The Wellers decided they wanted more out of life so they sold everything, moved into a double-decker bus and are about to take it on a journey across Europe.
Chris Broughton meets the family on board their 1973 Leyland Atlantean - Saturday January 5, 2008

The idea, says Brian, came out of nowhere - an idealised vision of freedom, unconstrained by practicalities. "Once I'd said it, there was no going back," he laughs. "We could have sat around and talked ourselves out of it again, but Dawn went straight on the internet and found the bus, just like that."

A plan emerged: the Wellers would use the bus to travel across Europe and beyond with no fixed timetable or destination. "We wanted our kids to grow up questioning everything, learning from experience, knowing it's all out there and it's up to them to choose what they want to do. We wanted to make our life an adventure," says Brian. "No set route, no return date - we'd just get on the road, take each day as it came and see what happened."
But while the idea came easily, putting it into action was another matter entirely. Brian - a novice when it came to converting buses into mobile homes - had to take on most of the conversion work on the 1973 Leyland Atlantean virtually single-handed.

The vehicle now boasts three bedrooms (Amy is the only Weller who doesn't have to share a bunk bed), a tiny shower cubicle and a galley kitchen. The "living area" at the back of the lower deck doubles as a schoolroom, complete with computers. The bus is also equipped with a satellite dish and Wi-Fi transmitter. Although the bus had only set the Wellers back a little over £2,000, the re-fit ate up a further £30,000, not to mention 18 months of their lives.

The build went on right through the sale of the family house. The understanding new owners moved in, and the Wellers ended up spending their first weeks onboard the bus living as guests in their former garden.
When the day of departure finally arrived, they still had five weeks on UK soil before their Dover ferry booking. So far, three of those weeks have been spent in East Sussex, parked behind the beach huts at St Leonards.

"It's not been as bad as I thought," shrugs Amy. "Some days are better than others. I do still want to go home, but I haven't really got a choice, so I suppose I've just got to live with it." Amy plays guitar and piano, and listens to alternative, emo, screamo and metal music. She describes her interests as "going to gigs and spending time with my friends" - none of these being pastimes that are easy to pursue when living on a bus.

"I talk to my friends all the time on MSN," she says. "But it can be hard hearing about them going out when I can't be there. They do want to hear what I'm up to, though, and I suppose it might seem more interesting than what they're doing. But I miss them."I don't like the thought of socialising when we leave here - I'm shy," Amy adds. She doesn't seem shy. In fact she exudes an effortless sense of cool probably exclusive to 15-year-old, guitar-toting screamo fans with their own hairdresser. Anyway, as the only Weller with more than a passing acquaintance with French and Spanish, she's likely to get plenty of practice talking to people."I don't think we should be put off by the fact we don't have languages," Dawn says. "We all just have to be prepared to get out there and learn.""I haven't spoken French in two years, but hopefully I'll remember a bit," Amy shrugs, then brightens. "Hopefully, I'll get to see some bands and stuff, and widen my spectrum with different types of music."

As Amy left school ahead of where she needed to be in the curriculum, most of the schoolwork she does now is revision, conducted under her own steam. The boys, on the other hand, have home schooling every morning.
"We always try and do two or three solid hours - reading, writing and arithmetic," says Brian. "It's been brilliant, actually, because we were able to identify what they weren't good at and work at it, one-to-one. Alex had fallen behind with his maths, but we went back and nailed his times tables."

Right on cue, there's a commotion at the door as Alex hops onboard, clutching his lugworm-catcher and a bucket.
"I got 20!" he shouts. Presumably this is a record. Brian beams. "This is just as important, though," he says. "Changing our environment all the time will be an education in itself." Alex has been spending hours on the beach every day with a local fisherman."He's learned long-lining, and he's identifying the fish as they're landed," says Dawn, proudly. "We try and keep the schooling relevant to the things they've experienced during the day, so they write up everything they do."

"Every evening, he's got so much to tell us," says Brian. "There's no 'What did you do at school today?', because we were there. Instead, we're having real conversations as a family and learning from each other."
I ask Alex if he's going to miss the beach when they move on.

"Nah," he says. "It's been brilliant, but there will be other beaches as we go, with different things to do."
The youngest Weller, Sam, seems to value action above words. When I ask him what he's learned on the trip so far, he runs off the bus to give a demonstration of his newfound free-running skills using the railings outside. "There's a parkour club who practice out there on Wednesday evenings," explains Dawn. "He's really got into it."

"It's amazing how quickly we've been absorbed into the community," says Brian, waving at a dog-walker. "We've made loads of friends; far quicker than we would have done if we'd just moved into a new house. It's great - people are drawn towards us because we're doing something unusual, but we get to find out all about them, too."
What about privacy, though? It must be hard enough learning to live as a family in such a confined space, without the almost constant stream of visitors.

"It's not so bad," says Amy. "My room's a bit small, but I can lock myself in if I want to. I used to get annoyed when there were people downstairs when I got up in the morning, so I'd have to get dressed and put makeup on just to make a cup of tea, but now I don't care what I look like. "

"Some days it can be quite tiring," Dawn admits. "We haven't had any major fallouts, but we do all have to find moments to ourselves, even if it's just an hour in the evening. Brian never stops, really - he's still thinking in his sleep. "
As well as the day-to-day bus maintenance, the family update their website, which includes a blog detailing their journey. As far as possible, Brian hopes to finance the trip by selling advertising space on the site. "Everybody has input into the website," he says. "The kids each have their own section for photos, Dawn writes the diary - it's getting quite popular, so if we miss an update we have lots of concerned emails to deal with."

As Brian's parents are both dead, and Dawn's only ever visited "a couple of times a year", the Wellers don't feel they are cutting any significant family ties. "There's only Caroline, really," says Dawn. Caroline is Brian's 29-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. "She runs her own recruitment company and has her own life, so she was never going to come," says Dawn.

Not everyone on the road has been supportive: "We've met motorhoming enthusiasts along the way who tried to put the fear into us," says Dawn. "They'd say, 'What about low bridges,' and 'You'll never get on the ferry,' and so on. These were people who plan everything in advance; they know where they're going to stay, they never stray more than 28 miles from the nearest town ... where's the fun if you plan everything like a military operation?"

"It was all about what we shouldn't do," says Brian. "When people say 'don't' to me, it's like a red rag to a bull.
"We'll rely as far as possible on local knowledge - but if that fails, there's always Google Earth."
The sun is starting to set over the huts; the boys are racing the waves. While Dawn boils water for tea, I ask her if the bus feels like home yet.

"To start with, it felt like we were on holiday, but that passed in a few days," she says. "Now it feels like this is where we've always been."

"It's definitely changed our attitude to the kind of home we might have in the future," says Brian. "If we ever buy another house, it would have to be somewhere small. I don't think we ever quite felt in control before."
And now?

"Now we're masters of our own destiny," laughs Brian, as he swings down the steps to join his sons on the twilit beach. "But we're not afraid to let chance play a role. Otherwise, it's not an adventure, is it?"
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