A Life Less Stationarity.

A Life Less Stationarity.

So yesterday was a huge landmark in all our lives, l taught my daughter to skip stones across the water so they bounce a few times before sinking! OK, it's ridiculous to call that a huge landmark, but then again is it? It's only eight years until she's an adult, how much we can miss of our children's lives of we let other people bring them up? And how much can they miss of their own lives if they spend six hours a day in a room with twenty-nine other kids writing stuff down for twelve years! I know many schools are very good and most teachers well-intentioned, but can we really call that a good education? What if they also spend their free time on screens? We are the generation replacing going and doing, with clicking and viewing. I'm not saying it's all bad, my daughter has become a fluent reader reading comics on YouTube in the absence of books in English! A wonderful future innovation! I guess I'm looking for balance. I'm trying to skip a stone across the surface of technology without sinking out of sight of the sunlight!

So there is also a narrative, we are travelling around Spain and Portugal in a campervan, to find adventure, experience, history, culture and a lot of sand! The last time I wrote in any detail we had made it to Santiago de Compostela and were staying in a hotel while broken down!

I'm now in a campsite in southern Portugal where we plan to sell the van and stay in a campsite but until spring. How did this happen? Well, we fixed the van in Santiago and set of South again in some of the worst weather we've seen in these parts, rain and flooding, rain on the roads coming from six directions! We got to Tui and stopped at the aire (free, camper only stop, which is basically a car park with a tap and a drain). The rain cleared and the kids and I took a walk.

Tui: I think Tui is my happy place! A perfect, tiny city, high on a hill with constant views of the wide blue river.

Porto: Porto is like London and Florence had a baby who got all the best features from both parents, add cable cars and trams too! It seems like a hundred thousand red roofs climb the hills from the river and no two the same shape!

Sao Mamede: We arrived in torrents of rain, everything was damp and our damp coats brought more wet into the van, keeping the door open was impossible, everyone huddled in the van on screens, everyone was freezing and board. I read it's a beautiful part of Portugal but the rain never let up and we left for more exhausting driving through minimal visibility. People we met were friendly and helpful, places were clean, if sometimes a bit scruffy from age, as I have found throughout Northern Spain and Portugal.

Fatima: Some point after Sao Mamede we broke down again, losing power on the long hills that characterize driving in Portugal (the big trucks frequently get down to 30 kilometres per hour!). A gentleman stopped to help us and ended up spending the whole day driving us around to garage and town, my son referred to him as a taxi! Fatima is odd, the whole town exists because some children had a vision of the Virgin Mary there. The pope has visited recently and the town is littered with statues of him, every shop sells statues of Mary and religious souvenirs, also wax body parts to bring the virgin as gifts if you require them healing! My daughter and I found wax hearts and intestinal tracts a bit macabre. If any of you would like me to bring you a wax spleen, say the word! There is no actual community there, just souvenir shops, hotels and churches!

All mankind has the right to celebrate their faith as they see fit, but personally, I felt real awe walking in the pilgrim's footsteps to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela and Fatima left me unmoved.

The garage at Fatima said my van needed a new engine and it would cost five thousand euros! The people at my breakdown cover were not convinced and we agreed to ship it South to a garage recommended by a Facebook friend!

Vilamoura: we took the train to Vilamoura and the van got a piggyback on a breakdown truck! The van was picked up on a Tuesday in Fatima but did not join us in southern Portugal until Friday! No one knows what she did while of on her own, if she turns out to be pregnant there is a waiting list for the little campervan! We took the train, which was less than a hundred euros for a family of four to travel first class halfway down the country! The train station cafe was a dead ringer for 1977!

Vilamoura is beautiful but the old town is so manicured and populated by English and Germans that it is indistinguishable from the hotels and golf course! Tourism gone mad, visit Portugal and miss the whole culture.

We went from staying in the four seasons, with four swimming pools and a spa (on the breakdown insurance) to sleeping in the broken van on the garage four-court in lashing rain by a busy road when the breakdown insurance ran out! Seldom has such contract been part of my experience! But the same Facebook friend came and took us ice-skating in a glittering mall!

Quartarteira: The new quote was for a fuel pump was a thousand euros, but after the previous breakdown and way too much eating out because the freezing wet van was no fun, we didn't have it.

