The unthinkable has happened, someone has bought our van!!

Jose from the Democratic Republic of Congo has completed an agriculture course in Reading and is buying up machinery to work on his farm in central Africa, he required a Mercedes van and so is taking Nevil… Yes that’s right, someone has bought our van and is shipping it to the Congo, paintwork and all! Not satisfied with conquering Europe Nevil has set Africa in his sites, I’ve got an email address so watch this space…

Our characterful van aside, it brings our adventure to an ultimate close, a little saddening but looking back it couldn’t have been more exciting. Can’t wait till next time!

Will & Ben

Ok, well, we’ve been back a while – myself (Ben) since early December and Will since the middle of December. We parted ways in mid-November in Paris as Will wanted to head to Spain to do a voluntary project near Barcelona and I wanted to spend some time in Paris with my girlfriend studying French. Since then we’ve both had a fun time living apart for the first time since August with other people, but now after some time to rest and recuperate we’re both occasionally missing van life!

We (I) have been a bit lazy in finishing off this blog (it was supposed to be my job!), but I feel it’s a bit late now to describe the end of the trip in detail after our last post. After Berlin we basically meandered along the North coast of Germany to Amsterdam, then took in Belgium, Luxembourg and some Champagne before returning to Paris. A bit of time in one place with a focus (french for me, making stuff out of trash for Will) was really welcome as we both felt we had sucumbed to “travelitis” by the last week or so. There are only so many sites, beautiful places and interesting people you can take in in one go. Fact!

We have now had a Christmas to reflect and remember and still seem to be talking; it must have been good! In the New Year we hope to get together for a party (any excuse) and perhaps put up a slideshow (non compulsory viewing:) for anyone who’s interested. There, its on the blog, we’ve got to do it…

We now plan to sell Nevil the van and move on… So VAN FOR SALE!! A Mercedes 308d with excellent paint work is available to anyone who fancies a camper/oddjob van on the cheap – its ready to leave on that road trip right now! England, Scotland, France, the world! I reckon it would be much nicer to go in the summer, but we want to sell it now as we have no further use for it and it’s just taking up space on Will’s parents driveway (Mum pressure). We wouldn’t be selling if we didn’t think it would make it a lot further – it’s got many more miles on it yet! A few hundred quid would be nice for it, make us an offer!!

Use my website to get in touch if you’re interested, all the photos of the van can be found on this blog so I’m not going to say any more other than if you’re thinking of doing a roadtrip sometime in 2008 THIS IS THE VAN FOR YOU!!

Word has it that both Northern and Southern mum’s are concerned about our diet so I’ve written an eating schedule to reassure all those who might be worried, and enlighten those who are interested as to how many interesting ingredients you can add to curry.

Breakfast – usually starts with someone getting an arm out of their sleeping bag and putting the kettle on. After that the question is coffee or tea? This should be a given however Ben bought a coffee grinder in Mostar (Bosnia) and Will is struggling to find decent milk. After this we discuss what type of tea to have, then when everyone has woken up we have a fairly fast and nutritious meal of either muesli and yogurt and honey, or bread and jam and honey. When its cold and we can be arsed we have porridge. There is a compulsory Serbian apple before lunch is allowed.

Lunch – often bread, cheese and an apple followed by bread, jam and an apple. In the more eastern part of our trip we are becoming quite partial to stopping at truck stops where there is cheap and good grub if you can decipher the menu. Its usually meat.

Dinner – to quote Nick, our most recent guest, “this is the healthiest I’ve ever eaten.” Some regular favourites are:

• Risotto – established after Balthazar and Josie showed us the way in Switzerland, we stocked up with 5kg of aborio rice in Italy. You can add anything to risotto, the best yet was Cauliflower and Parsley with parmesan.
• Curry – mummysouth curry powder + Harissa from Bosnia + one or more of the following: Potato, marrow liberated from wildish romanian fields, any tinned ready meal from Carrefour, any root vegetable, tinned beans or lentils, cream, any type of sausage, peanuts, raisins etc.
• Pasta – the emergency is with pesto but this is less popular now we can’t find good cheese. Mostly tomato based sauces with seasonable vegetables, you can get 2kg of red peppers for 70p in serbia, or an aubergine for 10p in Romania. The flavouring varies from mixed herbs to balsamic and chilli.
• Casserole – well we’ve only done this once, in Croatia, but it was bloody good and lasted two meals! Still not quite sure what the meat was as we couldn’t read the lable, it was quite tender and had little fat and definitely wasn’t pork.
• Couscous – see pasta and add chilli or Harissa.
• Eating out – this is becoming better and cheaper and better the further we go! The menu is always fun so we usually request local recommendations. Buffets or where you can see what you are choosing are safer but less exciting.

