All I knew was that there was some rave/festival in Santa Fe, near Granada (aka Dragoff or Dragon festival – read more) so we put that into the satnav and went. There was no sign of any party on arrival – not even the distant reverberation of a bass bin which I was relying on […]
Living and travelling in a van
Living in a van – I am off-grid
Throughout the conversion of the van, I was reading a book called [amazon text=Off-grid by Nick Rosen&localise=0&search_link=0&multi_cc=0&live=0&asin=B004ZLS6QA]. My plan wasn’t to intentionally be off-grid but as I read the book I realised that I was probably heading into this territory without really knowing – although nothing quite as amazing as some of the people in the […]
Music for driving a van
Nothing else seems to bookmark my life like music can. Some of my most detailed memories can only be triggered by music or ‘that song’. ‘Oldflame’ by Arcade fire instantly takes me back to when I was 17 and we would stay up giving each other tattoos in my parents kitchen. ‘The skin of my […]
A change of plans
The great thing about not having plans is that you can change them at any time. I always had in my mind that I’d travel around Morocco in the van. I just like the idea of Morocco; Apart from the great food, music, people and scenery, it’s a bit of a challenge. The thing is, […]
Wild-camping- where have we been staying?
My aim is to wild camp as much as possible. Wilding is way more fun, exciting and gives more freedom and variety. After all, I built the van to be off-grid so I would not have to rely on mains electric hookups on campsites. Here are some of my favourite spots we’ve stayed over the […]
First week of travel
I’ve been living in the van for just over a week and have travelled 1400 miles from England to Spain. I have a couple of mates (Matt and Ross) with me so the van is at full capacity and has certainly taken a beating climbing through the Spanish mountains. I’ve used a fair bit of […]
Europe POI download (standard GPX format)
There are tons of great POI resources scattered around the net but the main problem is all the different file types and formats. Everyone is using different software and devices. A solution is the .gpx format which is an attempt to standardise GPS data and it does seems to work well. The best resource I […]
ITS TIME for step 3. Its time for travel!
Over the past 4 months I have become completely obsessed, side-tracked, absorbed and totally oblivious to everything else around me apart from van stuff. I could carry on doing this van for many more months but a line needs to be drawn. This is it. I’m off. You can see the (pretty much) finished van […]
Broken again – A list of work done on the van
The van has been in the garage for nearly 2 weeks now so I thought I’d do a list of all work done. It went in to get the steering box fitted/setup and to get a new full MOT on the 13th of Feb. Yeah I’ve been bored and frustrated. The list of work done […]
Getting to know my engine
I thought it might be a good idea to get to know the engine on the van (Ford Duratorq 2.4L) a little better and get familiar with the location of the main components. The van is in the garage getting fixed up and MOTed so this is one of the things I’ve been doing while […]
