our jobs and bought a motorhome to live in full time and travel around the UK and Europe. Sounds crazy when you say it out loud doesn’t it?! We wanted to tell you all about our new home and show you around, for anyone who may be interested in owning their own Swift motorhome.
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Why did we go for the Swift 694 motorhome?
So, the Swift Escape was not the motorhome we originally planned to get. This doesn’t mean that we’re not incredibly happy that we ended up with this motorhome.
The motorhome we originally planned to get was a brand-new Peugeot Elddis. The waiting time for this motorhome kept getting delayed further and further by our dealership due to delays with manufacturing due to Covid, and we were starting to be on a tight timescale of when we wanted to start travelling, so for this reason we switched to the Swift which was in stock and ready to go. It was only a year old and had hardly done any mileage, and when we viewed it, we fell in love straight away.
Now that we’ve lived in this motorhome for a little while, and comparing it to the Elddis, we actually believe that this worked out for the better. We really do prefer the layout and the overall finish of the Swift, so we’re really pleased things worked out as they did.
Swift Escape 694 Dimensions
The Swift Escape is a 4-berth motorhome. The overall width is 2.31 metres, height is 2.88m and the overall length is 7.41 metres. The payload is around 578 kg.
Swift Escape 694 Layout
The layout consists of several different “areas”, the Cab, Living Area, Kitchen Area, Bathroom, Bedroom and the Garage.
The Cab
The cab contains 2 swivel captain seats which are fully adjustable and have arm rests. The cab also contains the reversing camera which we find super helpful when driving the motorhome. The motorhome also has reversing sensors. The cab also has some overhead storage, be careful when thinking about what items to have in this storage though and how the items may move around because having a heavy book fall on your head when you’re driving is not fun!
The Living Area
Moving to the living area. This has a corner sofa seat and also another bench sofa seat on the other side. The corner sofa seat has the 2 extra seatbelts for 2 more passengers. There is also a fixed table which can swivel and move around as required. We find this fixed table great, it’s a perfect place to sit and eat but also a comfortable place for us both to work at, as we both work remotely whilst we’re travelling. There is also storage under both of the sofa seats, overhead storage and reading lights.
Just above the main door there is also the control panel. This is a touch screen panel where we can control heating, lighting, water etc. The panel is so simple and completely user friendly, we feel this is a really impressive feature of the Swift Escape 694 and helps us to keep on top of when we’re running low on water and our battery levels etc so that we can manage these.
The Kitchen Area
Our motorhome has a fab little kitchen area which consists of an oven and hob, microwave, tall fridge and sink area. There is also a fold-out extendable worktop space. There are overhead storage cupboards, a large under-sink storage cupboard which contains a cutlery drawer and a storage drawer underneath the oven.
The Bathroom
Moving to the bathroom. This has a Thetford cassette toilet, a sink, mirror, shower, an under-sink storage cupboard, an overhead storage cupboard and a towel rail. For a compact bathroom, it has everything we need! The shower also has really good pressure considering it’s a van shower.
The Bedroom
The bedroom has a double (maybe slightly smaller) island bed (which lifts up for extra storage space and access to the garage) and also extends to give you some extra length. There are also some USB points but only on one side of the bed, we wish they were on both sides. There are 2 wardrobe cupboards either side of the bed, and some overhead storage above. There is also a dressing area with a mirror and shelves underneath which I really love about the motorhome. Having somewhere to get ready in such a small space makes life much easier!
We’ve added some fairy lights around the bed to give a really cosy feel at night, and rather than having a TV we have decided to have a projector and screen in our motorhome. Our TV bracket / aerial was in a really awkward spot by the toilet door, halfway down the motorhome. We prefer to watch the TV in bed which is why we decided to remove the bracket and have the projector instead.
There is also a curtain to close off the bedroom area to give it a more private feel and also makes it feel like it’s own little room which we love. The bedroom area is our favourite area of the van.
All of the windows and sky lights have blinds, which work wonderfully and completely block out the light at night, and also fly screens which the main door has too.
Swift Escape 694 Upgrades
Some of the upgrades we have made to our motorhome are adding 2 solar panels to give 470 watts of power. We have also added a 2000kw inverter and 2 Gaslow LPG refillable cylinders. We have also added some winter tyres.
The reason we have made these upgrades is because we plan to live in our motorhome full time and hope to do as much off-grid camping as we can to save money. We don’t always want to pay for campsites so we wanted to be as self-sufficient as we could be. Also, gas cylinders are notoriously difficult to get hold of at the moment and LPG seems easier to find and also more cost effective in the long run.
We have also added a tracker, some security cameras, an alarm and window sensors – security is so important to us.
Would we recommend a Swift Escape Motorhome?
We absolutely would recommend a Swift Escape! Considering it isn’t the motorhome we originally chose, we’re so glad things worked out as they did, and we ended up with this as our tiny home on wheels for the next year or so!
Keep up with our full-time van life travels over on our YouTube channel! If you enjoy our videos, please give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel 🙂 – Three As A Bird – Vanlife Travel – YouTube
You can take a look at some of our other van life posts which include lots and lots of hints and tips on all things van life here – Van Life – Travel Information, Hints, Tips and Advice (threeasabird.com)
If you’d like to follow more of our adventures or keep up to date with our travel hints and tips, please join our Facebook group, we’d love to connect with you all! –https://www.facebook.com/groups/309295536220437
Also, if you have Pinterest, please give us a follow for your van life travel inspiration! – https://pin.it/770Cq1Q
I love everything about travel, from seeing new places, learning about new cultures and trying new foods! I believe that travel is one of the best forms of education you can get, I have learnt so much about myself and about the world from travelling all over. Travel is something I feel so passionately about, and I love the fact that we are now lucky enough to have this opportunity to do what we love as much as we can, it’s a dream come true.
Before we started travelling, I worked in local government in administration. I had been in this job for several years and had reached a complete brick wall where I was so fed up, but didn’t know what else to do. The only thing I knew that I wanted to do was to travel, and had wanted to do that for many years.
There were hundreds and hundreds of places on my wishlist that I wanted to go to, and I knew that going on a weeks holiday maybe twice a year if we were lucky wasn’t going to cut it.
After being in lockdown due to the Covid pandemic, and working from home staring at the same 4 walls every day, 2021 seemed like the perfect time for us to take the risk to finally do what we had dreamed of for so long.
It was a hard decision to completely change our lives, but so far it has been the best decision we have ever made!
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