Al from the JK Team is off to a great start as he tackles a 6-month road trip around Europe with his girlfriend, Maddy. They’ve been on the road for a couple of weeks now in the campervan which they converted themselves, and it sounds like they’re having a great time!
Here’s an update from Al and Maddy and ten lessons they’ve learned about living in a van and adventuring in Europe after nearly 1,000 miles driven in their Mercedes Sprinter, named Percy.
You can read about their Sprinter and how they got it ready here, or keep reading for an update from Maddy about how she and Al are getting on.
Miles driven: 932
Days away: 11
Countries visited: One (France)
We actually did it! With our van converted, and test run to Cornwall complete, we found ourselves on the ferry to France with a tank of diesel and some big ideas.
Not without the usual last minute admin dramas though. Here are a few of the lessons we learnt along the way:
Tip One: Brexit means brits have to abide by the 90/180 day rule in Schengen (28 European) countries.
This can lead to much stressing about how to apportion what was intended to be a six-month trip around Europe. However, it is ALL good, so don’t get too precious about where you do and don’t go.
Tip Two: When travelling to France, do not forget to order your Crit Air sticker in plenty of time for it to be posted from France. This is essential to drive in and around certain cities.
Tip Three: Make sure you have a phone plan that includes data roaming (or a travel e sim) in the countries you are visiting, especially if, like Al, you have very important work to do on your travels! We ended up in a two-day battle with Vodafone, which resulted in justice eventually but was painful and took away from climbing time.
Tip Four: Getting car (and travel) insurance for long trips abroad is difficult and more expensive.
Our existing policy only enables 60-day trips. In hindsight, we should have considered this when taking out the policy and made sure longer trips were covered to give us some more flexibility.
All that being said, as usual, things sorted themselves out in the end. Our first morning consisted of 2 pain aux chocolats and a baguette from the vending machine opposite the village car park in which we had spent a peaceful night. I love France!
We headed to Fontainebleau, just south of Paris. Possibly more widely known for it’s palace, the surrounding forests are also a bouldering mecca to which climbers from all over Europe flock to be humbled by the hundreds of sandstone boulders that litter the forest floor, and the French climbers’ interpretation of “peu difficile” when it comes to routes.
We spent a very happy week at Camping Paus’art Deco, which we found through the Park4Night app. Speaking of which:
Tip Five: Park4night is the essential app for overnight stops. It shows you good day and night parking spots for camper vans, as well as camp sites and farm stays all over the world. It also includes pubs in the UK which will let you sleep for free in the car park if you buy a drink/meal. No more incentive needed!
This campsite had 31 permanent residents and seemingly no tourists whilst we were there, with private grassy pitches and no stress. I was in heaven (especially with 5 nights with an easily accessible shower), Al occasionally pined for people, a swimming pool and a bar. Maybe he can choose the next campsite…
We managed 6 days of climbing hard, with a bit of work interspersed, and one rest day due to rain in which we cycled into Fontainebleau itself to visit the palace. As usual, the planned two hour bike ride turned into a 50km epic through the forest in thunderstorms, after a beautiful stint along the Loing Canal to the Seine.
Exhausted, grazed, and feeling like we were just getting the hang of Font climbing, we tore ourselves away in search of some rocks over 4m high and headed for the Alps. A day is a long time in van life, you can wake up in a French aire with no cards in your wallet after an overnight break-in and go to sleep that night by the side of a lake in the Alps, surrounded by mountains with not another soul in sight. Another valuable lesson learned.
Tip Six: When staying in French motorway aires (or big cities), make sure your valuables are in the back with you and your doors are securely locked whilst sleeping. Camper vans seem to be prone to break ins and whilst this has been our only bad experience to date, it is worth being wary of.
We are definitely in the off season for the mountains, somewhere in that no man’s land between the ski season and the summer holidays. This means quiet roads, towns, walks and campsites, but it does also means not much is open (including bike parks, much to Al’s dismay) and the weather is somewhat changeable, with a fair bit of snow around still. With this in mind, we diverted from our planned stop in Chamonix and instead drove through Grenoble to the Ecrins.
