#ldv convoy
This is our home. She’s a 2002 LDV Convoy, once a minibus, now a cosy cabin on wheels. She’s taken us to places that no minibus was ever designed to go. She’s travelled tens of thousands of miles with us over the past four years. She’s survived roads many 4x4s would cringe at.
Sure she wobbles and squeaks and moans and the brakes constantly fail and the rust is eating her inside and out, but she’s done us proud this humble van.
Her roaring engine turns heads wherever we go as people stop to stare and read out the letters L… D… V?
It never ceases to amaze me that the simple combustion of fuel that drives our engine can propel our little home all over the world. Our van is both the heart of our adventure and the very thing which enables it.
She’s taught us everything we know about mechanics, roadside repairs, replacing parts, and everything we know about building a home too. The constant problems that come with an old van are both a source of frustration and a motivation to learn, but they sure make for some interesting travel tales.
After all, it wouldn’t be an adventure without a few bumps in the road.
Not every day on the road can be an adventure. We need rest days, van repair days, life admin days.
Days where we just chill, where we sleep in late and sip coffee gazing out of the back doors. Days where we clean the van from top to bottom or catch up on our work. Rainy days spent cosied up under blankets trying to catch the various leaks in our roof.
Contrary to our little highlight reel on here it’s not all epic roadtrips and new discoveries; for every day of exploring there’s a down day closely following behind (or two, or three…). Constant motion is exhausting; travel sometimes overstimulating. We need time to process and digest just as much as we crave new experiences and changing scenery.
As with everything in life it’s all about balance, and the days spent sipping coffee in bed are just as important as the days we’re out scaling mountains.
The SH75 was a road we’d been warned about.
Snaking its way through the endless mountainous landscape in the South East corner of Albania, this road was as long as it was arduous. Many of the roads here had not been paved since the time of communism, instead being left to the devices of nature and only those who were prepared to take the challenge of a day’s drive to their destination.
We left the beautiful Ottoman city of Korçë behind us and began to wind our way South close to the border with Greece. The road started off well, threading through fields and beautiful scenery, but by hour two it had descended into no more than a patchwork of half-assed repairs. By hour five the novelty had worn off and we were growing tired, our van battered and bruised from the relentless bumps.
We pulled over by the side of the gravel track when a clunking noise underneath our van grew loud enough for concern. There, by the roadside, we reattached a piece of our steering column as well as a shock absorber that had rattled so loose it was about to fall off, all the while minibuses went hammering past us, honking and waving in solidarity or offering help.
Our van patched up, we descended the final few kilometres which took hours due to the state of the road. Night fell and we were still meandering down this hellish road, dodging potholes and herds of cattle until finally we made it into the safe clutches of Permët, the first town we’d ever visited in Albania, and the sense of relief and familiarity overwhelmed us.
We’ve driven some interesting roads during our time in the Balkans, but this really pushed our van to the limits! Would you believe this was a numbered road on the SatNav? We really need a 4x4 for our next adventure…
Join us in this week’s episode as we leave the snowy wonderland of Mavrovo National Park and attempt to find an alternative route down the mountain. Paved roads really aren’t our thing, so we test out a mixture of snow, mud and low-hanging tree branches on a track that was certainly not designed for minibuses.
Later we make it to the famous Lake Ohrid where we’re treated to another incredible driving road, and a surprise encounter with some wonderfully hospitable locals.
This video is really the essence of what travelling’s all about for us. If you enjoyed the video please don’t forget to Share, Like and Subscribe, or consider joining us on Patreon to help us keep on creating content
Living in a van for us has only ever been about one thing: adventure.
It’s not about living the dream on a beach somewhere, it’s not about having the most aesthetically pleasing home we could build, it’s about taking that home on wheels out into the big wide world and seeing how far we can push it to its limits.
Our van is a vessel for our photography as we travel around seeking out documentary projects and video opportunities. It’s a place to rest our heads at night before we continue our exploration the next day. It enables us to travel to far flung corners of the countries we visit and encounter locals wherever we go.
Our van to us is so much more than a van; it’s our home, it’s the heart and soul of our adventures, and it’s taught us some valuable lessons along the way.
