Tag: fromrusttoroadtrip

fromrusttoroadtrip:

Join us at 8pm GMT as we release the first video of our Bedford CF barn find restoration and conversion project on Youtube! We will be premiering the video which means we’re inviting you to watch along with us, ask us questions and offer your input about the build in real time.

The video will detail how we removed all of the surface rust from the chassis and inside the cab, a technique which is really useful for any kind of van project. Also make sure you watch til the end, as we will be releasing details and giving you a virtual tour of how we hope to lay out the interior of the van once it’s built. We welcome any tips, advice or constructive feedback about the build, after all we’ve never taken on a project quite like this one in the past.

Join us at 8pm GMT by clicking the link below!

From Rust To Roadtrip on Youtube.com

fromrusttoroadtrip:

Rain, rain… Maybe we just have an affinity for it because we’re British. Maybe we’ve learned to embrace the inevitable. But there’s something about a rainy night or even a rainy day that makes you feel snug, safe, comforted. That particularly familiar sound of droplets on a fibreglass roof, splashing on panes of single-glazed glass, forming ephemeral circles on our porthole as we watch. Watching it collect on the windows in frozen powdered white, watching it melt back into rain again. It enshrouds us like a cocoon, keeping us safe, leaking in through the holes and exposing the cracks but we don’t care.

And it didn’t half rain on our week away, but we were in England after all. Every day and every night it rained, although it didn’t dampen our spirits. Not sheltered by the ancient pine trees of the New Forest swaying over us. Not tucked up in bed with a cup of tea starting the morning slowly, appreciatively. Not splashing through puddles and fording floods and trekking over damp Autumn leaves.

You see we don’t mind the rain, because it never stays for long, as we never stay in place for long too. It’s fleeting, and transient, like our lives on the road. And it’s comforting, soothing, the soundtrack to so many days and nights spent in our humble little van.


Follow the hashtag #Fromrusttoroadtrip to follow our van conversion project and our travels around Europe! 🌍 

fromrusttoroadtrip:

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.

 

fromrusttoroadtrip:

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.⁣
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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.⁣
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Anyone else heading off somewhere nice this week?

fromrusttoroadtrip:

It feels so strange, to be left behind. To spend our first winter in three years not on the road but standing static, rooted in one place. To experience the changing of the seasons from our memories, so familiar yet also so distant.⁣
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What even is normal anymore? Is this normal, working our jobs, saving our pennies, making the most out of living in one place? Or is the new normal to be on the road, to live our lives in perpetual motion, scraping by and facing life’s problems head on? Who knows anymore. Our double lives are worlds apart, and it’s too painful to think about whilst living the other. Remembering those we’ve left behind while we travel, or remembering how it feels to wake up in ever more unfamiliar places whilst we are greeted by the same view every day.⁣
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Only one of our lives ever manifests itself to other people at a time, and they never intertwine. Only we can see them both, laid out before us, future plans and memories past, the full scope of our two worlds which never collide but shadow eachother inextricably.⁣

Follow the hashtag #Fromrusttoroadtrip to follow our van conversion project and our travels around Europe! 🌍 

fromrusttoroadtrip:

Want to take a sneaky peek inside this gorgeous rustic home on wheels? Well guess what? You can!⁣
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Back in July we met up with Tom and Sophia of @vanderingaround while they were down in Cornwall and they were kind enough to give us a little tour around their recently finished LDV Convoy conversion. It features a wonderful cabin vibe with a cosy woodburner, beautifully bespoke kitchen and loads of unique little details dotted around. And have you seen their spice rack?!⁣
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Head over to our Youtube channel NOW to watch the tour of their wonderfully cosy home on wheels! Link below, and don’t forget to hit that subscribe button! 🙌⁣

WATCH | 

Couple Create Rustic DIY Tiny Home on Wheels | Van Tour on Youtube

fromrusttoroadtrip:

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! 🌍 

fromrusttoroadtrip:

#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! 🌍 

fromrusttoroadtrip:

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! 🌍 

fromrusttoroadtrip:

When we embarked on our very first adventure, bright-eyed, eager, knowing very little of the world we live in, we were given good luck talismans by our friends and family. We were gifted a chunk of topaz, a necklace and two bracelets, one green one black, one with the sign for peace and the other with the tree of life, and a piece of paper with instructions to tie them around our wrists and make a wish and when the bracelets broke our wishes would come true.

We made our wishes and adorned ourselves in these talismans thinking little of them at the time.

Two months into our first trip our van broke down. We were off the road for a week, angry and bitter at being separated from our home, and we cursed our luck and we cursed fate and chance and karma too.

A little while later, when we were back on the road but with a big hole in our savings, Ben was examining his wrist.

“My bracelet snapped,” he said, confused at the correlation between our recent terrible luck and the wish the bracelet had promised to grant us.

“Well that didn’t work,” I’d said scornfully.

“No… Maybe it did. Maybe that’s the reason I touched the brake pedal before we set off down that mountain road. Maybe it actually saved our lives.”

We sat in silence for a while, thinking loud thoughts.

“What did you wish for?” I whispered finally.

“Safe travels.”

“So did I.”


Follow the hashtag #Fromrusttoroadtrip to follow our van conversion project and our travels around Europe! 🌍