2: First Week on the Road

Oct 12, 2018

Everything is swaying in the van right now. It’s been like this for two days as a storm has been brewing and finally hit the west coast of Ireland in a full-throttle rage last night. I hadn’t quite mentally prepared for wind as a weather worry in the van, but turns out 80mph gales make it feel like a washing machine in here. We woke up most times a gust shook the van last night, and each time, Simone would get up and remove another jangly item from the walls.

We’re realising living in a van presents a whole different array of life challenges to overcome. Except now, instead of traffic or paying rent, it’s making sure we park somewhere the van won’t get hit by a fallen tree as we sleep, or planning where we’re next going to fill up our water tank.

(We found a flat, shielded church car park last night, away from the coast and high grounds. We made a late decision to park next to the bushes rather than the few trees which lined the car park, a decision we realised was a big one in the morning when large tree branches lay scattered across the ground where we would have been sleeping…)

Church Car Park, Before the Storm

Approaching these challenges is already building us and we’ve learned more in a week than I think I learned last year.

For example, Simone and I can now put plumbing down on our CV. After having a dripping pipe for a few days (not good for an already rusty van approaching winter), a plumber in a plum shop (as we called it) told us we’d need to fork out €160 for a new water pump. Instead we spent €10 on some tools and managed to fix it ourselves.

We’re learning how to be incredibly sustainable. Seven days in and I’m shocked to think about how much water I used to waste. We now use less water in a day to drink, cook and wash than a single flush of a toilet. It’s the same with energy; we turn every switch off when we’re not using it. We make sure we have next to no food waste and reuse every bag we have. Also, it’s shocking how little money you need to spend when rent and bills are taken out of the equation, and nature is completely free.

We’re happier than we’ve ever been. We get to spend every moment together (and we’re absolutely not sick of each other…yet). I couldn’t recommend anything more for an engaged couple - it’s like a long pre-marriage honeymoon. We both keep randomly squealing with uncontainable excitement.

It feels so freeing to be in control of our own time, and understanding how we use it now we have the choice. We’re no longer drained by having to give our time to jobs we’re only doing to pay the rent for the home we’re never in because we’re always working. Now we’ve stepped out of the cycle, it’s even more obvious how deflating the rat race was. I spent over an hour yesterday watching the clouds swell over the mountains. WATCHING THE CLOUDS!

We’re fitter already - having time to run along beaches and cycle through mountains, instead of on a machine in a gym. We’re eating amazingly well - often only using one or two pans when making a meal and sometimes cooking outside on an open fire. As vegetarians, we don’t need to worry about not having a fridge, and the cooler we use keeps everything fresh. (I sense a campervan cook book might be coming…)

We feel closer to the earth. It’s sad how disconnected we feel in concrete cities, that we forget to even look at the stars, if we can see them at all in the polluted skies. We’re currently on the Ring of Kerry in Ireland, close to the International Dark Sky Reserve - a protected area where we see the sky as our ancestors did, and the only Gold-Tier reserve in the Northern Hemisphere. We’ve never seen so many stars! Yesterday we were walking through a forest where wild stags roamed maybe 10 meters away from us.

I think that’s probably why we’re dealing with this storm so well - the overwhelming power of nature around us is humbling. And even though we’re rained in today, Snail feels cosier than ever as we’re snugly reading, writing and listening to the patters on the roof.

One week in and it feels like we were born for this lifestyle.

Love,

Becky and Simone