We patched the van up and drove it to a campsite in Quartarteira. It's along the beach from Vilamoura and joined together, like Brighton and Hove if there was fourteen miles of sandy beach and spiders the size of fifty pence pieces and the colour of the sun!

The lady at the campsite explained it to me like this, “Up that end they lie in the sun beside their villas, this end we work!” she chuckled quite cheerfully about that, clearly a woman who understands that no happiness has ever been found by doing nothing!

We arrived at the campsite, after two months on the road in a basic van, two breakdowns and a month of rain, every scrap of clothing was dirty, everyone was dirty, we were down to a handful of euros and dead tired.

We washed out clothing and bedding, charged our devices and made a plan, sell the van and rent a hut with a shower and flushing loo! Here we will stay until spring, no longer meandering around the coast visiting every village and bay, but it's beautiful here and we will explore and learn.

I've figured out the smart way to have come here, flights from the UK are very cheap and the campsite hut is six hundred euros the first month but only three thereafter. We could have flown Gatwick to Faro for about £50 each! (half an hour in a taxi each side) and rented a hut, skipped the rain, saved a fortune, never slept in a garage, never been boxed in, never arrived to sleep at an aire and found it shut, never broke down, never been tearful or lost and driving in circles.

But who wants to skip life, we would have never stood in improbably silent streets, awed by the vast churches, met heroes in nowhere places, chanced on stunning bridges and empty beaches! High fived at working out the toll booths! Inspired our friends and strangers met, tested our courage and communication skills. You don't want to skip over life, that's not an education!

Love Kirsteen

Living in Spain: You will think I made this one up!

Living in Spain: You will think I made this up to entertain you, but it's true!!!

One of life's great pleasures for me, and a very rare pleasure, is the fun I get from getting to be gracious about something done to me, that others have been horrible to me for doing to them! To literally be better, and know it! It sometimes happens with ex-boyfriends! It's like Oscar Wild said, "The best revenge is living well." Perhaps mine is a smug, impure pleasure, but if it pans out to being nice in practice - does it matter if I gloat a bit to myself?

Well those of you who have been following my adventure will remember that I had a campervan that I realised was not right for us and sold. It then broke and the buyer went ballistic- threatening to take me to court and forging my signature on a document to try to make the van legally mine again.

This evening I was strolling down the front with my daughter taking selfies with the palm trees wrapped in fairy lights, when who should I meet but the bloke I bought my van from! The Chevy! He was surprised and delighted to see me and said "You made it then!" So I gave him a short version of the breakdown, shipped the van to England, getting quotes to fix it... He was gutted for us and gave me the name of a garage that rebuild classic gearboxes. He kept saying "But I just drove it here and back no problems." I kept saying it's not your fault, it's old and it could have done another 50,000 miles or more, no one knew. He's a nice bloke and it's not his fault! But I got to walk away from treating him with respect and decency thinking "See! That's how that is done, I knew I wouldn't have behaved like those people who bought my previous camper and I just got to prove it!"

I'm also blown away by the coincidence!!! We talked about my trip and his lifestyle so we knew we were both heading to Spain, but it's a big-ish place, I had no idea where in Spain, I was not expecting to meet him on my pre dinner walk!!!

In other news I have failed to stop myself from planning the next van, to take up around this peninsula (France, Spain and Portugal) one day when I get together another shot at it. Here are the plans, and some photos of similar van, and other similar things to help give the idea. Feel free to comment your advice - I only ever listen to advice I like the sound of anyway - sorry, just a personality trait I guess!

What are you doing still here? Europe in a campervan.

I'm taking my family to France, Spain and Portugal this winter in a classic Chevy van. For adventure, to break out of suburban middle class thinking, to learn languages, to experience culture, and to escape the rain - mostly the last bit!

I'm still here, however, getting rained on! We are becoming professional at waiting for garages to do work! All British people are already professional at getting rained on! We finally got a service and an oil change but the breaks need work, I'm thinking we might need them! We might leave on the the 1st or we might not!

I keep meeting friends who greet me with “What are you still doing here?” “I thought you had gone?” And even “I can't wait for you to go!” Then they realise what they have said and frantically try to dig themselves back out, “Oh! I do like you of course…” it's ok, I understand.

