The First Night
Day after day of hard work on the van finally paid off. It was ready for a trip. I wouldn’t call it finished… we still need to perfect the storage space in some of the cupboards and put the sink in, but a trial run was definitely in order. There’s a few things we realised we didn’t need on this trip, and we figured out what things get used the most and need a better spot. I am genuinely excited to get back to work and reorganise it.
For our first trip we decided to stay close to home as we weren’t totally used to the van yet and it’s tradition for something to go wrong on the first night. Low and behold, on our drive to the lakes, a brake light went out. Not a big deal, we just nipped to Halfords. There were a few other little issues here and there but we figured everything out and it actually went pretty smoothly and we learnt that we should always keep a few basic tools in the van so we don’t have to pay someone to fit a brake light.
We stayed at Wallace Lane Farm just at the top of the lake district for this first night (more on the rest of the trip soon), parked up and plugged ourselves in. Literally the only reason we wanted electric hook up was for our little camping heater. Oh my god the heater. I feel like it needs a journal post of it’s own. We had our first night in the van on the coldest night of the year, woke up to frost everywhere, but we were cosy. £20 well spent.
We explored the site, ate dinner (steak, also a first night tradition), watched a film, read our books and woke up to coffee and breakfast before we headed off to go further into the lakes. Absolutely ideal.
