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Is van life for me? 8 questions you need to ask yourself
“Van Life is a sub-culture of nomadic individuals who are embracing minimalism on a journey to reassess what is truly important for a happy and balanced life.” – Ben, Kombi Life As more people fall in love with the idea of freedom, minimalism and moving away from traditional 9-5 living, van life is becoming more popular than ever. You can barely move for all the #vanlife Instagram accounts out there and we’ve certainly met a huge number of van lifers during our time on the road. But while it all seems like a nice idea, the reality is that it’s not for everyone – and that’s OK! For us, the…
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Three months in: An update on van life
I’ve picked up a lot of extra work recently and taken on some great new clients, which means I have been writing my butt off the past couple of months. Just sadly not for this blog. And I do feel a genuine sadness when I haven’t had time to stop and write something for myself. I am always writing for other people, but as I get paid to do so it really does have to take priority in my brain. So today I decide to take a quick 10 minutes for myself to share an update on what we’ve been up to since we left Scotland. Especially as yesterday officially…
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The North Coast 500 – The home straight
This will be my final update on our North Coast 500 journey, though they’ll be plenty of other Scotland-based content to come from the great places we stayed after we completed the NC 500 route. The last post ended as we began to head down the East coast and back towards Inverness. Now I won’t lie to you because that’s not my style, the East coast was a little bit less attractive than the West had been – and ain’t that always the way! Much like England (and I sincerely hope I don’t offend anyone by saying this) the east is not as nice as Wales and Cornwall on the…
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The North Coast 500 – Reaching the north coast of Scotland
When I last left you on our North Coast 5000 journey we had stopped in Gairloch, just 150 miles in and starting to climb up the West coast. This next instalment of our journey takes us all the way up and along the North coast of Scotland, to the highest point in the UK and to some of the most beautiful beaches we’ve ever seen. So let’s pick straight up where we left off! Day 4 – Ullapool – 198 miles in Ullapool is the biggest settlement in the north west of Scotland and the harbour there is a hub of activity, even now. When we arrived we were quite…
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The North Coast 500 – The first 150 miles
A few weeks back we completed the North Coast 500 which is a 500 mile road trip around the north of Scotland. The guide book we bought estimated that this would take us around a week, but we took a slight detour over to the Isle of Skye, so it actually took us about nine days to complete. If you’re considering the NC 500 or you’re looking for inspiration for your next road trip, we couldn’t recommend it enough! We picked an amazing time of year to come as we had beautiful weather, it was mostly sunny, it wasn’t too cold, but we also got to enjoy the odd snowy…
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Converting our own camper van – Phase 3
Here is the third and final part of our van conversion, though we are sure there will be plenty of tweaks to make in the future. With the basics in place, it was now time to start getting in the finishing touches. One of the biggest tasks left to do was the wiring and then it was really just about making it feel homely and cosy. Wiring in the electrics To make things easier for ourselves (because neither of us are electricians) we decided to buy a full van conversion electric kit which came with leisure battery and everything we needed. We were able to fit the fridge, water, lights…
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Converting our own campervan – Phase 2
Welcome to phase two of our campervan conversion! This post will take you through the next stages of our journey from putting in the floor to installing the fridge and cooker. These were some of the trickier, but certainly more fun parts of building the van! Wood on the floor and walls Once the van was completely insulated, it was time to cover up the ugly looking Celotex. We used sheets of 9mm ply to cover the floor and 6mm for the walls. Using thin sheets of plastic as a mould, we measured and cut the wood to shape before screwing it in to the van. We chose to use…
