So the last time I put thumb-to-screen and blogged about whatever, I think I'd gone back to my casual seasonal work of ragwart pulling, which I'd done the previous summer all over the UK - I'd spent the winter based in Hornsea renovating a holiday home and living there through the week, completed that early in the New Year ish and hit the road again. Ragwart pulling was a good gig for making a few quid and took me all over the place - a proper "traveling job" that kept me busy and my finances healthy. Through the powers of the weird and wonderful (and insane and terrifying) world of online dating (dating as a van dweller is a topic I'll get onto another time, as it's definitely high up there on the FAQs, and probably warrants its own post, but not right now) I'd met someone and had been dating for a couple of months by this point, based in Sheffield, so I was keeping my seasonal work in and around Yorkshire so I could head to Sheffield on Weekends and whatnot. One of the ragwarting jobs that got booked in was a commercial gig at an active quarry site in North Yorkshire, I was asked to head this booking and staff up for it - so I recruited Lucy (that's her name by the way, she's a real person, honestly) and our friend Amy for the job, plus a bunch of other guys, and had ourselves a little workaway in the sun.
We had the idea of doing a proper road trip, booking some time off work for a bit and heading off somewhere. So after the quarry job in July, off we fucked round Scotland for a couple of weeks, and spent 18 days doing the famous North Coast 500 - a five hundred mile loop around the coastline of the Highlands, starting and ending at Inverness Castle (which from Sheffield and including a tour of Skye, is actually more like 1800 miles) and seeing all the sites, which was awesome - we bought an inflatable kayak and took that with us too so we could do some paddling on a few of the lochs in-between ticking off the checklist of landmarks and locations.
I love Scotland and have enjoyed my previous visits there, though sadly not as often or for as long as I'd have liked, so it was amazing to spend a chunk of time there and see so much of it. Proper tourists! I suppose in a way this was also Lucys initiation into Vanlife, which I'm pleased to say was a pass with flying colours. Oh, and while we were away, the sale of my house completed, which I'm very pleased to say closed an incredibly stressful chapter in my book, so I came back from Scotland a little richer than I left, both figuratively and literally!
Back to work on return. Needs must, and all that. The quarry client had booked us in for a second location, so I teamed up with a lad called Charlie who I'd worked with at the first booking and then later on met up with in Scotland, so I was pleased to be back working with him again. Towards the end of this job, the client not-so-discretely approached us to ask that we work for him directly - same arrangement, freelance on a week-by-week basis but doing a broad range of work types, to which we eagerly agreed as it suited us well - plus having worked with Charlie before and hung out with him socially, everything sounded good. Still living in our respective vans, parking directly on the work sites through the week (a mixture of quarries and ex-quarry nature reserves), and a little payrise too - then heading off to Sheffield on the weekends. So this is how we spent summer, which flew by incredibly quickly due to a new plan...
Now I've mentioned my mate Mat before and how he and family bought a motorhome and set off traveling Europe on a permanent basis. What I can't remember mentioning (I could check, I suppose) is that on their travels they bought an old Mercedes coach to convert for full time living. Mat and I had maintained regular contact since their departure and the proposal was floated a few times about me going out to Turkey where they were based for the big build, and giving them a hand for a few months. This proposal gained traction into an actual plan, and Lucy was on board too - so after a LOT of planning involving her applying for a career break and giving notice of her rental property (and the mammoth task of putting all her things in storage) that was it - we were off to Europe, for 6 months!! The brief and mostly unplanned aspect of "the plan" was to leave early December, spend a couple of months bumbling through Western and Central Europe, slowly making our way East towards Turkey, spend three months there, and then bomb it back quickly before our 90day allowance ran out (thanks to Brexit). Sanchez is a European pet passport holder thanks to being Spanish so he was good to go, the only major hurdle for us was being unvaccinated during covid restrictions, but we figured we'd wing it on the day. But not before my 2 year Vanniversary and my 40th Birthday - which Lucy and Amy had worked together on in turning into a suprise birthday bash in the Peak District in a blizzard. Because we don't do things by halves here. But a van party / departure bash was to be had, no exceptions!
D-Day quickly arrived and we headed for Dover - only to bump into a familiar face - Charlie! The sneaky bastard had booked his ferry for the same day after an in-jest comment about coming with us - so we actually travelled the first few legs of the big trip together, as far as Rome, where he set sail for Spain and we continued East into Slovenia where we spent Christmas Day (even managing to cook a full Christmas dinner on two hobs), followed by New Years Eve above the clouds at the top of a mountain in Croatia watching the fireworks in the distance. I intentionally won't go on about the trip here (cardinal sin of traveling, banging on about it) as there are plenty of pics on my Instagram (@thisvanlifething for anyone interested) but a few countries later, a couple of blown tyres, a minor mechanical breakdown, and many police stops along route, we were in Turkey and met up with Mat and family in the very industrial city of Bursa all ready to jump aboard the big bus build.
While in Bursa, which is famous for being the automotive central of Turkey, we decided (through a mix of want and need) to have some major work done on the van too - it was looking and feeling a bit tired from the harsh winter trip and previous years of abuse as a trademans van, plus general age - and it made sense to take advantage of the downtime and exchange rates and have it done here. So with the help of Mat, his contacts, and our incredibly helpful new friends that we had met, I had the engine rebuilt, the whole van resprayed, and some new windows installed, plus the seats reupholstered.
Again I won't bang on about our time in Turkey but I cant not mention the incredible hospitality of everyone we met here - more sincerely friendly, helpful, welcoming people you could not meet in the world, and we met a lot of friends here as well as the feeling of being adopted by the local community. It made saying goodbye very hard when our time was up - but time most definitely was up. We actually made it through the border with only 20 minutes remaining on our visa! The drive back through Europe is all a bit of a blur and we had such little time remaining on our 90 day allowance (yeah thanks for that, Brexiteers), so it was mostly long uninteresting drives and the odd evening of city wandering - though we did stop at Castle Bran, Transylvania, so thats one location ticked off my bucket list.
Landing back ashore of old Blighty came with a bang. No time for fucking around here; Lucy had to be back at work by the 1st of June and we had the slight inconvenience of moving her into a new house first, before we could go back to our respective jobs. Charlie had arrived back a couple of weeks before me, and I joined back up with him back at the quarries.
Aaaand we're up to date. If you've made it to the end of this chapter in my life, well done! I will try and blog a little bit more often, and get back on track with portraying the reality of living in a van day by day. It's not all road trips and sun chasing. I write this from my bed in the van, somewhere in North Yorkshire, in 38c heat. Aside from the freakishly hot weather, its back to normality now for me - or I guess what has become normality for me, being into my third season as a "vanlifer", living and working on the road. Its not all that bad, is it 😉 Si thi!
