WeVan ‘Exploring Scotland by Campervan’
Tag: campervan
builtsosmall-campervantravels:
TRAVEL BLOG –
Before I left the campsite this morning, I spoke to a backpacker who had a wonderful setup in his van. He allowed me to take a photo to blog about it. He bought a Mitsubishi Express van with nothing in it and built everything himself from recycled parts and wood and some bought plywood (not much). He spent 10 days at a place with a drill/screwdriver and a $6 saw and made the whole setup. He even found an innerspring mattress in a plastic bag and cut that to make it not as wide. He showed me all the photos he took making it (fantastic!!!), that he had sent back home to show his family. He doesn’t have a blog, so I can’t link to any of it, but I’m so glad he let me take this. It’s so inspiring when you meet someone who has made a lot out of not much… … .
Waking up nestled in the foothills of the High Tatras to discover ice crystals had formed on all the leaves, to a view that belonged on a postcard of Slovakia; big, purple mountains looming over us, tantalisingly snow-capped. A vast, lush meadow spilling out in front of us, a thousand hues of autumn scattered across its grass. A crisp bite in the air of a day not yet warmed by sunshine. The smell of coffee wafting out of the door, washing gently drying in the breeze as we prepared for the day’s hike ahead.
These are the simple moments we love so much about travelling, the ordinary for us that seems so extraordinary to outsiders. The ways in which we adapt to living in a tiny space by extending our home outdoors. To feel closer to nature, surrounding ourselves in it and embracing it, cold nights, wild animals and all.
We all need a little escape from time to time, a break from the mundane, the routine. So we’re heading to the South East of England for a week, to explore, to relax, to find fresh scenery for our photography. To discover the wild moors and rocky coastline of our own country we have seldom explored.
In true Rusty Roadtrips style it’s forecast to rain and howl all week, but it’s inevitable in this area of the world anyway- we’ll survive. This same wet weather is making it difficult to make much progress on the Bedford, not to mention our own van, but these are the limitations we accept by undertaking such projects in the winter. And if numb hands and cold feet are the sacrifices we must make to travel full time in the future then so be it.
Anyone else heading off somewhere nice this week?
I’ve always been of the mindset “do what you wanna do”, ever since I started my very first school. I could never understand why you would want to live your life doing things the way other people tell you to do.
This mindset got me into a lot of trouble as a kid; I was expelled from 9 different schools, refused to wear uniform, refused to hold a pencil properly. Refused to do anything unless it was my way. Now as an adult, this mindset gives me unbounded freedom: why would I let anyone tell me how to live my life?
Although all of our friends and family love that we’re travelling in our van (apart from my dad, who keeps asking when I’m gonna get a “real” job), there’s a certain pressure from society which channels you into a consumerist lifestyle to maintain the current system.
It’s like passing Go on a Monopoly board, jumping through hoops as they say: when you’ve finished school go to college, when you’ve finished college go to uni, get a degree, get a bit of paperwork that proves you can do the job you’re good at. Now to pay for that degree you’ll need to work for the next 20 years of your life, although there aren’t any jobs, and while you’re at it you may as well add another 20 years onto that because you’re going to need a mortgage for that house you’ll never be able to afford.
It was amongst this tide of pressure that we both put our feet down and said no, we won’t swim with all the other fish, we want to fight against the current. We don’t want to carry on racking up debt for the rest of our lives; we want to see the world.
But society needs debt to thrive, and by removing ourselves from that cycle we become antisocial; we don’t play a part in the system and that makes us outcasts. Radicals.
But more and more of us are waking up, realising there’s more to life and a different way to live. We’re part of a movement who decide to cut our ties, break the mould, and allow ourselves to be free. We reject debt, we reject the items you’re supposed to need in order to be considered successful, and we just do what makes us happy. Because 80 years is a very short time on this planet, but a very long time to not be happy.
#Follow the hashtag #Fromrusttoroadtrip to follow our van conversion project and our travels around Europe! 🌍
#Throwback to… Well, throwback to nothing, really. This is our every day vanlife in all its glory. All the glitz and glamour of our daily grooming routine.
