Campervan designs and maps...where next.

Where will we go next and how might we get there?

In between trips around this part of Portugal have been obsessively drawing campervan ideas and and looking at maps. When you stand on a pristinely empty beach with your kids running out across the sand like deer, one thought takes hold,
"How can we do more of this in the future?"

I'm keen to explore my native Scotland and Wales (which has more castles per square mile than any other country in the world!) I've also always had a thing about North Devon. My daughter is desperate to spend time in Paris, we have passed through but not explored.

Looking at the French road map I never realized how well connected we are with France....

We need a Britstop book, to sleep free and legal in the UK, and Aires book for France, and a van, car turned into camper... Here following are my ideas.

Portugal: Ideas and Impressions.

Portugal: Impressions and ideas.

I'm sitting in the main street in Quarteira, in The Algarve, in Portugal. Is a little scruffy. A Christmas fair has been running on and off for a few days and they have put read carpet all down the street, which is now rather dirty! A busker is singing a mix of the usual busker hits, like, “American Pie” and something I assume is Portuguese, but it's a really hard language to pick up and I learned more Spanish, Italian and German in 24 hours than I have Portuguese in a month - sorry.

A few moments ago a man walked by with a bucket of half alive octopus. There are lots of bikes and scooters, cars are hard to afford here. Portugal is pretty poor and pretty sparsely populated. Lots of people don't have jobs, however many of them are not unemployed, they live off small plots of family owned land, growing most of their food and bartering a bit more. Even in the town lots of bits of verge or unused land has been adopted by householders and turned into stretches of vegetable garden.

There are many empty show and decaying buildings but also little friendly business almost always kept very clean, even if their stuff is a bit old and scuffed it is usually wiped, maintained and polished. It shows a short of self respect which is typical of the almost poverty of many here. They don't act down on their luck, they act happy, friendly, community minded - without much wealth. Up the street a young woman and a weathered old lady have been dancing to the busker while minding empty stalls, at the end of the song they embrace and go back to work, see what I mean?

There are also many empty apartment buildings - I saw this in Spain too. Row upon row of holiday flats empty nine months of the year. I may a man who owned one and worked in London, he moved to Portugal but before that had owned it ten years and spent one month total in it. I did last them on my bike, and passed the building sites throwing up more and think, can't we share them out somehow? I'm not socialist, I do think you should benefit from hard work but surely a system could be worked out to learn them out to displaced families or something? I don't know but it seems so sad that people are sleeping in the doorways of 100 empty little fully functional apartments!

The coast and the countryside, the history and the wildlife are wonderful here, feasting on being surrounded by so much differentness.

Love, Kirsteen

End of the line for "Hope"

"Tomorrow we may have to fight again, but for now we'll ride the train to the end of the line. And then, we'll jump." To steal a line from a good film.

"Hope" the campervan has reached the end of the line.

The van will be €1000 to fix, and we don't have it, but it runs at 30 miles per hour. I'm also fed up spending money on it that would pay for a flat!! So I am going to get them to put it back together broken and drive it to the nearest camp site, about 20 minutes drive where we will use it as a static caravan!

I walked to the campsite from town today. It's nice. There is a cafe, bar, mini supermarket, tennis courts and play-park. Lots of winter discounts working out about €13 a night perhaps less. She's going to work out what we qualify for. It's all fenced off and the door office is manned so it's very safe for kids. Clearly it also has showers and loos and stuff. There are little hits to rent if you visit. Everyone come see us!

I asked the bike shop to make me an offer for renting a bike and seat for 3 months.

The campsite is 5 minutes walk from the beach and about 15 from the town centre. You go down a road a few hundred meters and the rest is all along a promenade by the sea where cars are not allowed. It's a very good place to be stranded. The town has two beaches, swimming pool, market, art gallery, shops, cafes, medical clinic, crazy golf...

You can take a boat cruise to caves with a swim and dolphins for €30.

A scooter for the day is €15. A bike with no long discount is €5 a day.

