Morocco in Pictures

Morocco in Pictures

by | Jun 7, 2020 | Featured Post, Morocco

We were so inspired by Morocco; its landscape, people’s spirits and culture that it brought my imagination alive and my camera’s heart beat faster than ever before. So as we compiled our Morocco by Motorhome ebook, it felt appropriate to put together just one album of all our favourite images from our month there is February 2020. I took hundreds of images and I really wanted to showcase them in one special place.

We hope you enjoy our tour of Morocco through my camera’s lens.

Click on the image below. You may need to wait a few moments whilst it loads due to the megaloads of pictures I couldn’t resist including. Although if you experience any difficulties viewing it on any device, then click here.

Celebrating Birthdays whilst travelling

Celebrating Birthdays whilst travelling

by | Jan 8, 2020 | Life on the Road Series, Personal Insights, Travel Blog

Celebrating Birthdays whilst travelling

 

Celebrating Birthdays whilst travelling or living on the road can be a tricky affair. Buying the right gift that you can keep a surprise, no room for parties, not being close to friends and family.  It’s a big conundrum that has vexed me since we left UK in March 2016.

Yet choosing a nomad life or even just spending a lot of time on the road means that life becomes a whole lot simpler. You find yourself thrust into an existence where your needs are few and your desires for material things dwindle with the speed of a gazelle.

A streamlined life with a back-pack, camper or boat may take on the look of a minimalist hermit, although the truth is that we really don’t need much to be happy. We are conditioned by the commercial marketeers that we need the latest leather sofa or car with go-faster stripes to define ourselves, yet we know in our hearts that it isn’t true.

Our stuff may well be decluttered, recycled or stored whilst our wanderlust takes over the reigns of our chariot, although our habits take a little longer to be reshaped. We are programmed to celebrate Birthdays, Anniversaries, Christmas, New Year with the gusto and flamboyance of a Royal Wedding. We go to town decorating our homes, buying gifts that no one in their right minds would purchase any other time of the year, bake cakes, write cards and generally set out to spoil the people around us in order to make them feel special.

Yet is love buying the latest gadget, the trendiest outfit or the most adrenalin filled experience? No with a capital N. This is what we have come to learn, although it is not the truth. And it is what life on the road is teaching me.  Life and gifts are so much more than purchases we make to bring happiness. Although I’ll not lie, breaking that materialistic bubble is tough when it comes to Birthdays. Even four years on, for me celebrating birthdays whilst travelling is a hard one to overcome.

Deep within me I love to make those I love feel happy – it’s an engrained pattern deep in my DNA;  a people pleasing trait. In turn, I feel more worthy when others acknowledge my Birthday. I’m not proud of this flaw and it is something that I am constantly working on  –  although there we go, this is my truth.

And it is these legacies that have me recoiling when it comes to celebrating my loved one’s anniversaries. Strangely I have overcome the whole Christmas thing as we’ve not sent cards or bought presents for over 12 years. So my habit has changed over time. And I hope the same will happen soon when it comes to Birthdays.

So as I sit here pondering on this non-Birthday Birthday phenomina for Myles 53 celebration, I thought it might be helpful to work this one through for those Life on the Roaders who, like me struggle to know how to approach it. I’ll be honest though, this is still work in progress, so I am no means cured from the society norms that have carved their patterns into my psyche.

 

10 Ways to celebrate without consumerism

 

 

1. Celebrate with a home-cooked meal 

As they say, ‘The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.’ Lots of people enjoy showing their love through the food they cook.  It’s so lovely to be able to design a menu of food that would make their hearts sing.  Ask if you had to design a ‘last meal’ what would it be.

 

2. Spoil them with breakfast in bed

I always enjoy the whole breakfast in bed gesture and whilst wholly impractical, it’s the thought that counts.  Going to extra effort on a special day is so much more meaningful than pile of presents that satisfy only our own desire to please.

 

3. Wake up to an appropriate song

“If music be the food of love, play on.” Shakespeare

For our Birthday’s we always have a song playing – often it’s Stevie Wonder’s ‘Happy Birthday’. What a fabulous way to start the day. Music has such a great vibe to it.

 

4. Create a personalised collage or gif and post to Social Media

I love putting collages together with my favourite pictures of times spent together.  Using an app like canva.com you can come up with some great designs that share  so much more than a present can ever do. The thought that goes into creating, building and designing something is worth its weight in gold.

 

5. Make a video from friends sending Birthday greetings

For Myles’ 50th Birthday, I asked friends and family (many of whom he hadn’t spoken to for a long while) to put together a 2 minute video sending him their Birthday greetings. I then put all those together into a video with music and made this his main ‘present’. It stunned him into silence and he still plays it three years on!

