campervanliving

When did you last make time to dawdle? Can you remember what it was like to do nothing more than meander, pootle or bumble along? And when was the last time you took the slow road, just because you could? If your answer is ‘too long ago’ then you need to keep on reading. And then possibly put 3 rd May 2018 in your diary. That’s because it’s the day my new book project, Take the Slow Road: Scotland gets released. That’s the cover, above. I love it. What do you think? I am really excited by it. Not only because it’s a new book, but also because it’s the product of a dream come true, and because of that, is a departure from the stuff I have done before. If my previous books were tender looks at food, camper vans and camping, this one is a love note to the journey that gets you there in the first place. It’s about taking the time to enjoy the road as a destination in itself, taking time to see and understand landscapes and to relish the moments that they give you. ...

Some time ago I was approached by the people at Tegstove. They asked me to try out one of their stoves. It uses Teg technology (creating an electrical charge by placing hot and cold surfaces together) to charge an internal battery in the stove, which can then be used to charge phones or gadgets. I said yes, because I like trying out bits of kit, but I did make a point of insisting that I would be honest about it because I only review products I actually use, whether good or bad. In due course the stove arrived and I unpacked it and read the instructions and looked at it and played with it. And then I put it away again. Why? Because I hated it. I couldn't see the point of it. I couldn't see how it could possibly be useful to anyone who is serious about camping. It looked gimmicky and nothing more than a bad case of form over function. Here's why: It's heavy. It weighs 1.4 kg, which is about 1.2 kg heavier than the Vango folding stove I use for lightweight c...

I went to the Arctic in March this year as part of a convoy of 2 Bailey of Bristol caravans and a Bailey motorhome. It was cold, as you’d expect. But not the kind of cold you get in the UK. That’s a grubby, unhappy and hysterical cold that’s usually accompanied by wind and rain and slush and traffic jams and a partial collapse of infrastructure. It’s not good when the cold bites in our little island.  But in the Arctic, as I found out, the cold is crisp and clean and dry. It’s so cold that all the moisture turns to ice and falls as snow. There are no puddles or slushy hard shoulders, no black ice and no refrozen pavements. The further north we drove, around the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea through Latvia, Estonia and Finland, the colder it got. In Latvia we found a beach where the edges of the sea were framed by a four foot high wall of frozen sea spume. Later, in Estonia, we encountered our first deep snows. But it wasn’t until we crossed over from Tallin to Hels...

I woke before the sunrise at Sundsvall. I was very glad I did. We had parked the motorhome facing the view, so the minute the kettle went on I opened the blinds to check what the morning was threatening to bring. The timing was perfect. A deep and dark blue sky was giving way to an orange glow from the east, directly opposite our pitch. I got out of bed and walked carefully (it was very icy and steep) down to the water's edge to get a better view of the sun rising over the opposite side of the bay. There were huge chunks of ice floating in the water at the edge of the campsite, bobbing in the tiny swell. While I had recently walked on frozen lakes and rivers and been in a vehicle driving over an ice road to an island, it was still an inspiring experience to see chunks of ice in the sea. You should never get blase about sea ice. And while it was warmer than it had been, it was certainly pretty parky. Later on I actually regretted not stripping off and taking an icy dip. Which i...

I had been in Sweden for a few hours when I enjoyed my first interaction with a Swedish person. I'll get to the point in a minute but need to tell you about how I got there first. My contact came on our first Swedish campsite, just across the border with Finland. The site was deep in snow, its glamping pods half buried in white, and the pitches cleared between deep drifts. We had arrived from Ivalo, having said a fond farewell to the film crew earlier in the day. Of course we would miss them - and their vegetarianism - but, on the plus side it meant that our group of hungry, carnivorous males could enjoy some meat. I promised them all a reindeer curry (ironically, honestly) once we arrived at our next overnight. So that brought me to being in the kitchen block at the campsite, which just happened to be next to the sauna. Every campsite has a sauna. Did I neglect to mention that? Anyways, I was cooking the curry and needed to wash my hands so I went out into the changing rooms ...

After our visit to Santa we schlepped through the snow and ice to Ivalo, our final destination in Lapland. Ivalo is home to Milbrook’s Arctic Testing Station, a place where winter tyres are tested to their limits in serious conditions. It was much the same with us. On arrival we met up with the team from The Caravan and Motorhome Club, the PR company and a couple of journalists. For us, the core team of drivers and crew, it was a chance to drink some pop, eat some good food and let rip. So it was all back to the motorhome after dinner to raid the drinks cabinet, play some tunes and party into the arctic night. It wasn’t pretty. We were a bit late getting to Milbrook the next day. And a bit cold. One of our Volvos lost all power so we had to drive there with no heating, windscreen blower or lights, which made for a very uncomfortable few miles from the campsite to the testing station. The temperature was minus 8 degrees. Once at Milbrook we were invited into a gorgeous round, woo...

We woke up at Kuopio camping to more deep snow. It had snowed overnight and the skies were still leaden with the weight of more. It wasn’t a heavy day as far as driving was concerned as we had a crew to pick up from Bailey and Truma, the heating people. They arrived at Oulu airport and met us at the airport hotel where we had lunch before heading out to Finland’s longest ice road. It crosses the Baltic sea to an island and is 15 kilometers long. We parked up the vehicles by the ferry port and prepped the vehicles and film crew before the first caravan headed out onto the ice. The ice is apparently 50 centimeters thick and can carry weights up to 3.5 tonnes, which is about the weight of a Volvo plus fully laden caravan. So prepping the vans simply meant lobbing everyone’s luggage out onto the ice. I went over in the motorhome with Bernie for the journey out and then back with Niall, from Practical Caravan Magazine. It was one of those experiences that sounds more exciting t...