#van conversion
Our second van video is up on YouTube “This Sucks! Let’s Do Something Else” In this weeks video we travel to southern oregon, redwoods and crater lake. Like comment subscribe
Bought a mini van converted it to sleep in. This is the first installment of our adventure.
The interior of my van is slowly but surely coming along…
I’ll be installing plumbing for the sink next, as well as making some curtains. Then, building a new bed frame, installing solar, finishing off drawers for the shelves, and (hopefully) putting in a 12v fridge. Ideally before Summer!
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Can y’all believe how far we’ve come on Magpie the Bus?! We are hitting the road in 2 weeks headed south!
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Since moving into our van, everything has changed.
I don’t just mean we live more minimally, that we own less stuff and shower outdoors. I mean that since we moved into a van, our lives have been a series of life-changing events and moments that would shape us into who we are and where we are today. Our direction in this world is constantly changing, not marked on any signpost or scribbled on any map. And in this world, where we’ve come from is just as important as where we’re going.
In life you choose which road you’re on; you can take the smooth roads, the long roads, the never-ending highways, but they’re a bit, well, boring. Or you can take the bumpy roads, the dirt tracks, the ones that shake your van apart and rattle your bones so fiercely you don’t know if you’ll make it to the end. These are the challenging ones, those that some of us choose and some of us end up on incidentally, but either way the outcome is the same; it’s how you take the challenges, how you handle the bumps, that defines you. There are no wrong turns, no misdirections. Maps are arbitrary when fate is there to guide you.
It would be impossible to pick a single moment when our lives changed for good, when every adventure is another thread in the tapestry. Gradually our lives without motion became unsatisfying; our souls began to crave the stimulation of adventure, of constant movement, of a life on the road. The difficulties, the impossibilities, roads too steep to climb and nights too cold to bear. These are the the very quintessence of life, whether we take these challenges as a gift or a curse, and they are the rubber on our wheels and the fuel in our tank as we roll…
Follow the hashtag #Fromrusttoroadtrip to follow our van conversion project and our travels around Europe!
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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.
We spend our whole days moving. Scenes and images flitting past us in a blur of motion, trying to ingrain as many sights and sounds into our memories as we can. So much to take in, so many moments to keep. So when we finally settle down for the day, on whatever nameless piece of land, or road, or body of water we find, I like to sit with myself, and just be.
I listen to the sounds of birds or bells or the cry of the muezzin, I watch the sky fade from blue into purple then from fiery gold into black, like the extinguished flames of a fire. If it’s cold I’ll wrap a blanket round my legs to sit in the doorway for as long as I can stand until the night air creeps indoors and I am forced to close it. This silence allows me to take it all in, to digest the many experiences a life of travel hands me like gifts.
I wouldn’t want to waste one second of the time we’re on the road, this time we’ve worked so hard to earn, and this is my small way in which to appreciate it all. My memories are worth more than all the money I could earn, pressed safely between the pages of a book and encapsulated in photographs forever.
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.
Coffee. I could talk for hours about it. Turkish coffee, Bosnian coffee, espresso, mocha, bónbón, iced, hot, sweet, black…
Drunk slowly in the morning, soaking in the view. Knocked back in the passenger seat pulling my shoes on and hurrying to start the day’s adventure. Drunk in a little nowhere cafe over light conversation amidst a silver cigarette smoke haze.
Coffee is integral to the start of any day in the Balkans, be it paired with lokum, or baklava, or a shot of rakia and a cigarette- the Balkan breakfast way.
But possibly the best way to take our coffee is brewed up on a little camp stove inside a chipped old enamel pot, prepared by a warm-hearted local by the fire in their home.
The hospitality in the Balkans is unparalleled, unfaltering, woven into their every way of life. It’s impossible not to feel touched and almost taken aback as we, coming from a country with such closed doors and minds, are not prepared for this level of kindness.
And it’s this warm welcome that will keep us coming back to the Balkans for many many years to come.
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.
Living in 6m² of space really teaches you to prioritise what you need in life.
Before we started living in our van Ben lived in a small flat and I lived in a house full of clutter. During uni he moved into an even smaller caravan, and I eventually joined him. Downsizing came naturally to Ben, but it took me years to rid myself of all the junk I’d collected.
By the time we moved into our van we had just a handful of possessions each, only the bare basics; clothes, plates, blankets, our all-important camera gear. Yet still we continued to minimise, leaving behind anything we hadn’t used in the past few months, choosing between spare parts and extra shoes and selecting only the most essential items for our trips.
When we came to embark on our third long roadtrip we were surprised at how empty the back of our van looked- had we forgotten something? Where was all the stuff that had once filled that space? Were we just ultra minimalists now?
Having just a few cupboards and shelves for storage has forced us to live minimally, but it’s also taught us what few essentials we really need. It seems frivolous to need more than one pair of jeans, several sets of cups or heaps of items for “just in case”.
We’ve mastered the art of having just enough and we feel happier for it, our shoulders lighter without all these pointless possessions to weigh us down. Everything we need fits inside this van of ours, and everything we want is waiting right outside our door.
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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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!
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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.
I wash everything by hand in our van- underwear, tops, cardigans, you name it, using whatever river or lake water is available nearby. We take a trip to the laundrette once every two months for our bedding and that’s it. It saves money, but I also enjoy doing it in some weird, old-fashioned way.
Maybe because it reminds me of when I was younger. We were always moving between houses, hauling all of our stuff in this big old yellow Mercedes truck to and fro across two countries. I got used to washing my clothes by hand in the sink of whatever house we were in that month, always a different bedroom or kitchen to get used to.
Maybe that lack of permanence in my formative years is what drove me to eventually get a van. Those memories of brushing my teeth in a lay-by or sleeping in the footwell of our truck seemed like hard done-by times back then, but I look back on them now with a sort of fondness and nostalgia at my unusual childhood.
There are many hundreds of little reasons that made me want to travel; moments that seemed innocuous at the time now resonate with a deeper meaning and inspire me to push on further. Movement is in my soul; it makes my spirit restless to sit still.
Often challenges can be the most defining points of our lives, whether we realise it at the time or only once they have been overcome. Maybe one day we’ll look back at these times we’re living now, cast a fresh gaze upon old memories, and I wonder which of those will stand out, and which will fade away.
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.
On a particularly frosty Monday morning we rose earlier than the sun did, cameras in hand and blankets around our shoulders to capture the sunrise and encapsulate it in our memories.
The watercolour sky was awash with pale pinks and dusky orange, the jagged mountain peaks shrouding the horizon beyond. Below our camp spot sat the most pristine lake of emerald water, clear as glass, and a thick stream of cloud scooting across its surface before being sucked down into the valley below.
We stood patiently, cameras poised, as the fiery sunlight licked the tops of the mountains and slowly made its way down to their base. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the golden rays filtered through the peaks and burst through the chill in the air. The snaking dirt track beneath us was all of a sudden bathed in gold, the fog clouds set ablaze in the sky, and the warmth of a late winter’s day kissed our cheeks and unfroze our hands.
It felt like an achievement for us, a rare gift of total aloneness after several chaotic days amongst the city folk of Tirana, long before the first commuter minibuses would rumble their way down this track. We retreated to the van to reward ourselves with coffee, watching the sun scatter the orderly clouds into a haze of fog that enveloped the landscape and licked at our van.
An early start and a little less sleep had been a fair trade to enjoy this moment all to ourselves. We cradled our coffee cups and pored over maps, planning the day’s adventure ahead before the rest of the world had even pulled back the covers and risen out of bed.
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.