So what if we wash our hair, our clothes and our plates all in the same bowl? So what if we hang our pants to dry in a tree? This is our normal. It may be a little unpredictable and a touch eccentric, but we love it. We’ve adapted our routines and found new ways to survive and thrive. And you know what, we’d rather be washing our hair with cold water in a washing up bowl by the sea than sat behind a desk for 40 hours a week.
It may not be the most likeable, shareable, Instagrammable of moments but it’s real, it’s raw, and it’s just that little bit different and alternative to the chains and shackles of a normal working routine.
So yeah, #Throwback to Greece, to just another day on the road, another thread woven into the patchwork blanket of colours and landscapes and memories that is our vanlife normal.
Follow the hashtag #Fromrusttoroadtrip to follow our van conversion project and our travels around Europe! 🌍
When we set off on our second roadtrip we didn’t make it easy for ourselves. We didn’t deliberately set ourselves some kind of challenge, depriving ourselves of heat, comfort and commodities- we just got a little overexcited when packing for our trip, and kind of forgot everything we needed.
Despite having already spent winter in the Alps, and without heeding the warnings of how severe the Balkan weather could get, we packed only a summer duvet, two blankets, left behind our fleeces and coats and winter boots. And within a week of leaving we were treated to our first sub-zero night in Austria, when snowflakes fell into the night turning the valley around us from green at dusk to white at dawn.
We faced many a cold, shivering night over the 7 months we were on the road, and with the short-sighted naivety of two young excitable travellers who thought that the summer heat and roadtrips would be endless, we neglected to put more than a bare covering of insulation in our van when we built it. This, coupled with our broken hot water tank, lack of leisure battery power and broken dashboard heater, all of which broke within the first week of our trip, made for a distinct lack of comfort.
And you know what? We pulled through. We survived. We took long drives to charge our laptops. We huddled close together at night for heat. We scraped the ice from inside our windows in the mornings, drank endless hot chocolates, and enjoyed the swirl of powder white falling around us. You see we didn’t choose discomfort, we didn’t choose the cold; we didn’t choose unpreparedness but it set us up for a challenge. And the thing about challenges is they’re not always enjoyable, they’re not always fun, but they’re not supposed to be. They don’t provide short term enjoyment and distractions from life; they force you to face it head on, and give you a deeper sense of satisfaction and strength.
A life without challenge is unfulfilling, even when the nights may be cold and the days are often hard, but success is addictive, and almost immediately after one challenge ended, we began looking for another…
Follow the hashtag #Fromrusttoroadtrip to follow our van conversion project and our travels around Europe! 🌍
It’s funny how you can look back on a photograph and all the memories instantly come back to you, flooding every one of your senses and enveloping you in the moment all over again.
How you can remember feeling the cold, crisp air or the damp of encroaching fog, taste the cup of coffee you cradled between your hands or the pit stop lunch you were preparing. How you can remember waiting for that perfect photo moment, sitting in the cab with engine running, heating on full, watching waves of fog rise like mist on the sea and waiting for it to part. The tapping of feet on wet tarmac, the fresh alpine air, the way the immense golden-toned mountains with their sparse covering of grass made you feel like you were in the middle of nowhere and everywhere all at once. The open space, every twist and turn of the road, the blanket of pine trees with their sweet sap scent and that cold pang of excitement in your stomach when you realise how many times greater that mountain peak is than you.
I can remember every roadtrip conversation, every lunch break, every person we met, what song was playing on the stereo, how many layers of clothing we were wearing, where we’d come from and where we were going next, if we even knew at the time. All of that encapsulated in the one hundredth of a second in time it took to create this photograph. Pretty magical, right?
#Throwback to the Transfăgărășan in Romania, the most amazing, awe-inspiring mountain road we’ve ever driven to date, even with one side of it being completely enshrouded in fog.
#Follow the hashtag #Fromrusttoroadtrip to follow our van conversion project and our travels around Europe! 🌍
Spitfire Alice A Gra 
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