We found ourselves parked up for the night on France’s largest man-made lake, Lac de Serre-Poncon, nestled in the mountains and peacefully deserted. I got a swim to wash away some of the Font grime from the previous day and Al got the paddle board out. The paddle board has been a bone of contention, it is bulky, heavy and does not fit in the boot! The agreed compromise was if Al found somewhere to store the surfboard off the floor, the paddle board could come (on the floor!).
Sure enough, hours before leaving the UK, the surfboard was duly mounted on the wall and the paddle board came along for the ride. Of course, Al was right, and paddle boarding on a lake in the French Alps at sunset, and sunrise, was worth the additional hassle of moving the paddle board around the van on a daily basis!
We had made another last-minute decision not to get a bike rack, due to the additional expense, length it added to the van, and risk of the bikes getting stolen. This means the garage space under the fixed part on the bed contains; the sergeant unit, the inverter, the Truma heater, the water tank and two mountain bikes, two boulder pads (think folded up crash mats), all of our climbing gear, two wetsuits, a yoga mat, two chairs, an outdoor table, various backpacks and a football (another bone of contention).
This leads to a regular game of Garage Tetris, which I leave Al to play as spatial awareness is not my strength!
Tip Seven: Space is always at a premium inside your camper, so you'll probably need to get really creative with your storage, and be prepared to leave some things behind or come up with really good reasons why you absolutely need to bring some bulky things.
After an idyllic morning on the lake, we headed to the only open downhill mountain bike park we could find in the Alps in May. I wimped out after taking one look at the locals in full face helmets and padding getting on the chairlift, which proved the right decision judging by Al’s face after his first run. I left him to it for the afternoon and went for a sunny wander in the mountains. Downhill fix achieved, Saturday Garage Tetris complete, we were off to find some more climbing.
Ailefroide is a tiny village in the Ecrins, that is a central point for climbing and mountaineering in the Alps. Due to being between seasons, we found ourselves almost alone in the Ailefroide campsite - an idyllic meadow and surrounding forest nestled in between giant snow-capped mountains, full of spring flowers and cuckoo calls. It was almost unbelievably beautiful, and very easy to imagine it becoming a bustling hub of climbers in a month’s time.
We got in an afternoon of sport climbing on some pristine Ailefroide slabs, which was the perfect start given it had been several months since either of us had put our harnesses on. The only mildly alarming part was Al almost sitting on a snake whilst putting his shoes on, but it sloped off and I kept a close eye out for any of its friends!
Tip Eight: Be mindful of local wildlife! We're pretty lucky in the UK as we don't generally have much more than irritating wasps, shy adders, and sometimes jellyfish to look out for, but as you move further afield there'll be creatures you're less used to encountering and dealing with.
We were rudely awoken that night to angry beeping from the sergeant unit, a day parked up in the shade combined with the laptop on charge and heating the water through the inverter and not the gas by mistake meaning we had run our leisure battery right down. Oops! Luckily it all leapt back into life at sunrise, thank you solar panel!
Tip Nine: Consider making a list of things to check before you turn in for the night while you're camping, like whether your doors and windows are secured, your appliances are running on the correct power sources, and that you're not likely to trip over someone's paddleboard if you get up in the night!
Other than that, Percy the sprinter is doing great, although Al and I flinch at every creak and groan, paranoid something will go wrong. Hopefully we will get over this eventually, but for now he still feels very much like the thing we have invested our lives into. Which in a sense is true, we would be homeless without him!
Sadly, the rain is coming… It doesn’t make sense to hang around in the rain so we are going to put some miles behind us and head for Italy where it looks like the sun may be shining.
Tip Ten: Don't feel like you have to stick to a plan, you can always drive off to where the weather is nicer and go back to a site later on once the conditions are better. That's half the fun of adventuring in your camper!
Ailefroide and the French Alps are firmly on our list for a longer van trip in future summers (and winters), given we can get there in less than a day from the UK but for now it is time to head further afield.
Allez!