Whether we’re camped up beside the most serene and peaceful lake or bumping and crashing down a dirt track mountain road praying the suspension doesn’t break she’s there with us, our constant companion. We might be thousands of miles from where we began in a country where we don’t speak the language or broken down by the roadside but we will always have the comfort of our home on wheels to return to standing right there beside us.
Snapshots from our van.
One of the tiniest storage areas in our van is the place where we keep our toothbrushes and toiletries. It was made by a happy accident, where two pieces of cladding overlapped, and it’s turned out to be one of the most useful things we have in our tiny home.
Follow the hashtag #Fromrusttoroadtrip to follow our van conversion project and our travels around Europe!
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I remember this moment well. Not one week into our third roadtrip, still giddy with the highs of freedom, we had just entered the French Alps. It was our plan to cross the length of the Alps in their 1,200km entirety, a feat we were not sure had been accomplished yet by road.
Except our van was beginning to make some worryingly loud noises as we decelerated down a hill, and we rolled into the town of Briançon with our first bout of breakdown anxiety.
It was here in the confines of a LIDL carpark that we identified a propshaft issue, but, unable to find a French mechanic who was willing to work on a weekend, we pressed on.
We spent a chilly but scenic night at just shy of 2,000m high on the shores of Lac du Mont-Cenis then pushed on toward Italy in the morning. Shortly after crossing the border however, the noise was now a permanent feature and a growing concern, until finally we pulled over and phoned for a recovery truck outside an Italian cafe. We spent five hours here waiting for rescue, drinking espresso, chatting with the locals in my best Italian, then finally succumbing to boredom and heat fatigue as we baked in the sun at the roadside.
After a good long while we were taken down the mountain on the back of a tow truck and it was just like the good old days, as though we’d never left the continent in our (t)rusty LDV. We were offered a hotel and help with the repair bill by our breakdown company, but I insisted we stay with the van. Much to everyone else’s chagrin we three spent a cold, miserable night confined to our quarters in the garage courtyard, dreaming of the hot shower and comfy bed we could’ve had.
But I knew I was right in my decision, and if three years of travelling thus far had taught me anything it was this: the van was our comfort, our safety, our home. When she stops we stop, and where she goes we go.
~ This image was created as part of our “Transient” travelogue project. ~ Stepping away from the Instagram frivolities and fakery, “Transient” serves as a close and intimate portrayal of our lives in an attempt to remove the romanticism of travel and capture a raw and honest self-documentary inspired by the images and stories of the new age travellers of 1980’s Britain.You can view the full project and others over on our website lbjournals.com.
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Join us in this episode we take a drive through Europe’s deepest canyon!
After 6 incredible weeks, we ready ourselves to leave Albania. We set off early after 48 hours of torrential rain, and contend with landslides and snow on the treacherous road to the Vermosh border crossing.
Here we cross into Montenegro through a very small and rarely used border station. Our journey across Montenegro takes an interesting turn as we end up driving through the depths of Europe’s deepest canyon.
From here we attempt to reach the famous Durmitor National Park. Will the snow and cold weather conditions be enough to stop us entering again like the last time we were here?
Join us on this incredibly scenic drive through Europe’s black mountains, on YouTube NOW!
If you enjoyed the video please don’t forget to Share, Like and Subscribe, or consider joining us on Patreon to help us keep on creating content
From Rust To Roadtrip on YouTube
Our arrival in Bosnia & Herzegovina came as a pleasant surprise.⠀
After following the craggy walls of the mighty Tara Canyon all the way through Montenegro it led us straight into the capital city of Sarajevo. We weren’t here to see the war ruins, nor had we come to try and find the best burek (although that was debatable). No, with just seven short days in this intriguing country that was once one of the most fundamental parts of the Yugoslav Republic, there was only time to explore one thing: the remains of Sarajevo’s Winter Olympics venues.
