Holiday homes seem to offer the opportunity for endless idyllic holidays, but as anyone who has owned one knows, that is only half the story.

Many people buy old wrecks with the intention of doing them up and even those that don’t often discover that at least some of their holidays will have to be spent on DIY and maintenance work.

If you are working on a big project abroad, one of the problems you might face is arranging for all the supplies you need to be delivered to your holiday home. Not only will you probably have a language barrier to deal with, but you are also likely to have very tight time frames.

After all, if you are planning to spend a fortnight fitting a new kitchen to your Spanish villa, a delivery estimate of ‘the next fortnight’ is not much use. It can’t be delivered before you get there but it needs to be delivered as soon as you get there. My experience of UK building merchants and kitchen suppliers is that kind of precision delivery is a rare thing.

One solution that could save a lot of frustration and risk is to simply take everything you need with you. That way, you can choose, order and inspect your materials at your leisure before you go and know that you will have everything you need to hand as soon as you arrive at your holiday home.

There’s still one problem – I hear you say – how on earth can I get it all there?

Van hire, of course! Plenty of UK companies allow their vans to be taken abroad and modern vans are more than capable of munching up a few thousand foreign motorway miles at respectable speeds.

What’s more, if your holiday home is in Spain, you can hire a van one way from the UK to Spain. Your family can follow along behind or go ahead, you can bring the stuff in the van and then you can return the van and return home with your family.

What could be simpler?

Click here for more information on one-way van hire between Spain, UK and Portugal.