The people who bought our previous camper and then said it's not their van, when it broke down, have reached an all time high on their reaction, they actually lied to the DVLA and forged my signature on a government document!! Fortunately the DVLA were on the ball and sent me a form asking if I really did want to transfer ownership back to me! They (the DVLA) won't discuss if they are taking action but they will keep all evidence. The police gave me a leaflet to report fraud. Tim also got a nasty letter from the buyers, and some calls to go on a lurid TV program and fight about it in public! We said no!!! If they do anything else I'm going to open a fraud investigation and perhaps even press charges! I'm not a vindictive person, but the threats have been horrible, so It's quite comforting to know I now have them by the private parts if they give us more abuse! I wonder if they will Google me and read my blog!!? It sort of cramps my writing style so I try to assume they won't.

I've discovered that the little Chevy cars you see everywhere are called a Chevrolet Spark!! Can you believe my daughter called our big Chevy Van “Sparkle” without knowing that? It all makes sense to me now. I've been showing her the A team van and theme on u tube, hopefully she won't now think I can jump six police cars at a time in our van!

We have got rid of all our stuff except a plastic set of drawers each. Each of my kids has two drawers of clothes and two of toys. Three pairs of shoes each…

Today I put everything in the van and it does fit, just!!! It's going to be like living in one of my daughter's dolls houses (now given to friends) without being doll sized! However if we can cope with so little space, we gain all the space, if we can cope with owning so little, we can “own” Europe...  We have been getting rid of stuff for weeks then sudden shopping spree; all week I've been getting boxes, they contain things like the extra car battery (now fitted and ready to run all our devices without flattening the main battery), a cool box, a roof bag and a potty. For the first time in my life I have a pot to piss in!

We are really, really, really, nearly ready. If you see me you can say “I know why you are still here!” I think it sounds sinister, perfect for Halloween!!!

The pictures are us “test camping” at a Brit stop; a campervan only free stopover that you can sign up for and get a book of. It's about £35 for the book, which is your membership, then you can park safely and free all over the country in pub car parks, vineyards, Mannie houses… it's a brilliant idea. You can't bring caravans, or tents and you can't set up furniture or awnings, just sleep and perhaps have wifi, fresh water or some facilities.

On our test camping we learned; don't set off when it's already dark and be looking for turn offs to some tiny country manor house in pitch black except for the angry local driver up your bum because he knows all the bends and wants to go fast!! But on the upside the view was a complete morning surprise!

Also a picture of our “Pot to piss in!” and trying to fit everything in! Heaven help me on that!

Bye bye Winter, Europe in a campervan

Europe by Campervan:

I'm lying on an air mattress surrounded by so much stuff. How can we still have so much when I've been giving it away every day single day for a month? It's been sneaking off and multiplying clearly. After 22 hours of intensive cleaning, and I know not how many sorting and giving away stuff I've given back my house keys, we are rent and council tax free and homeless, on my mum's floor.

So the news is good, we have sold our previous camper "Winter Dolphin Magic" (I have a romantic streak as wide as the Nile and a nine year old) and got a fair price for her! Few! Turns out I could have got more if I was an arse. The whole thing was a roller coaster of raw emotion.

She was no good to us because the law has changed and you can't add rear seatbelts any more (I'm a researcher but I tripped up here, I can't stress enough, don't just do research, do ACCURATE research!) but the list of jobs was getting a bit daunting too - she needs some love.

Well we listed her and got a storm of interest, cool surfer dude turns up first, I pull up at the same time as him and the radiator starts leaking down the street!!! Cool surfer dude heard me swear, those who know me will know I hardly ever swear! So we get a quote to fix it, bring down the price, get a temporary fix and edit all the listings to include the new problem.

The camper garage told me it's worth £5,000 but I get a series of calls saying it's worth nothing from chancers, and offers for £900. I start to freak out, I've spent a lot of Tim's money on it and then my step dad got it serviced and four new tyres, what if I've wasted their hard earned money. Just when I've taken to waking at 4 in the morning and making contingency plans, we get a good offer and say yes. Then I get lots more interest! Several people say "I'll give you the asking price and come get it today." I told them I had to keep my word. I'm happy it's defiantly worth what I've sold it for. I phone the people who have bought it, they are coming in a few days. They are perfect because they are a couple (no seatbelt problem) and he was once a mechanics apprentice, he's still friends with them and can get her fixed up, I'm very straight with him about what needs doing and what's good too. I tell him I'm getting higher offers now, but I'm keeping my word. We get on. After the phone chat he put the rest of the money in Tim's account!!! They don't have any van, paper or keys!! They just trusted me! Goes to show - you get the treatment you dish out!

