John and Emily James, 33, bought the old caravan park near Llanelli Wells in June. The couple said they hope to bring it to life with the goal of living mortgage-free.

The couple decided they wanted to live debt free and sold their first home and property for £132,000 on Instagram. After paying off their mortgage, they were left with £79,000 and used another £11,000 in savings for a caravan park – leaving them with just £500 in the bank.

The couple, who are both wedding photographers and videographers, decided they wanted to live a simple, mortgage-free life and thought a caravan park would be the perfect fit. They moved into the land eight weeks ago and are living in a small camper – which they have just finished – while they renovate the park.

Emily said that in order to save money, they do all the work themselves and are not afraid to learn new things along the way. Emily said: “We heard the land was going to be sold in 2020 and when I told John I asked him if he knew where it was, he said, ‘We’re not buying anything.’

“John knew exactly where he was every time we went to visit his grandfather. A year passed and it was still for sale so we thought we’d go and check it out in August 2021.

“As soon as we turned around, we felt in love and put in the offer the next day. The sale took eight months to complete, and at points we thought it would never happen.

“When we finally got confirmation that he had passed, there were so many happy tears. Every day we wake up and say we can’t believe it’s ours.”

“We’re grateful to be able to pay off our mortgage and now own the land debt-free. Living within our means has always been important to us, so we wanted to buy at an affordable price without going into too much debt or getting a big mortgage.”

“We didn’t have a really big budget, which meant our options were limited to what we could buy. A caravan park was within our budget and would easily allow us to live debt free in a place we love, so this seemed to suit us.

In the year After the coal mine closed in 1989 and it was completely overgrown, the old miners’ caravan park steadily declined, Emily said.

She said: “The abandoned passengers are completely rotten and beyond repair. We are living with less visitors as we clear the land.

“We plan to bring the park back to life. After the coal mine closed in 1989, the old coal miners’ caravan park fell into disrepair, with little use or love, and was completely overgrown.”

“We are planning to clear the land, remove the old and rotten boarders that have been there for decades and replace them with modern ones. We are not afraid of a challenge and love how many new skills we learn along the way.

“As much as we have spent all our money on land acquisition, we do not have the budget to hire people to work for us. We are renewing ourselves every month as we get salary from our work.

“We’re excited to see where we’ll be this time next year. That’s less than the amount of money we have in our bank account.”

But we are so easily happy and we take it day by day because we don’t need much to be happy. We used all our money from the sale of our house and savings to buy the land outright. £500 in our bank.

“It’s a slow process as we start saving money from our day jobs every month, but it’s important to us to do what we can.”

The couple is documenting their journey on YouTube.