Supper – the day is finished off with tea or wine or beer and occasionally some chocolate then we forget to fill the kettle and fall asleep. How civilised!

with three days to go until departure I think the van is about as close to readiness as it will ever be – apart from all our stuff of course! We’ve both put quite a lot of work into it with a little (lotta) help from our friends and there has been a real transformation. From plylined dirty box to luxurious apartment in two weeks…

Thank you to Mr. A. Kharamed of Lockleaze garage, Bristol, who has seen us through the first stage of the journey… the MOT!!!

After a spot of welding on the front chassis member and a little attention to the brakes and steering linkage we got our piece of green paper for the hefty sum of £308.64. Whilst I was checking what had been done I spotted a rather large crack on one of the front spring hangers, another thing to be added to our list of “jobs.” Obviously this is passable for an MOT! Lucky I caught it here and prevented a potential nose dive into a ferry terminal.

The next step is to give it a good service and get a few spare parts, then start offering our “man-with-van” services in time for house moving season. First deadline is seats in the back for Glastonbury…

My trip to Leeds train station and back to pick up Nevil was all made worthwhile this weekend when it had its first outing in “camper” mode! Unfortunately Ben had to see a man about a dog and finish some degree or other and so was unable to come.

Wiscombe Park Vintage hill climb was the delightful venue for this trial, in support of another potential long distance traveller, a 1907 Mors racing car (www.pekingparisraid.co.uk). The test went swimmingly, literally… it rained most of the weekend and so I was very pleased to have a solid roof over my head! I used the new stove to heat up spag bol for the eight campers and slept the night on the floor in the back. It was quite comfortable and warm enough, but the rain made an unbelievable noise on the roof – some modification needed here I think. Saw a landrover with a “radiation shield,” excellent idea!

The van is still very bare inside and so to make the most of the space I decided to take a “borrowed” pub picnic table. It fitted perfectly inside providing covered seating and a nice table to sit at!

It was great waking up in the morning on a particularly wet and miserable day, and being able to sit up out of bed and put on a brew. Unselfishly the campers helped me drink a few gallons of cider to enable the containers to be used as water bowsers… If I keep collecting at this rate we’ll be carrying enough water to start a small irrigation business in the Gobi!

Also tested the van out “offroad”, the parking field was on a slope and particularly wet and slippery. I got the back end out whilst traversing the slope and ended up reversing up the hill to try and get a little more grip! New tires are definitely a must, but I feel that we are almost certain to get stuck at some point and so should go prepared… perhaps a compressor so we can let the tires down and maybe some ladders.

For the way back my bro found a bit of old fencing wire which I quickly fashioned into a new radio aerial – get much better reception now and so I rocked out to Radio 2 before switching to some classical when Alan Titsmarsh made an appearance. 147mile round trip, 4 gallons of diesel, 2 gallons of cider, 2 bottles of wine, 1 gallon of spag bol, 2 gallons of water, several apples, 4 pans of tea, 12 eggs, 24 rashes of bacon, and a loaf of bread.

So, we’ve bought a van and have done lots of research on the web while supposedly going through the final few hoops we have to jump through to get our degrees, but we haven’t actually got much of a concrete plan yet. Having the van is good though – there’s loads of stuff that needs doing to it, mainly small cosmetic stuff such as building some bunks, a table and carpetting it out. It’s in the garage having a premature MOT today so hopefully we’ll know whether for our £475 we got a bargain or a death-trap!

I keep getting lots of questions about our route and seeing as this blog is public I guess some people might like to know what we’re doing…

This summer after myself and Will have finished our degrees at Bristol (Computer Science for me, and Mechanical Engineering for Will) we’re heading off in a van from the UK with the vague destination of India. I’m waving goodbye to freedom and a distinct lack of responsibility (i.e. university) in January 2008 when I start a full-time job so this is to be my last big trip for a while – hence the idea to do a big fat road-trip.

India has always been somewhere I’ve been dying to visit, and Will isn’t too fussed about India but wants to see Eastern Europe and beyond – so this seemed as good a compromise as any . We might not actually make it as far as the subcontinent but as our engineering degrees have taught us targets are always good and neither of us are particularly fussy about where we end up anyway… Mongolia? Beijing? Japan?… Folkestone? Who knows how far our 1994 Mercedes ex-carpenter’s van will take us. I’ve mapped a route out on Google Maps, the main thing to take from it is that we’re definitely heading EAST – everything else is a little more vague… http://tinyurl.com/32mc5x

Even though we’re not setting off for a while yet I thought I’d start this blog now for several reasons. Firstly it will be a nice record of our trip from it’s early preparations to our successful arrival in… wherever, and secondly it’s one more distraction from writing my thesis. Maybe we’ll put up some of the lessons learnt from the trip to do with… well, stuff we learn for anyone who fancies doing a similar thing themselves sometime.

Suggestions, comments etc. are more than welcome – just leave a comment below this post.