Now what? Well I've fallen in love with an American Beast that Jasmine wants to call "Sparkle!!"

It has four seat belts (built with four). I say beast as it's a 5L engine, my pervious camper was a 2L engine for a two ton vehicle, this is smiler and more than double, it beasts along!

Remember the A Team? It's their van but longer. In fact it's the one used in the new movie but not the original series. Now we have to re-edit our stuff to fit a smaller van, oh! Help!

However, we will be able to get closer in to cities, cover more ground faster, it's not so high top, so it's less rock-like-a-boat to drive. It's also totally un-rusted and apart from a service sound enough to take on a two or three thousand mile trip tomorrow. Oh and it's right hand drive? Left hand drive? Europe way around!!

I have a question, so you have heard of a learning curve right? Why is it all my life I seem to set myself up to go up the learning CLIFF, straight up? Please can someone point out my comfort zone on the horizon so I can at least head that way one day? In the meantime, wish me luck driving a wrong way round van all the way home on Friday! :)

Campervan: doing things I didn't know I could!

My current art form: campervan, or doing things I didn't know I could!

So we bought a motorhome (29 year old Mercedes) to travel Europe for a couple of years.

I've been weeping on poor Tim because I attacked all the damp wood with a claw hammer and then found the mess a bit overwhelming (classic Kirsteen, if I'm honest, throw yourself off to see if it's too high). Also my wonderful step dad paid for a service, but they were so disparaging about the rust, oil leak, tyres, pipes… that I've been going around expecting a wheel to fall off ever since! But we borrowed our neighbor's ladder and Tim helped me and I attacked the front of the van with a serious amount of sealant. It now looks like it lost a snowball fight with a mad artist but it's raining hard out there and my VAN IS NOT LEAKING!!! YAY!!!

Also I took out the great big seats myself, they are no good in a crash (which I won't be having) so we want to replace them with proper bus seats with seatbelts! I thought it was a job for a garage, but Tim sat on one and we ran over a bump and it collapsed! Yay! 30 minutes with a screwdriver and they are on the drive under a tarp!

Tim is referring to the camper as “My current art form” because any time Dylan sleeps and Jasmine is at a friend's house, I race out there and put new locks on cupboards, fix light fittings, lay flooring… but I think I've figured out what my current art form is, it's doing things I didn't know I could! Like driving it, let's hope that applies to driving it onto the ferry and down through France, Spain and another ferry to Morocco! You see we have a plan now, so it has an oil leak, so it's got so much rust it might not pass another MOT, well we are going to take it to Morocco and get LOTS of work done cheap! I'm calling it Moroccan Motorhome Makeover! Perhaps if their is money left we can have exotic carpets, curtains…

Here are some pictures of the huge seats I took out, and the huge can I drove, looking better!

Europe by motorhome: Driving around in my house!

So we bought a beat up motorhome and we are planning to take it to Portugal this winter, (leaving in September) via France and Spain. We will come back in April and see family and friends, then take off again before it gets cold... perhaps the Adriatic coast...

So I drove it about two miles! Woo hoo! Sainsbury's car park and back, and we dropped my daughter's friend home, rock on! I normally drive a smooth, fast, car with good acceleration etc. the van is different, you really are driving around in your house! Everything rattles, it lumbers along and is as nippy in the gaps as a narrow boat! And, as my husband put it "stoping distaaaaaaance!" Momentum is a serious force, don't piss that chick off when you weigh two tons! However I did two miles of a 2000 mile adventure.

Thinking about getting rid of stuff verses really getting rid of it. Thinking about getting rid of stuff goes like this "oh! My things, my treasures, that jacket, that handbag...how will I do it, will I regret it?"

Really getting rid of stuff goes like this: Wheee! Off goes all the cr*p I usually have to tidy up, over the big drop at the dump, or off to charity to help someone! Feeling lighter by the minute, gifting that favorite jacket to one of my friends who it actually fits!! Feeling generous and unencumbered!!! Weeee!

My daughter is also enjoying giving lavish presents of toys to every friend who comes to play! I've discovered that lighter load = lighter heart! I think I knew this long ago before I had kids and a husband but it got beaten out of me by the cruel and ruthless forward march of Christmas!

Europe in a motorhome, campervan, van! The van has worms!