We pulled up after a long day of inter-country driving, arranging of SIM cards and fawning over foreign foods in a new supermarket, next to a long, snaking and heavily graffitied piece of concrete. We’d seen photos of the abandoned bobsleigh track online but never for one minute did we imagine we could drive into it, let alone camp. The place was perfectly secluded amongst the pine trees, at the top of a mountain which gave a spectacular view over the city. As night fell we rested underneath the Sarajevan sky now studded with stars.
Come morning we noticed a distinct chill in the air, and threw open the door to discover a blanket of snow all around us. We’d had no inkling snow was coming, and had been lamenting the day before how incredible it would’ve been to see the bobsleigh track as it was during the 1984 Winter Olympics.⠀
We bundled on our boots in pure excitement and piled out of the van to make tracks in the fresh, untrodden snow and explore the lengths of the snaking concrete track which wound its way in and out of the pine forest. At times we were completely hidden by trees, shrouded in fog, appearing at regular intervals in view of a road or a place where spectators would’ve gathered in years gone by before the war changed the face of Sarajevo forever.
Fingers suitably numbed, we headed back into the van to warm them with coffee.
, , , …
Our boots crunched over loose, rocky scree and a vertical incline that threatened to topple us over at any minute. The track we were following was unlike anything we’d hiked before; less a path and more a trail carved out by the resilient villagers who lived at the top of this mountain.
We had journeyed to the Northernmost corner of Albania until the road could take us no further; here we left the van and met our guide who would take us to meet the villagers living in some of Albania’s most remote regions, places only accessible on foot or by mule.
At this altitude in the Albanian Alps there was no vegetation, nothing to suggest this area would support life; the closest thing to trees were the makeshift poles supporting a thin electricity wire than ran from the bottom of the valley to the peak above us. We followed the path arduously, gasping for breath and legs screaming in protest while our guide, who’d been traversing these mountains since he learned to walk, sailed ahead of us.
Men twice our age passed us with ease, taking their mules to the top to fetch hay, and we doubted whether we’d ever make it to the end of this 2km near-vertical climb.
But then, mercifully, the ground began to level out, and a luscious green pasture spread out before us, covering the plateau. This was the last place on earth we’d expected to see people living, yet unbelievably a dozen or so houses were spread out across the vast fields where horses and sheep grazed.
It took another hour or so to reach a homestead which looked like it might be inhabited; many of the rest were crumbling ruins, long abandoned as their owners headed for the city. A middle-aged woman greeted us at the door, wearing a white head scarf and modest clothing; she was clearly surprised and excited to have visitors. She immediately invited us inside for coffee, and set about pouring glasses of rakia from a bottle shaped like a crucifix.
We were in awe of her home, which was furnished with beautiful polished wood items and an ornate wood burner in the center. We inquired how she had managed to get it up here, and she recalled hauling it up the same track we had taken, carrying it on sticks along with her husband on their shoulders. The same would’ve been true for every item of furniture in their house, making this otherwise ordinary house suddenly look quite impossible.
After drinks, Age (Aga) happily showed us around her property; she had vegetables and dried mountain herbs in her larder, dried cuts of meat in her barn. She kept sheep for their milk, churned this by hand to make butter, and knitted clothes and rugs from their wool. Her water came from a spring and her income came from raising cattle. Every part of her life was fascinating to us; our minds boggled at the length and difficulty of the journey we had taken, hours from the nearest city with amenities, right up to this woman’s house that would be ordinary if not for its exceptional location atop a mountain.
It was still incomprehensible, even though we’d completed the journey ourselves, and we imagined her and her husband making their monthly trip to Shkodër then hiking back up the vertical path with their supplies; it was a world away from simply visiting the supermarket. From this vantage point we could see dozens more houses scattered across the mountains in even more unlikely places, and we were curious whether anyone still lived in them and what their stories were.
We said goodbye to Age, who still had much work to do before the sunset, and began our painstaking journey down the other side of the mountain left in complete and total awe.
This is an excerpt from an ongoing documentary project about the residents of the Albanian Alps, one of the most inaccessible regions of Europe. The video of this adventure will be out on YouTube on Sunday, and the full photo essay will be available to view on @lbjournalssoon.
When you’re heading into the mountains, preparation is key. And in mountains as remote as the Albanian Alps it’s downright essential.