 

6. Celebrate with a meal out 

It’s always fun to be with people you love and being able to share the celebration with special people makes the day more meaningful. So if you’re in a place where you can share with loved ones, find a way to celebrate together. We are often stationery in a campsite on Myles’ Birthday, so we have the chance to be with friends or visiting family who are with us for the Christmas period. Otherwise we might delay a celebration so we can be with fellow travellers who we want to rendezvous with.

 

7. Buy a local tipple or tasty bite

If buying a gift still feels important, then look for a special tipple or traditional food from the country you are travelling in. It might make a nice change to try something cultural that they wouldn’t normally have throughout the year, that feels like a treat.

 

8. Send an ecard

If like us, whilst on your travels, having cards that cover every eventuality is impractical, then you always make one or send an e-Card. Increasingly saving resources is important so an e-card is a lovely way of celebrating that special day.

 

9. Kiss, hug and squeeze just a little bit more than normal

Special days come each morning we wake up, although when it’s a Birthday or Anniversary, then the most priceless gift is your time and affection. When we recondition our beliefs to realise that buying a present isn’t the only way we can show our love, then the options are endless. Take more time to spoil your loved one with even more hugs and kisses.

 

10. Do what they want to do and not what you think they would like

I remember last year’s Birthday for Myles; I asked him what he wanted to do with his day. His needs were simple – just a walk along the beach. Whilst it didn’t feel ‘enough’ for me to acknowledge his special day, it was a perfect for him. And that’s what really mattered.  Sometimes the most simple pleasures have the most meaningful impact.

 

Celebrating Birthdays whilst travelling is just one of the many things that require a shift in thinking and a change of habits. Finding a different and more simple way of showing someone you love them is so important. After all, moving away from the traditions of the Matrix was what motivated us to live an alternative life in the first place. So as we evolve our behaviours, we continue to find more simple ways to give gifts, show love and acknowledge important dates without the commercialism that we have grown up with. For inspiration on creative gifts whilst on the road, read my post by clicking here.

How do you celebrate whilst travelling? Would love to hear how you approach this tricky conundrum.

And I’ll leave you with one final thought thanks to Henry T. Ford….

 

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

 

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Guest Post – Gap Year Nomads

Guest Post – Gap Year Nomads

by | Jul 12, 2019 | Featured Post, Guest Blog

We love meeting new people on the road and hearing what brought them to travel. When we rocked up to a wild spot on the west coast of Portugal, there was a bumble-bee coloured van sat looking across the ocean. Of course it was only polite to see if they minded us parking next to them – and then we saw they were British. And that moment was the start of a fabulous evening, sharing food stories and a few tipples. Here is Emily and Lloyd’s story of their gap year in their self-converted minibus, Flora.

 

 

Flora’s Conversion

At the beginning of 2018, Lloyd and I hatched a plan to travel the world. We looked into backpacking, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail before finally landing on travelling the world in a van. For budget reasons, and for design creativity, we chose to self-convert a van.

I work in Marketing and Lloyd works in Sales, so you could reasonably assume that we didn’t have any DIY skills. I was handy with a paintbrush and Lloyd could change a lightbulb and put up a picture. Although beyond that, everything we learnt, we found on the internet. We followed anyone and everyone on Instagram who had converted their own vans for inspiration, we read blogs for tips on the best things to use and we watched videos on Youtube on how to put it all together.

 

We had saved around £3500 to spend on a van, and we would then save the same again to fit it out. We found Flora, a 15 year old LDV Convoy Minibus on Autotrader with around 17,000 miles on the clock. With no intention of buying that day, we drove up to visit the first van to get the ball rolling, and next thing we knew, Flora was ours. We drove her away on the same day. She had 17 seats and a roof rack – and she was ours.

Initially, we were very optimistic about the conversion; we spent a weekend gutting out the 17 seats, the plastic walling, the floor, the soaking cab mat and were left with an empty husk of a van. A bright yellow empty shell. After watching videos, we had planned to spend the following weekend cleaning, rust treating and priming. That weekend stretched from 1 weekend to 4. That was a bit of a wake up call.

 

Initially, we kept the van on my mum’s driveway as there was more space than outside our 2 bedroom house in Portsmouth. However, by August, we had insulated the van using Celotex boards, expanding foam and some recycled plastic wool, which was not as far as we were planning to be. We moved the van down to Portsmouth, and whilst we both worked full-time, our evenings and weekends were spent in Wickes, B&Q and in, on or around the van.

Our house is small and we lived in chaos. We ate Heinz tomato soup and ready made pizzas to save time in the evenings so we could make the most of the light. We gave up hobbies and socialising. We worked all day, every day and it was some of the most stressful times of our somewhat short lives.

