Tag: wildcamping

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! 🌍