Unpredictable, wild, vast and unforgiving- these mountains command their presence and dare you explore their impenetrable façade.
We stocked up in the city of Shkodër pre-trip, the nearest amenities to our destination for several hours around. A week’s food, a tank of fuel; everything else we could need was already in our van. The residents of Malesi e Madhe, Albania’s Northernmost corner, grow their own food and slaughter their own meat, with monthly visits to the city for supplies; we would have to follow their lead in stocking up at our last opportunity.
The two hour drive from the city was nothing short of incredible; roads that wound tightly and sharp inclines enough to slow us right down to a walker’s pace. A handful of switchback turns thrown in for good measure on the Leqet e Hotit Pass. All the while overlooked by those imposing, jagged limestone peaks as we wound through the valleys at their mercy.
We stopped for a rest at a point where water gushed from a hole in the rock at a furious speed and trickled down through wooden channels out into the road. Here we made our final preparation, filling our tanks with the freshest spring water and loading them back into the van.
We continued our journey to the small village of Selcë, a place that just a few years ago would’ve been virtually inaccessible to us in our van, now paved with the smoothest tarmac road cutting the residents’ travel time to the city down by half a day. We would spend the night here among terraced mountainsides and sparsely populated houses in preparation for tomorrow’s expedition to begin at sunrise…
The distant sounds of the Call To Prayer rang out across the steely waters of Lake Skadar, crackling out through distorted speakers atop the minarets of several mosques, clashing and vying for dominance like the howling of street dogs. The sky was reflected in the glassy lake surface as it turned slowly from blue to purple to an electrifying red which set the clouds ablaze. And we were making our preparations to head deep into the mountains.
We’d been parked up amongst the waterlogged trees and lake reeds for several days, a furtive little spot accessible by driving through a shallow river that had swollen to twice its size following the rainfall on the day we arrived. But now the blissful sunset colours cast down onto the distant mountains of Montenegro and all was calm in the far North of Albania again.
Of all the lakes we’d camped by in recent months, Lake Skadar was easily the largest and most impressive.⠀
While we’d stuck religiously to our inland route around the Balkan Peninsula these lakes gave us some comfort and a gentle reminder of the ocean’s edge we’d left behind in search of provincial adventures. Although we’d grown up a stone’s throw from the sea and these country’s coastlines provided an easily navigable and scenic route, we’d been drawn to see more of Europe’s hinterlands, a world away from glitzy seaside resorts and tourist attractions. In the heartlands of Albania we’d discovered spectacular mountainscapes, empty lands, impassable roads and an authenticity, warmth and unrivalled hospitality from its people. The same was true of the Balkans’ whole interior, and in fact we’d only briefly touched the sea in Thessaloniki since our departure from Calais many months prior.
These lesser-visited areas are what we live for; places you won’t find in any guidebook, unblemished of tourist attractions. Just raw and honest countryside, nothing more.⠀
We finished packing up our backpacks just as the last of the light was fading, ready for our journey tomorrow into the most remote corner of this country. ⠀
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When it rains in the mountains, it really rains. Not a fine mizzle or the odd shower like we get in England, but a biblical, all-engrossing rain that pelts down from the sky and sends rivers running down the mountainsides in great waterfalls that flood the roads and make planning any sort of activity quite impossible.
Such is the unpredictability of the Accursed Mountains, a corner of Albania whose curious histories and unique way of life woven amongst its limestone peaks will forever keep us coming back for more.
This fascinating mountain range was so named for its wildly inhospitable conditions, and is one of the rare mountain ranges in Europe that is yet to be fully explored. But mountaineers with their compasses and maps will never truly conquer these mountains, for the only way to truly navigate them is with a lifetime of muscle memory, ingrained into mountain men from the age they learn to walk. There are few roads, no signposted trails, and no forgiveness; if you get lost and the weather doesn’t get you then the wolves surely will.
But while the mountains may ward you off with their inhospitality the people will surely not, as they are perhaps some of the warmest and most welcoming in all the Balkans. With no fear of strangers and no reason to lock their doors some three hours away from the nearest town, they will happily invite you into their home for a coffee and a rakia before you continue on your journey.