We hit a turning point in early-mid October when it finally started coming together. We had finished the main components of the build and could see a light at the end of the tunnel. I was painting, Lloyd was completing woodwork pieces. I was put on garden leave in early November which was a real blessing. We would not have been ready to leave by the deadline we had chosen if it wasn’t for that, because not only were we converting our van, we also had to jump through the hoops required to let out our house.

 

We moved out of our house on December 31st. Trying to get the final few things completed for the house was a mad dash. We had electricians ripping up floorboards on the 23rd of December and replacing the fuse board. We received our gas safety certificate and, the day we handed over the keys, we collectively let out a sigh of relief, in part because we had only just finished cleaning the house that very morning.

Lloyd worked the first week in January, whilst I cleaned, painted, carpeted and packed the van. The day before we left, Lloyd fitted the gas, the diesel heater and we had an issue with the battery which needed fixing. Then like it was nothing, we started up the engine on the 13th of January, and we left the UK for the trip of a lifetime.

 

How we are finding it so far?

We are now eight months into our trip and we still cannot stop smiling.

We live with 75L of water which lasts us 4-5 days. We rely solely on solar power to charge our phones, laptop, iPad, lights, fan and water pump. We have a 13kg bottle of gas that has lasted so far and is still lasting us. We don’t have hot water, we don’t have a shower and we don’t have a toilet. We live with less now than we ever have before but feel richer with everything else we get to experience on a daily basis.

It was a steep learning curve. 15/20L of water a day doesn’t really sound as little as it is, but as the average use of a person living in the UK currently stands at 300-370L of water a day, so it’s a noticeable adjustment. We don’t have a shower so rely on boiling water from the kettle and using the sink and a flannel or a swim in the sea. We don’t have a toilet, which has been a source of many laughs, tears and midnight drives, but now our bodies are starting to get used to it.

It sounds like a nightmare, but really, it’s not that bad. In fact, it’s just not bad. We have this inexpressible freedom to go wherever the wind blows. Choosing where to park is easy now with so many apps and websites for camper vans, caravans, and other converted vans.

 

How we afford to travel

As I said earlier, we both worked full time, during which time, we saved enough money for us to travel for a year. On a budget of maximum £1000 a month, we are currently spending around £600 a month on all our expenses, for both of us. Food, fuel, travel costs which is split about a third each way. We currently don’t earn money on the road, and we’re not sure if we ever will, so we have saved enough for us to do the things we want to do for a year.

We are very lucky that there are so many places to free camp across Europe as this has saved us vast sums of money and it also means we have been lucky enough to have some of the most beautiful places as our back garden.

 

Our route and future plans

Our journey has taken us from Dunkirk to Lake Annecy, Lake Annecy to the Etretat Cliffs, along the coastline to Mont St Michel and the Cote de Granit Rose, to Bordeaux, Biarritz and Bayonne. We have petted wild horses in the Pyrenees, had our van towed in San Sebastian, drank cider in Oviedo and hiked the Ruta del Cares in the Picos de Europa.

When we first met Karen and Myles, we were in Portugal and cannot express how beautiful this country is. From the granaries in Soajo and the Bom Jesus do Monte in Braga to the street performers in Porto, we had the most incredible time exploring Portugal in our van. We carried on through Southern Spain and up the Mediterranean coastline for an exceptional month meeting family who met us in Barcelona, the Verdon Gorge and Antibes, before heading over through Switzerland & Northern Italy, where we spent a magical evening under the Tre Cime de Lavaredo. After a quick stop in Lake Bled in Slovenia, we met friends in Austria, before finally heading through Slovakia, a completely underrated country in our opinion!
Our journey now, will take us from where we are in southern Poland, up through Lithuania, Latvia & Estonia, where we are planning to take a ferry to Helsinki. We will then drive up and over into Norway in time for the Northern Lights around September/ October time (before we get snowed out), then we will head down for the Christmas markets in Germany & Czech Republic, before returning to the UK for our MOT in December.

 

If you’d like to follow along with the rest of our journey, you can follow us on Instagram: @ourconvoyage or you can check out our blog www.ourconvoyage.com.

 

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Camping-van Problem-solving en France

Camping-van Problem-solving en France

by | Nov 17, 2017 | France, Travel Blog

So, it’s  been an interesting fortnight at Motoroaming HQ as we took time out to see our French friends in Toulouse as we were in the area.  We hoped that they could help us navigate our way through resolving an ongoing problem  with our shower, buy new batteries, get a service booked and contact the local Pilote dealer where we could get our annual Habitation Check sorted.  We’re due up in December and given that we’ll not be back to UK until March, we needed to sort something out in France or Spain.

Whilst Myles’ French is pretty good, when you’re on the spot trying to find the right technical vocabulary, it’s a challenge and can be stressful. So we hoped that having a Frenchman supporting us, we would nail these tricky manoeuvres with the dexterity of a slalom kayak!!

