A COUPLE were devastated after their beloved caravan went up in flames.
Sally Martin and her partner Dan Matharu had transformed the vehicle into a cake shop on wheels which she branded The Bakewell Cart.
The baker first bought the caravan in August 2022 where she used it as a portable stall at a Christmas market in Margate.
Dan, who runs his Prestige Paint and Powder Coat business in Broadstairs, Kent, set about painting the van and fixing the logos onto it.
But that year, the Christmas markets weren’t quite a profitable as they had been in the past.
Sally told The Sun Online: “We got the van so we wouldn’t have to stand out in the cold.
“It was a really quiet time around the Christmas markets, which are normally really good for business.
“We thought perhaps the van could be putting people off so we got rid of it.”
She sold The Bakewell Cart in January 2023 for £2,000 less than they had paid for it but added it was then left.
She was horrified to learn it had now gone up in flames.
Sally said: “I was gutted. I drove past it several times before, with graffiti appearing. It was awful to see it deteriorate.”
She added the man who had bought it had intended to do it up some more and take it abroad but never got round to it.
Sally said: “He just left it to deteriorate at the side of the road.
“It still had my logos and signage on – after asking him multiple times to remove them – so I parked next to the van one day and just removed them myself.”
She previously told KentOnline: “We lost around £2,000 on it so seeing it all up in flames when it could have been so much more was awful,” she says.
“Now it’s nothing, I just feel like we should have saved ourselves the hours of work and just set fire to our money.
“When we sold it, we said we’d remove all our logos but the person who bought it said they’d do it all as they were going to strip it and paint it.
“It was sat there for a few months with my logo all over it. I kept messaging them to tell them to move it and sort it out but they just ignored my messages.”
She said that the council put a notice on the vehicle, which prompted her to remove all the signage herself so she wasn’t associated with the vehicle.
However, an eyewitness noticed the caravan had gone up in flames at Dane Park in Margate at 6.20pm on July 9.
The cause of the fire is currently unknown.