The Albanian Alps possess a deep sense of mystery that fascinates us and seems almost tangible as we pull off the craggy SH25 alongside the Drin river, unwilling to drive any further in the torrential downpour. The thunderstorm would not pass until tomorrow evening when we would be rewarded with another spectacular Albanian sunset, but before that we would endure a night of lightning strikes powerful enough to knock out the area’s only phone mast, and thunder that shook us violently inside our van; if you’ve never heard thunder in the mountains before, imagine someone dropping about thirty dustbins off the side of a cliff at once. It booms.
It felt all at once overwhelmingly exciting and familiar to be back in the North of Albania once again, parked up so close to an area we’d become so affiliated with that had played home to one of our favourite travel stories. But now we were about to make more, as we were set to be heading off the road and into the furthest reaches of these mountains on foot, a place where vehicles could only dream to go and mules were the primary mode of transport.
Soon we were going back into the heart of the Accursed Mountains.
99% of the time our van is not as tidy as it looks in photos.
It’s a tiny space, but it gets messy just as quickly as we can tidy it again.
Camera gear, shopping and clothes end up scattered across the floor, cupboards open while we’re driving, things fall over and smash on bumpy roads.
We squeeze as many days as we can out of our bedding and clothes before we have to wash them again, probably a few too many. When the cab’s not filled with puddles from the rain it’s usually coated in dust and mud.
Living in a van is far from the idyllic few minutes in which we snap the photos for our feed, before the mess overwhelms us again.
It’s challenging living your life in a 6m2 space shared between two of you. Our bed is our sofa, our office, our dining room; our kitchen doubles as a bathroom, a washroom, a hallway.
But that hour in the morning when all the clutter is cleared away, ready for the day’s adventure ahead, and those moments when we crawl into a freshly made bed with clean sheets from the laundrette, it’s little moments like these that seem somehow amplified and make us appreciate the simple things in life all the more.
Good morning, everyone! We hope you’ll join us on this adventure as we experience one of the craziest roads we’ve ever attempted to drive.
In this episode, we end up on the notorious SH74 road in an attempt to find a scenic route to the historic city of Berat. We’d heard many warnings about this road but wanted to experience it for ourselves, and it turned out to be just as bad as we’d imagined. We’ve only ever had to turn around less than a handful of times, as this was one of them.
How far will we make it before we say enough is enough?
Join us as we put our LDV Convoy through it’s paces and push it to the max. Let us know if you’d drive this road in the comments!
Join us over on YouTube NOW! If you enjoyed the video please don’t forget to Share, Like and Subscribe, or consider joining us on Patreon to help us keep on creating content
As always big thank you to @undyingheads for creating the perfect soundtrack to our travelogues- make sure you check them out!
Standing on the edge of the world with you.
We’re missing camp spots like this one in Albania as we self-isolate back in Cornwall after a nightmare drive getting back, but we still have many weeks worth of photos and travel stories to share with you all that will hopefully brighten your days.
Tell us what you’re up to if you’re self-isolating- we’re working on our huge backlog of travelogues for YouTube, repairing the many problems with our van and drinking countless cups of Yorkshire tea! ☕️
Over the years we’ve travelled our humble van’s back doors have framed a thousand views. They’ve shown us mountains, they’ve shown us shores; they’ve housed sunsets and sunrises, put on lightning shows and been blanketed in snow.
Hundreds of views, bordered by those strips of metal and wood, have passed beyond these doors like projector slides, temporary homes, our van the only constant as we go.
The view is our reward at the end of the day’s adventure; the more effort, the greater the prize. Adrift from civilisation, at the end of some nowhere dirt track, is where we can find the peace and solitude that we crave.⠀
We can become so overwhelmed by the vastness and beauty of what we’re seeing sometimes that our eyes become blind to it, but sitting from the comfort of our bed gazing out across the horizon has a way of grounding us and reminding us of where we are and how far we’ve come.
Like framing a photograph, sometimes all it takes is a little shift in perception to appreciate what’s been in front of you all along.