I'm coining a new emotion, I have joy-terror! It's the emotion you get when you propose to take your young children, and husband to Portugal in a beat up van.

Even the van itself is giving me joy-terror! I cleaned it from top to bottom, the kids in the street (who have played in it 47/7 since it arrived, mostly because it wouldn't lock) all joined in, they had buckets and mops and a hose and everyone got soaked, my tow year old didn't quit get the game and sat down in a bucket! That's the joy part!

In the process of cleaning I found damp and strange worms under the kids mattress, I'm not sure what sort of worms they were but whatever they were they didn't like the mold killer, so ex-worms. So it needs some work, we knew that... breathe!!! It needs a worm pill, like a pet, pets are nice... breathe!!!

However it looks better.

Another joy moment was going into a charity shop and looking through the box of maps and guides, "I'm going there, and there, and there, not that one, and there..." I've drooled over travel guides my whole life, I've never bought 14 in one sitting, with full confidence I need them! Joy!

Europe in a motorhome, oh help, and drawing.

Europe in a motorhome, oh! What have I done? I've bought a beat up van!

It's a Mercedes, it's literally two tons of wishes made into metal. I've been wishing and planning and researching Europe by motorhome for months, but now I've spent £2300 of my husband's hard earned money (while he stayed home with the kids) I'm thinking I've had some sort of mid life crisis and run mad!

The engine has purred all the way from the north of back-of-beyond to Sussex so at least it runs, the millage is only 38,000, it's not damp and it's, got only superficial rust on the van it's self, but the good news ends there. Inside it looks like a refugee camp on laundry day. I'm pretty sure there is a stove back there but it's too rusted to be sure, the water tank is empty and the battery for internal stuff is flat, so I had to buy it without testing anything (that it's worth the money even if nothing works is not in doubt, there was a cat fight for this 29 year old treasure-horror!

Perhaps I should explain, my husband and I plan to take our two year old son and our nine year old daughter and drive down through France and Spain to southern Portugal this winter. We currently rent a big house (shared) in Sussex we can't afford, we owe taxes, credit cards and family, because of not keeping up, and bad judgment, we want out of debt, we also want to see life. We could move into a smaller place, it would have to be a room to be cheaper than our house, we could move out of, richer-than-you-are-or-more-in-debt, middle class Sussex, or I could put my daughter in school (we homeschool) my son in a full time nursery and work full time too.

Non of that sounds fun, so we are getting rid of everything and heading for blue ocean, with a plan to work on the way, but right now we are still paying rent, I have a car (for sale as of now) and now a truck load of 1980’s interior decorating, oh, I mean a motorhome!

I'm not even driving it! My mum is! It's HUGE, it's got to be a full time home to a family of four, so it's huge, and my husband can't drive so it's all me!!! I've never driven a big vehicle (a few days in a big long car in Australia) that they call a Ute (Utility vehicle, six meters). I have also never driven on the other side of the road, I'm having kittens! Not actually in the van, I'm not having pets to deal with as well, nor do I want to mess up the couch, oh wait, that's been done.

We got flashed! I'm in some sort of vintage, Mercedes, van-home club! A matching one flashed us coming the other way, clearly more than one has lasted 29 years!

So why have I done this, bought a van I'm too chicken to drive? Well wishes and dreams have to be made to come true, there is never going to be a day when we have digitised the last CD from our collection, paid the last debt and sorted every toy, and now we are ready, we would be older than the cast iron heater or possibly black box, or alien DNA canister in the back there! You have to go out and get your wishes, you have to bring them down the motorway and go, here, it's done! It's real! Two tons of metal says that what was conceived as a light and joyful thought, is now really here, and really happening, line up world, I mean this, or failing that get your mum to do it for you!

There is more to this plan than escaping the high cost of living an hour from London, this is a van to take our children to meet the world in. Start them on a path through other places, cultures and lifestyles, if they grow up and do what we everyone else does, then that will be because it's an informed choice, not something they slid into without noticing. In the meantime they will learn, languages, art, navigation, finance, science and much more by, doing and seeing, not listening and writing down to forget later (when the teacher shuts up and they have time for forgetting)!

So we have to, sell the car, clear out and give back our house, build the Skype tutoring business, and continue to build my textile design business, and get the van traveling fit simultaneously, wish us luck, or come sand some rust for me!

I'm going to keep blogging about this adventure, assume that it’s an adventure for now.

Love, Kirsteen

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