1: Tour de Snail
9th October 2018
It felt inevitable that Simone and I would end up living in a van. The camping trips we took in our stride, the weekends in log cabins that never lasted long enough, the feeling we got every time we got a fair distance away from London and could finally take a deep breath of fresh air, as if we’d always been holding it in a bit.
Now, I’m sat on the couch in the back of our van, Snail, while Simone is cooking breakfast (which just made the smoke alarm go off as it always does in this small space. Boiling potatoes set it off yesterday… I currently have it wedged under my jumper to stop it screaming again). Our garden today is amongst a forest in Ireland, overlooking a huge body of water, and our previous life - less than a week ago - feels worlds away.
It’s surprising how quickly we’ve adjusted; how quickly Snail became home. Already, we get the feeling when we get back in, and slide the door shut, that we’re in our safe bubble, even though we’re in a different place every day.
A week in and we’re already learning to live differently; to appreciate the little things.
We can wash up and shower with a tiny amount of water. Cook (veggie) bangers and mash only using two pans. Be entertained enough with the only screen we look at being the front window of the van.
It took a lot of courage to take this leap, but the grass is literally so much greener over here. We’re living a permanent holiday. We don’t need to worry about the weekend ending, or preparing ourselves to wake up in the morning and put on a different version of us to wear to work.
I also can’t shake the lyrics of Highway to Hell which has almost permanently been swirling in my head since we hit the road.
"LIVING EASY, LIVING FREE, SEASON TICKET ON A ONE WAY RIDE…”
In #vanlife style, we thought a good start to our blog would be showing you all our crib, while she’s still fresh. So here’s Snail.
Snail is 17. Her name comes from the fact her comfortable top speed is around 55mph, and that she's carrying our entire home on her back. We found her online and immediately felt like she was THE ONE when we saw her skin was like a combination of me and Simone's. She was already converted into a tiny home by her previous owner, who called her 'Rusty'... go figure.
She bears her name proudly (also so drivers tailing behind us have a reason to be a little more understanding):
And the bumpy ride makes her googley eyes spin around. Steering wheel Snail gets lots of encouragement as she slogs up hills.
Up front, Becky sits in the driver's seat. We jazzed everything up with some vibrant fabrics; around the sides is some brown fur, at the back is a hippy sheet we had hanging in our bedroom for years, and at the top a fabric a good friend brought us from Africa. We added a shoe rack behind the seat, and hammocks hanging above for extra storage. The broken CD player became a phone and wire holder, and there's another little snail on the dashboard, replacing a broken button.
Simone is in the passenger seat. We hung some extra hooks next to the hammocks for hats and coats. We spray painted the dashboard black, from its previous dirty grey. On the underside of the sun visor, we keep pictures of friends and family. Right at the front of the windscreen, we have a dreamcatcher which Becky has had in every car she's had (and plans to always have).
Between the front and the back of the van, we have a hatch!
To the back! The side doors slide open to reveal our tiny home.
Inside, is our sofa which pulls out into a bed. Underneath, is heaps of storage where we keep our recording studio equipment, art materials, bathroom stuff, as well as our batteries for our power supply (which is also charged by a solar panel on the roof). Above the sofa is a bookshelf, our studio speakers, two hammocks on either side which hold all our clothes, and our duvet when we're not using it. My Nana knitted us both the socks which are hanging up :)
Opposite the sofa is the kitchen where we have a fully working tap, piped to a water supply underneath in a cupboard. There’s also a powerful, permanent gas cooker on the surface. We keep all our storable food and cooking equipment in the cupboards below and fresh food hanging above. There's a chopping board which slots on top of the sink when it's not in use. Behind the curtain, hides a very strategically placed keyboard!
Behind the kitchen is our bathroom. We have a toilet which we empty daily (and a rule of no number twos in the van), and a shower room (where we have a portable shower which we hang up). Toiletries hang on the inside wall out of the way, but easily accessible.
In front of the bathroom is our furnace! It has a chimney which funnels up through the roof. Underneath we store wood and firelighters and Simone made the beautiful door. Next to the furnace are two guitars, which we slotted perfectly into a sack and strapped in (you'll notice that literally everything in the van is strapped down somehow to stop us returning from a drive to a bomb-site).
Oh, and we painted a chalkboard on the back of the slidey door:
And that’s Snail, our home on wheels for the foreseeable future! We’ve managed to fit our whole lives into a 2x5 meter space. And the best bit? We’ve been on the road less than a week and have already had a seafront, a waterfall, a lake and a forest as a front garden. Doesn’t get better than that.
Love,
Becky and Simone