I am parked up some 50m from the beach. To the side of me the open expanse of a nature reserve and a dune restoration project. Behind me a couple of gentlemen are playing boules on the hard sandy soil. I’m in Spain, in one of the quieter stretches of the Costa Brava, out of season. It is cold and windy. Tomorrow they promise sunshine. The seagulls are calling. I am happy.
I have decided to start a blog, and I thought about writing about today, because I’ve googled about fixing inverters and wild camping, and I didn’t’ find anything positive or encouraging – so I thought I’d write something to fill the positivity gap. Not that I know anything about fixing inverters. And it’s probably an issue with my battery anyway. But wild camping in a motor home as a single 52 year old woman? THAT I can write about.
Just over a year ago, as the pandemic raged, I was in France, trying to navigate creating a European branch of my business so that we could survive Brexit. My 90 year old mother was also in a care home in France, it turned out she was dying, but I didn’t know it at the time. Funnily enough an unexpected silver lining of Covid and Brexit was that I was able to spend the last months of my mothers’ life at her side. And you can’t ask for better than that. About that in another blog. For now, back then, the pandemic fear, the need to keep myself and my son safe, as Britain closed its borders and I had to continue working meant that we invested in Bobbelix. A 2005 595 Hymer, a rear saloon/come office, come my bed, and a drop down over the cab bed for Zig. For most of 2021 Ziggy and I lived on the road, safe in our Bubble Bus, having the adventure of our lives.
Our very first night in Bobbelix, up on the wild coast of Brittany in January, we slept facing the Atlantic. We parked up in the dark. I had found a dead end on a coastal road on Google. I popped a pin down, and we aimed for that. At the end of a pot-holed track, hoping for the best, seeing little beyond the beam of our yellow headlights, we parked up. The wind whistling, the sea crashing loudly below us, that first night we kept warm wearing woolly hats and all our clothes. We snuggled and we grinned from ear to ear. Eventually we learned about the aires – managed car parks where campers can stay – we learned about the ubiquitous camping car apps – that help guide travellers like us. I learned to fix the heating, we brought duvets and pillows, and making the van our home, found our safe places to keep sea urchin shells and our toothbrushes, and learned that some cigarette lighter sockets needed adaptors, and that google maps can sometimes take you some very random routes.
Travelling with a then 12 year old Ziggy meant that on the whole wild camping was to be scorned. Whilst we did our fair share of side of the road, countryside, mountain top wild stops – Ziggy needs for ‘juice’ to run his gaming laptop, to zoom with his friends, to get to his online classes meant that it was hard for him. His laptop is quite hard to charge from our solar set up, it takes a long time, and means nothing else can run.
Then in September Ziggy went back to be with his dad in Wales. Alone it took me a while I guess to gain the confidence and knowledge of wild camping – parking up in a ‘non-designated’ space. At the beginning I was a little scared, somehow more scared alone than with my tweenage companion. Waiting for someone to come banging on my door, telling me to move on. Or trying to break in. Luckily in all the travelling I’ve done since then I’ve been left alone, and I’ve awoken in the most spectacular – and the most mundane! – of places.
I have learnt how little I need. How efficient my solar panel is, and how to judge cloudy days vs power supply. I have switched out my laptop – so I no longer run a powerful beast (seemed a good idea when I got it, so have something that could run heavy programs), now I am wiser, what I really need is something fast and agile, and that most especially can charge directly from a 12v cigarette lighter power supply. I’ve settled with a Pixelbook for any of you wondering.
My laptop is my work, my way of managing Dr Zigs, my toy manufacturing, spreader of joy, love of my life business. Being connected means that even in the most remote of locations, tops of mountains, sides of roads, carparks, border control stops, I can be on a zoom call, answer emails, manage our socials. It is probably one of the things that I am most grateful for, as it allows me to make the most of this nomadic lifestyle whilst continuing to work.
I get online with a variety of data only SIM cards – I have one for each country – and they sit in my little mifi – a hotspot router. It’s not always great, but if my signal is too poor, I simply move location.
Once a week or so I will head into a campsite, a chance to make use of washing machines, waste disposal, hot showers. Othertimes when I know I will need an impeccable connection for important meetings I will stay for a while. Occasionally there are locations where wild camping is tricky, especially by the coast in summer.
And there have been times, when wild camping simply means parking up on the side of a residential street, being circumspect, and pretending we’re parked, not really living in the van. That will be for one night stops, for times when I’m on the road, driving a distance, and it’s late. Other times I have used laybys – occasionally a little spooky. For those days I’ve learned how I can lock the van from the inside, leaning out my ‘kitchen’ window, securing my sliding metal lock with the key.
The oddest thing is that when it’s dark, and all the blinds are up, so no light is showing from inside the van, and there is no way of seeing out, it’s like being in a little bubble of safety, and the world outside seems to disappear as if existing in another dimension. Unexpected noises can be strange. Or voices heard when I thought I was alone in the countryside. Sometimes I have gone out to investigate, and been rewarded by a starry sky, a moon. Others I have pretended not to have heard. I hide. Sometimes I’m simply not so brave.
The best thing is having two bikes on the back pannier of the van. Mine and Ziggy’s. No one knows he’s only 13 – when he is traveling with me, and when I’m alone, one would certainly assume that there were two people in the van. After all, 99.9% of all campers seem to be couples.
I love wild camping. I love living on the road, parking up in the most precious of locations. Beach side is always a favourite. The contact with nature, with local people is inspirational, and being able to work, like today, gazing out onto a sea of water reeds, watching the wind buffeting the birds, listening to the gentle toc of boules behind me, and the convivial chatter of the men as they while away their Saturday afternoon, wrapped-up against the chill February breeze.