Practical stuff

For most of this trip we have been sleeping inside the van on the rock and roll bed. While we are at this site we are experimenting with sleeping in the pop top.

It feels more like camping, which is nice. Also, it avoids the faff of having to make the bed every night, we can just leave our bedding where it is and push everything up into the pop top during the day. Much more convenient.

The only downside is our nightly wee, which I definitely need every night these days (it's an age thing!). We have to climb down into the van and use the porta-potty, then climb back. Oh well, can't have everything I suppose!

Getting the bedding (which now includes two thin air mattresses from Decathlon as well as our 5cm thick Duvalay mattress topper) into the pop top in the first place is a bit of a hassle which is why we don't bother doing it if we are only staying somewhere for one night.

We have also put up our air gazebo at this site - again, too much hassle for a one-night stop. This gives us somewhere warm to sit in the evening. I find sitting in the van a bit uncomfortable. No idea why, the seats in the van are very comfortable for driving. Annoyingly, we spent £70 on an electric pump for the gazebo and we can't make it work properly at the moment so having to inflate it by hand.

Finally, we are not using many of the other facilities in the van much. We are not bothering to fill the water tank - it's so easy just to get water from the campsite taps as we need it - so not using the sink and no grey water to empty when we leave. And we are cooking outside on our Campingaz cooker, so not using the cooking facilities in the van either - think we have only used them once all trip. The grill is a complete waste of space and I think we will get it taken out and just use the space as extra storage when we get back. The fridge and associated storage shelves are brilliant though.

We haven't wild-camped or used "aires" yet (free or cheap places to stop but with few facilities and not a lot of space). The aires in France have always looked too cramped for us - basically just carparks. The ones in Spain have had more space but we are now in the habit of searching for campsites not aires and planning ahead for an aire feels a bit high risk.Read more