There is free wifi on the beach!!!

When March comes we will ship our stuff on a pallet for about €200 and fly or train and boat home.

We can list the van on ebay (Campervan, running, needs fuel pump, already in Portugal) I have seen such things.

Non Portugal. Sci-fi place!

While my van was lost (allegedly it has been found and will shortly show up at the garage) I had a night at a smart hotel in Vilamoura. I am very glad we had somewhere nice to sleep but the place was a bit odd. I've usually travelled to friends and family or cheap hotels down in the city, even in Egypt, which can be a bit dangerous, we walked around rubbing elbows with the people there. 

Back to Portugal, this morning I left the hotel to get some food and found myself in this "old town" so manicured I kept asking myself if it was fake, or part of the hotel. Portuguese people swept and cut grass while in all the shops and cafes only English and German was spoken! Everyone who helped me/served me addressed me in English without trying their native tongue first. All signs were in English only! I felt like some sort of white oppressor! The manicured town reminded me of a sci-fi book I once read where everyone's parents turned out to be robots!!!

I had heard of the concept of traveling only for the climate change and avoiding local culture and indeed contact, it was freaky and tragic and rude! Bring back Portugal please, and all the attendant difficulties! Down with you heated pool, giant double beds and tree-surgeoned palm trees! 

I'm actually looking forward to camping in my van again!

Broke down again in Portugal.

Ok, so I'm a fool for setting off in various beat up vans but I actually know someone who has kept his day job and is tinkering and rebuilding his van so much his work friends say he will never set off! I think he, will but you get the point, life never provides the ideal window to do stuff you want. No adult dentist ever got that letter from the tooth fairy "Dear, Dentist, Good job, this year you don't need to be a dentist anymore, I will be taking on all your responsibilities and funding you through school, so you can go be a dancer like you always wanted! Go rock the world of hip hop!" You have to do it anyway! Similar with the learn to drive a manual idea, sure I will, others have said Tim should learn and have two drivers, wait till we can buy a brand new van... Some people wait till they retire, some are then too scared or unfit. We met a guy in Javea who got second hand bikes cheap in his shop often, he said people planned there whole life's to come down in a camper and bike around the country, then they arrived and found they felt too scared of a fall at there age, truly tragic.

So my van is back in the garage and the trip is not quite on plan...and my last trip didn't go to plan, come to think of it I'm not sure my life at home always went to plan!

I'm in Portugal, in a town so historic it took 15 years to get planning permission for a Mc D here. I've never been here before, nor have the kids, we have been helped, we have been surprised, we have been sad, we have been frustrated and we have been high!

My daughter talks about places she will travel with her friends and then kids when she has them! My son says  "I love mine holiday!"

I have become completely used to driving a big vehicle and driving in Spain and Portugal sometimes in pretty bad conditions. We have all learned more Spanish, and about three words in Portuguese!

If I get the van going again for a sensible amount we will pick a campsite on the south coast and make day trips for the worst of the weather and because the van is being unreliable. That is only about 3 hours away. We have been traveling well over a month.

We have missed all the terrible flooding, storms, snow and danger Spain and Portugal have been having. We have been impressed with the warmth of people and the beauty around us. On balance defiantly worth it even if it ends today, but don't wish that for me. X

Things have gone wrong but right too

I'm down in Portugal right now in a van with my family. I bought the van for £2500 and converted it for £400, it's pretty basic but OK. Lots has gone wrong, in fact it's in the garage getting fixed right now, but lots has gone right too. My family and I have learned so much wandering through Spain and Portugal with no plan other than roughly South! I've been here over a month and we have five to go. The emotion is intense, so much is new, the highs and the lows. Even if I can't sustain this, it's already changed us all for the better. I would not undo it, mistakes and all. If you want to change your life you can, it's a matter of a firm choice, not of circumstances or luck. I hope this helps someone. 

These are my own pictures, I have stood in each of these moments and that cannot now be taken away from me in the future. X