In Brittany

Posted on May 24, 2011 by EllieGee

We’ve been spending the last couple of days with Jono on the campsite where he’s working for the summer – just outside Nevez, on the Brittany coast not far from Pont Aven (a lovely little town, full of art galleries – Gauguin lived there before going to Tahiti. After a few hops across from Calais, it’s been good to be in one place and we’ve enjoyed catching up with a good friend and seeing first hand the lifestyle of a campsite rep. He’s working for one of the big-name holiday companies, specialising in providing cycling-related activities. As well as taking holidaymakers out on cycle tours of the local area which he has put together to cater for a mix of abilities, he is also engaged in helping children on a learn-to-ride a bike programme. What a fab summer job for a total cycling fiend! Thanks, Jono, for helping get our bikes into usable shape, and for all the hints and tips.

We’ve been relaxing and exploring the local area – visiting Concarneau by van and Pont-Aven by bike, a different means of enjoying the open road. The roads round here are perfect for cycling – not too many hills and the bonus of helping keep the inches off as we can’t help but sample the local delicacies. Swimming in the campsite pool is helping too.

Still encountering various technical hitches with regular internet access, but we’ll do our best to keep you updated as we leave here tomorrow heading south, to see a bit more of Brittany (Carnac and the Golfe de Morbihan next, with their prehistoric megalithes), then lazily head Spain-wards. Pictures soon too, hopefully.

Posted in By Country - France, Travel stuff | 3 Comments

A passion for France…

Posted on May 21, 2011 by AdrianC

As we sit back, on a farm just north of Mayenne, at the start of our third night away, the stresses of packing and sorting the house are starting to fade.

The word “chilled” could almost start to be used again.

Goat's Cheese farm, found through France Passion, near Auxi-le-Chateau

This is our second resting place found through the “France Passion” scheme, a guide book containing 1600 farms, growers and producers, who invite motorhomes and campervans to stay on their land, in exchange for nothing more than a greeting and the opportunity to sell their produce. There’s no obligation to buy, but the goat’s cheese and apple juice the other morning were delicious, and if you think we could sit on a farm producing Cider and not succumb, you don’t know us at all well…

We’re initially heading for the south-west of Brittany, to see a 2cv mate – Jono – who’s working on a camp-site for the summer. After that, towards the south-west and Spain. Probably.

Posted in By Country - France, Food stuff, Travel stuff | 3 Comments

Hit the road, Jack…

Posted on May 19, 2011 by AdrianC

Wherever it goes.

We seem to be in Dover, waiting for the boat to depart. The house is echoing, the storage unit creaking at the seams, and the guys at the local tip know us well.

Minimalism always seemed an alien concept, but we’re starting to see the appeal. Just as well, eh?

Posted in By Country - UK, Personal stuff, Travel stuff | 7 Comments

Packing the house up… part umpty-seven and four-thirds

Posted on May 17, 2011 by AdrianC

Are we nearly there yet?

Gawd, I hope so. I think so.

Rooms are echoing.

Hold the front page. News of our departure might actually be forthcoming. Soon.

(In the meanwhile, if ONE more person asks us if we’re actually just winding ’em up and aren’t actually planning on ever going anywhere, I might scream. Out loud, not just inside…)

Posted in By Country - UK, Personal stuff | 1 Comment

Packing the house up … part three

Posted on May 5, 2011 by EllieGee

Yes, we’re still here, still sorting and packing …

My advice to anyone reading this is… avoiding accumulating… anything. The packing and sorting has been challenging on so many levels!

In the meantime, since our last post we enjoyed our local bluebells and spent Easter week socialising with our 2cv friends in the fens and raffling off assorted 2cv related items in aid of our favourite MS charity and eating fish and chips on the beach at Skegness. We had lovely visits to family in Norfolk and St Alban’s, enjoying the continuing fine weather immensely. We’ve also been to a Royal Wedding street party and enjoyed various send offs locally and our bemused friends are wondering when we are going and if we are going …  We definitely are going … it’s all taking longer than expected and we are a couple of weeks behind where we wanted to be … Spain!  Although the lovely weather here has not exactly helped hurry us out of the country.

One man, one woman, one campervan, enjoying a bottle of bubbly in the sunshine...

Today has seen Adrian knee deep in sweat and oil servicing the van, and giving the cooling system a good precautionary going-over… a job we knew needed doing but somehow it has been slow in being gotten around to …  Meanwhile I continue to delve in emotional depths of belongings – sorting family related stuff and monumental amounts of accumulated junk. I’ve got rid of yet more bin bags full but this bit has been harder even than getting rid of all those books.

Now it’s about knuckling down and figuring exactly what will fit in the van … and whether the remaining stuff will fit in the storage unit. Keep watching …

Posted in By Country - UK, Personal stuff, Van stuff | 3 Comments

Packing the house up … part two

Posted on April 19, 2011 by EllieGee

We’ve been continuing to frantically pack since our last post… So far we’ve packed up and off 21 boxes of books to two Oxfam bookshops. Some of it quite painful, but with way more than 30 boxes of books already to storage that is more than most people ever have …
We’ve also earmarked two huge boxes of reading matter we want to take with us … but I think with our limited space we will be prioritising guide books, road atlases and language learning books. Novels will be further down the list, even if they fall into the ‘read and throw’ category. We’re far from being like our friends Dave and Anne-Marie who got rid of almost everything for their adventure … but then they have onward plans to live in a small space and it was great to see them and their lovely newly purchased narrow boat a week or so ago.