However it’s not been that easy and the ensuing chain of events has created some important learning that we wanted to share for anyone in a similar predicament whilst in France and more particularly for anyone out there having to resolve issues with their Pilote.  So here’s today’s Classroom of learning!

The Batteries

  • If you need to replace your leisure batteries find a Battery Specialist found in most reasonably large towns.  Take one of your original batteries in with you so that you can be sure to get like for like.  One of the most important phrases we needed to use was to ask for a Slow Release Battery for a Motorhome which in French is Décharge lent pour un camping car.  The two new batteries cost €320 and although we had to order them in, it only took 48hrs.

 

The Warranty

  • We have a December 2015 Pilot P740 and we had the idea from somewhere that we had a three year warranty.  This is not correct.  We have had it verified that we have a 2 year Mechanical Warranty and a 5 Year Body Warranty.  So do check what you have so that you can make informed choices.

 

The Service

  • If the timing of you being away means you need to get a vehicle service done in France then ask a local for a recommended Garagiste rather than using a dealer as it will be significantly more expensive. You need to ask for Une révision annuelle. The mechanic should be able to source your specific oil and filter although we bought ours from a Car Parts shop, which you will find in most large towns.  Expect to pay €56 for a filter and 5 ltires of oil on top of which you will need to pay the mechanic’s labour.

 

  • A service that includes the oil and filter change is called a Vidange in French

 

  • If you need to get a Gas and Electric test (rather than have it done as part of your habitation), then that is a Contrôle de gaz et electrique, which you can get done at a motorhome dealer.

Habitation Check

  • To protect your Warranty you will need to have your Habitation done as close to your anniversary as possible. If this happens to fall whilst you are outside the UK then this shouldn’t be a problem. We were advised that we must go to a Pilote dealer to ensure that any future claim was not null and void and that a note of our Habitation could go onto the central Database. There are two parts to your Habitation; The Gas and Electric check (see above) and the Body Check (which is the bit you need for your 5 year warranty.) We tried phoning the local Pilote dealer in Toulouse only to be fobbed off with a ‘He’ll call you later,” and of course never does.  We suggest you physically go in ask to be booked in for one. We had ours done within four days and cost us €123.  It took four hours in total, partly because there were other people in front of us.

 

  • The phrase for arranging the Body Check part of the Habitation is:  J’ai besoin d’une Contrôle d’étanchéité pour mon camping car, s’il vous plaît. 

 

  • If you own a Pilote, then it is possible to arrange to have your Habitation deferred for up to three months, as long as you contact your Dealer and put this in writing.  We have been co-ordinating with Martin Storey, who is a Pilote UK Agent, who has been terrific in helping us to navigate our issues. He confirmed that although it would be better to get the Habitation done around our anniversary date, if it was impossible then Pilote would be prepared to defer it until we got back to UK as long as this was within three months.

 

Warranty Work

  • If you are away in France and have an issue that falls within your warranty, you do have the option of sorting this out directly with your Dealership in UK, although you can also get this done in France at an appropriate dealer, if you’re with Pilote.  Other brands may have different arrangements, so it’s important that you contact your dealer in the first instance.
  • If it requires urgent attention and you cannot return to UK to get it repaired – as in the case of our leaking shower, which has been an ongoing issue for 12 months, then (certainly with Pilote) this can be dealt with by any Pilote dealer in Europe.  Once they open up a warranty claim it goes onto the central system and even if it cannot be dealt with locally, once it’s on the system then your dealer back home can deal with the paperwork. So with our shower, we had the option of trying to get the Toulouse dealer to resolve it, do a temporary fix and open up a warranty claim so that our Dealer in UK could resolve it when we returned.

 

  • We’re yet to see if their fix has worked, although because of the paper trail that has now been undertaken, we will have plenty of recourse when we return to the UK.

 

A note for Pilote owners.  The issue we have with the shower is the shower base doesn’t seem to be supported efficiently to the floor and so with pressure on the base, the edges come away from the back wall leaving a gap as the silicone cannot support the weight (and we’re not heavy by any means).  Apparently this is a Manufacturing Issue and is common in Pilote vans, so be aware of this and ensure that more than just a re-sealant fix is carried out for you, otherwise it will return to bite you on the backside. In the Toulouse dealership they use Sikkaflex which is the best stuff on the market.  We’ll see what happens over the course of the next couple of months.

Whist our French friend was terrific, much of this saga was negotiated behind the scenes with Pilote, so if you have any difficulties and you need support as a Pilote owner, then we suggest you contact Martin Storey, who is incredibly helpful.  He is a Pilote Agent for UK owners and you can contact him at mstorey@pilote.fr or on 00441902 256990.

 

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