Ex-BBC presenter Siobhan Daniels lives full time in a van

The 65-year-old has been living on the road for the past five years, making her home in a caravan and travelling constantly, every departure also an arrival.

However, she's currently housebound because her daughter Sammy, 35, has broken her hip and Daniels is on hand to help nurse her.

"She's back to the hospital on January 25," Daniels says. "If they say everything's ok, I'm out of here on the 26."

Daniels might now be stir-crazy when confined to barracks for even short periods but she was not always so confident and proficient with van life.

In fact, her friends, family and Sammy thought she was nothing but crazy when, in her late 50s, she decided to rip up her life and stitch it back together in an unrecognisable form.

She had been working at BBC South East as a news reporter and producer for 30 years but said she was overlooked, undermined and "broken" by the workplace environment while going through menopause.

Two close family bereavements - her mother and oldest sister - added to the sense of despair and need for an overhaul.

"I was so broken," Daniels said, "and one day I went into the workplace, looked at myself in the mirror and I was crying and I just thought, 'I don't want to do this anymore.

"'I need to find a better way of living'."

The idea of a motorhome, she said, "popped into my head one morning" despite the fact she had never driven one, nor holidayed in one.

Before she knew it, Daniels had sold her home, sold and given away most of her possessions, and bought a motor home.

"Much to the amusement of the dealers," she added. The dealers were so taken by her cluelessness that they paid for her to stay on a site for a night, to give her time to think.

Daniels said: "We are all obsessed with working long hours, earning loads of money to buy loads of stuff to fill our houses and that means we're not living, we're just existing and stressing over how the hell are we gonna pay for it.

"I wanted to show that you could live life with very few possessions and find happiness."

When she finally turned the key in the ignition of the motorhome in 2019, Daniels found herself laughing and crying at once, thinking, 'What the hell are you doing?'

Her plan was to "have no plan" other than to hit the road, forge her own path and find happiness ... and then lockdown hit.

She was berthed in a field for nine months but this gave her time to work out what to do - and that, ultimately, was to be an inspiration to other women in their 60s.

Daniels said: "I was broken in my mid 50s and I've gone from broken to the happiest I've ever been.

"The reason so many women in society find themselves lost and broken in their mid-50s is with the same things that I found - siblings have maybe died, looking after elderly family, feeling bullied and marginalized in the workplace, struggling with the menopause.

"And there's so much around the menopause that everybody thinks it's the beginning of the end.

"And I'm trying to show actually, it's the beginning of what could be the best phase of your life.

"When you retire, you can re-fire and have all these adventures."

It was no easy adjustment, moving from "glamorous Siobhan from the BBC to Sionhan trailer trash" as she terms it, and she dealt with a lot of pushback from worried friends and family.

Her van is kitted out with little luxuries, such as a gin bar, and the only thing she really misses is a bath.

Life changes are nothing new to Daniels - she was a nurse for nine years before joining the BBC trainee scheme at the age of 31 - but becoming a social media influencer in her 60s was the biggest change yet.

She had also gone backpacking solo for a year at the age of 49 after her brother, who was 53, died of cancer and she had had a hysterectomy.

Daniels said: "I call it my hysterical-ectomy 'cos I've never been the same since."

She shares her adventures on the road with a keen band of followers on Instagram and Twitter/X and gives talks to women's groups about changing perceptions of women's lives post-menopause.

One point in her travels was pivotal to ridding herself of pent up distress and trauma.

On a journey in the Highlands, she stopped at Loch Morlich and, while looking out over the water, began to vent her feelings.

Daniels said: "I screamed and I cried and I just got rid of all the heartbreak of people who had died, feeling bullied, feeling marginalized in work.

"I had all the conversations I needed to out loud - I don't know what the wild animals thought but I was screaming like a banshee and then I just fell to my knees and I was crying and I just thought 'That's it now, leave all that behind, use it as fire in your belly, go forward'.

"And from that day I have done and things have just kind of worked out in my life since then and I've had amazing adventures in my motorhome."

Siobhan retired at 60, having reached the end of her tolerance to a working environment she said was hostile to older women.

But this creates a tension - how do women challenge workplace discrimination if they opt out and aren't there? Daniels gives a call to younger women.

"That's an interesting question," Daniels said. "Historically, women were treated badly.

"The culture was, well, they're going to retire soon so you weren't given the career opportunities or sent on the courses because you retired at 60 but now you don't get your pension until you're nearly 70.

"Those of us that were suffering and were broken, we need to leave because the system hasn't yet changed.

"But it's your generation who can change it and we need this intergenerational discussion and for your generation to call out ageism when you see it.

"You will be the old person in the future.

"Society needs to accept that women are ageing differently and, and we've got childhood, we've got adulthood and we should have elderhood, not just be written off."

Daniels is now planning a new podcast called Retirement Rebel: Life After 60 and wants it to be a platform for people to talk about and tackle ageism.

Since "retiring" she is busier than ever and will be in Glasgow on February 1 to 4 for the The Scottish Caravan, Motorhome and Holiday Home Show at the SEC where she will be hosting a talk.

Women write to her to tell her that she has reignited in them a sense of adventure they believed was dormant and that, she says, is the reward for her work.

"I feel," she says, "We're not really living.

"Some are, but the majority of us aren't, we're just scratching through, waiting for the next payday to pay off whatever we've got to pay and not do things we want to do.

"I hope to show that we can change that. People ask when I'm going to settle down and I say I don't know.

"Maybe never."