We’re planning on heading for Spain first and are looking to leave really quite soon now … we can’t believe it’s all happening. In the meantime, there is still so much to sort out. I certainly plan never to accumulate in the same way again … all this is quite cathartic. With a minimalist tidy house we might be tempted to stay on!

We’re also busy catching up with as many friends and family as we can, showing the van off and testing it out, and taking time out from dusty boxes to view wonderful bluebells and enjoy this fabulous weather.

Posted in By Country - UK, Personal stuff | 4 Comments

Packing the house up … part one

Posted on April 6, 2011 by EllieGee

I’m wading waist-deep in boxes of books. There is, in theory, a methodical plan around this packing up task, but it’s still looking so challenging. Eight boxes of books have already gone to Oxfam – there will be a minimum of eight more going out … so Adrian hopes. The Swedish Church have kindly agreed to take the Swedish language ones.

When you have two free pulp books a day as one of your terms and conditions of employment and a 70% discount over a period of years … it takes someone stronger than I to resist the temptation to take up this offer. There’s so many and when you haven’t read them all – it’s hard to get rid of a book that might just contain the meaning of life or otherwise be a perfectly hidden gem. The job is made harder by the fact that I have so many books that belonged to my parents. But I’ve taken the plunge and now I feel a real need to get rid of as many as humanely possible.

That goes for other possessions – clothing, bric a brac etc. I’ve spent too many days of my life just sorting through one lot of stuff or another and fighting my genetic predisposition to hoard when I could have been reading, writing or making books not just moving them from shelf to box and back again, and again. And again. So this whole stage in our lives is not just about taking to the road and seeing where it goes, it is also about freeing ourselves from our usual habits and opening ourselves to new opportunities and experiences.

The lovely spring weather and our full-bloom magnolia tree are helping to lift the weight of the drudgery around shifting never ending boxes!

Magnolia tree in full bloom

Magnolia tree in full bloom

Posted in By Country - UK, Personal stuff | 2 Comments

Meet the van…

Posted on April 6, 2011 by AdrianC

Those of you who’ve found the blog this early probably know one or both of us. But few of you will have been introduced to the third member of the team.It's the van

He/she/it’s not been christened yet – “the van” just sounds so impersonal, but a name will come when it comes.

The van’s a 1988 VW Westfalia Club Joker HighTop. Yep, a VW camper. Not one of the “cool” ones, though – we were definitely not bothered about paying the scene-tax prices, and we wanted some space inside. So it’s the ’80s version, the “T25” or “T3” or “Vanagon”. (Don’t ask…)

The last knockings of the Beetle in some ways, it’s rear engined, flat four (2.1 petrol), but watercooled, and a LOT bigger than the Bays and Splits. It’s kinda Transit sized, but because the engine’s under the back, there’s no big overhang at the front. Your feet are just behind the front indicators – which means virtually all of the length is usable space inside. Compared to the more normal later vans, there’s a chunk more space inside for about the same amount of outside size – which was nice, because it meant we didn’t have to decide between “common sense” and a bit of character.

So what’s inside? A fridge, a two-ring cooker, a sink (with clean & waste water tanks and an electric tap), a petrol-fired night heater with timer, a table, two double beds (one upstairs, one downstairs), and a hopefully adequate amount of storage space. The front seats swivel round, so four can sit and converse inside, whilst the downstairs bed is a bench seat by day. A bike rack on the back is going to be home to a couple of bicycles – yes, pedal power, not the VeloSolexes… There’s a notion that we might even get a bit fitter out of this.

Fresh into the UK when we bought it at the start of 2011, the van’s spent most of its life in Southern Germany, going by the paperwork we got with it. It’s tidy but not too tidy (especially since somebody <ahem> decided to test the relative strengths of German wheelarches and Derbyshire pub stone walls). At some stage, it’s been through a bit of a hippy phase – the whole of the lower half used to be metallic purple, it appears… It’s got somewhere around 230,000 km on it at the moment, and appears to be mechanically fit. That’s not to say there’s nothing to do – it’s getting a thorough service and going-over before departure, with anything and everything it may need being attended to. Famous last words, eh?

Best of all – yes, that’s a Michelin man on the front of the roof…

You’re probably asking what’s happening with the rest of the fleet? They’re mostly hanging around. One of the 2cvs (Hetty the old grey van) has already gone to a thoroughly deserving new home. The other 2cvs (Sparky, the beige French van, and the Mehari) are staying, tucked into lockups. The Pug is staying as the sensible we’re-flying-back-for-a-weekend-and-need-transport standby. The Saab, though, has also gone to pastures new.

Posted in Van stuff | 5 Comments

Hello and welcome!

Posted on March 27, 2011 by AdrianC

This blog’s going to be about our life on the open road.

Who are we? Adrian and Ellie and a big red campervan.

What are we? We could get metaphysical in answering that one. We could call ourselves travellers. We could just say we’re skiving and running away into the sunset. But we’re definitely not retiring – just taking some time out while we figure out what comes next.

Where are we? We’re on the road. Somewhere. Or will be, soon.

Where are we going? Ask us tomorrow or the next day.

Where have we been, and what have we done? That’s what this blog’s about. It’s going to be a mix of travelogue, the places, the food, the quirks of wherever we are. Probably. It’s going to involve photos, text, art – and whatever else that happens to crop up.

Stay tuned. It’s going to be a lot of fun for us, and we hope you’ll enjoy it, too. 

Posted in Personal stuff, Site stuff | 5 Comments