The start of a wild adventure

I haven't had much time to blog recently, as we have been very very busy working, removing the contents of a three bedroom house, and building a camper van so we can travel, forage, hunt, fish, and generally live closer to nature.

Well now we have done it.


I am typing this while sitting in a field, and a red transit van that has more than passing resemblance to romani vardo, so much so I have called the van a vando. The space is beautiful if a bit cramped. We have fitted in everything we need. The underbed storage area is huge and and we have fitted in a number of new range of stupidly simple products, and good stock of old favourites.

I have built a cold cupboard around the gas bottle using a lump of slate. It presently contains eggs and hogweed and ramsons which I am about to cook for lunch. The cold cupboard is generally about 10 c below the temperature of the van.

This was all a lot of work, but by far the hardest part was getting rid of the amount of stuff I have accumulated over the last 45 years. My grandmothers sideboard, a ninety year old inheritance of solid oak was collected by the YMCA charity shop, so was two chairs I painted, an an utility ware tallboy. I gave away the chest freezer and fridge on facebook freecycle. I gave way the treadle sewing machine to friend. The crockery , the books, the spare saucepans, was put in ruck sacks and the bike trailer and taken to charity shops. I watched a load of marie kondo videos on netflix. If you aren't familiar she is a japanse de-cluttering guru that has method of putting all your clothes in a pile and asking item whether you love it or not. Those that you don't love, you thank and fold and depose of. I did this to start off with, but after a while it became tiring. So simply selected what I couldn't live without, and formed a pile of everything else, and burned it.

I burned the sofa, it was past what would be accepted by a charity shop, due to cats, ferrets, and a really bad idea of mine in tie dying it purple. I burned old towels, half arsed roll pallet cupboards,, garden plastic, rotting wood, boots, it became an endless pyre for about two weeks.

I am telling you this not because it is the irish catholic in me confessing of how much I have contributed to global warming by burning my sofa, but because every other van-life video and blog seems to put their stuff in storage. I felt this wasn't an option for us, and there is something very powerful in feeling the burden of every item you own. Everything takes an energy off you to be bought or made. Everything has an environmental burden, and social cost. We needed to feel the shear burden of owning what everyone in the west deems normal, and then find a way of getting rid of all of it. I could of sold a lot of our things, but I find very draining to deal with selling things on the net. Very rarely do you get a simple sale, mostly you its constant stream of automated or stupid questions. When I tried to sell the bedford camper van, the stream of pointless questions drove me potty. However I found giving things away energising. My polytunnel went to a local veg growing charity, and when I gifted my sewing machine to friend I nearly cried that this beautiful piece of indestructible engineering had gone to someone that was so capable of making wonderful things. Marie Kondo has a point that your surrounding become part of your spirit, changing those surroundings sets a direction on the person the you wish to be.

This was all extremely hardwork. But now we dont need anything. We were dropped off in northampton yesterday to go look at the shops. We wandered, we bought a tin of powdered milk and some josht sticks. We didnt need anything else. Today I hide from the heat of the day lying in a curtained van in the cool. We literally wish for nothing. That is freedom.

The general plan is that we are heading to scotland, to sell the the renamed bug oil [now call tick repel] and the midge repel. We will of course eat what we forage, we have crab net, fishing net, and rods and ways of taking rabbits and game. We then might head to ireland or portugal, or where ever fate takes us.
 

And recipe for lunch was
hogweed, ramsons fried in butter until soft, then two whisked eggs and some dried bladdewrack powder mixed with salt, then cooked until firm. I also picked ground elder and feral rape broccoli which I munched raw.