Well today, I have yet again been cleaning!

…and tomorrow I will be doing the same tomorrow! But still, the van needs it. There was so much dust left over from it’s working life that it would have probably be a health risk as a campervan!

So anyway ladies and gentlemen, I am again thoroughly knackered (which means really tired (for Kate)) so below are a few photos from today’s cleaning mission, more coming soon.

LDV Convoy Dash Stripped out

The door panels, as they were

Scratches and horrible white gunk on the door panels

Door Trim mid-scrub, you can see the horrible colour of the soap suds!

Anyways, more to come tomorrow.  The floor is also coming up and the seats are going to be steam cleaned, leaving me a clean canvas to start the conversion.

So that’s Sunday sorted.  Hopefully on Monday morning my insurance papers will come through, meaning I can finally get tax on the van and actually drive her!

Hope everybody else is doing well!

Yes, after too long a wait the LDV Convoy that I was after has finally been purchased and is now parked on my driveway being stripped out.

I have attached some images below for you  guys and girls and will post some more updates later this weekend.  To be honest I am a little bit knackered from stripping out the ply-lining, dashboard and cab area, door trim, and floor.

Once these were off I discovered a build up of dust that could only be described as having it’s own landscape!  Oooh and I also found an authentic 2007 banana skin tucked behind the dash.  Lovely!

So there we go, one step closer to turning this van into a campervan.

And for those of you who want to know, yes it is an ex Parcel Force in GPO Red, LDV Convoy, Hi-Roof, LWB 3.5tonne, 2.4L, 90PS, Ford Transit Duratorque TD.  How did you guess? ha!

——Laptop is not behaving, please see link below for photos —— http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=67978&id=502954239&l=8545f8ed4a
And I’m going to bed, hope all is well with your world. Special Shout out to Kate, whom I have learnt so much about.  May your trip bring you all you want it to.

G’Night,

Well ladies and gentlemen. Hopefully tomorrow I will be selling my current van, to be replace it with a new mahusive wagon for the Grand Tour!

Will update you guys all later on this weekend. I hope you are all having a brilliant weekend and enjoying the weather (if it is sunny anyway).

I had a reply on my last post about Budgets from experienced traveller and blogger Lissie from Budget 4wd Travel.

Lissie raised some very good points regarding servicing of the van etc.  In fact there were enough questions for a post, so a post I shall write!

So from here on in Lissie’s comments are in the Block quotes and my answers are below.

I’d say the main thing you are missing – and the biggest risk is maintenance – curently spending A$1500 on torque converter for said 4wd (yes we still have it!).

We’re lucky enough that the van is fairly new (2004).  Of course the downside of this is that there’s a lot that we cannot fix if it did go wrong, most of the injection timing and stuff like that is all controlled by the Engine Management computer and they are damn expensive.

We do have some other spares we will take with us (I used to work for a magazine for the automotive repair trade – it’s not what you know but who you know when it comes to getting things for a good price).

Tyres wear out, etc. We did do 35,000km in 6 months though – you get that in Australia! You should service a diesel every 5000km to – its really a bad idea to miss this (they are less forgiving than petrol in this)

The tyres should last us for atleast 7500 miles, they will be replaced at  the start of the trip if they don’t look like they will.  We will also take two spare tyres (full size) in case of punctures or blowouts.

Fiat Panda, 1.3 Diesel!

As for servicing every 5000km – I’d disagree.  Modern diesels (Like Ford’s 2.4litre Duratorque that powers the LDV) should be able to last 12000 miles between servicing, obviously more often increases longevity and economy etc. I’m not sure if Australia have the same kind of diesels as we do in Europe, I know in America they are seen as slow and sluggish but in Europe diesel powers just about as many cars as petrol.  There is even a small diesel unit for the Fiat Panda!

In pratice you will need to regionalise your budget – you cant spend your average in Bulgaria and expect to spend the same in Sweden LMAO. We budgeted on a weekly basis – cause stuff averges out. What about interent and phones – internet adds up trust me on this!

We are looking at this.  One of the reasons we went for the same costs acros the board is due to weighing up living costs.  In Sweden and Norway etc we can camp for free in layby’s and even out in the wild, so our nightly costs will be nearly nothing, meaning that we can shift some of our 55GBP daily budget aroundfor food or activites.

In Eastern Europe, although we can camp for free, we will not be doing so.  This is due to security, many campervanners have tales of being woken in the night by people robbing them, or even just stealing the whole van whilst they are in the back in bed!

Using guarded campsites does not come cheap though – about 20euro a night minimum, of course this is offset by cheaper activities and food costs.

On the flipside to all that though I quite agree with Lissie’s comment.  It is hard to know what things will cost until we get there, and then budgets can be properly set.  Different countries may have different costs and different regions certianly will.

We set out our budget just to get an idea of our trip’s cost. It’s a kind of “worst case scenario” or “most expensive scenario”.  Once we get underway I am sure we will chop and change things and almost completely rewrite the book.

As for internet and phones – we will only be taking a mobile with us for emergencies.  Again down to costs.  As for Internet, we will be relying on internet cafes in cities, in most youth hostels you can find a pc with internet (free) and on campsites we will be hoping for wi-fi access or again a pc and internet.

You can see Lissie’s post from her travels by clicking  on this link : How much will a budget trip around Australia cost? Part 1: Day to Day Costs I really do appreciate everyone’s comments, and I hope Lissie doesn’t think I am just disagreeing with her! lol.

I hope all the rest of you find these articles useful.  Are there any other tips that you guys want to know about?

Hey guys,
Just a quick post as a few people have asked this question and a few others have come from google search.

So – How are campervans charged on ferries?

There are two factors to take into consideration. Height and Length.

For height different ferry operators have different limits, depending on the size of their car decks in the ferry. Some have a maximum height of up to 2.4 metres, others 2.8 and if you take the eurotunnel, then it is just 1.8 metres tall, so all those cars with top boxes – beware!

The next is length. There seems to be universal agreement amongst ferry companies that anything over 6 metres is classed as “long”.

Of course going over these limits, either height or length, means that you will be moved into a different category and charged a different rate for your crossing.

Expect to be charged 20% more than the normal car rates for travelling with a campervan, and serisouly try to avoid the busy peak times. Your 6 metre long motorhome could fit two little peugeot’s in so the ferry companies will make you pay!

Finally, remember that travelling later at night is always cheaper. I usually book myself onto a midnight ferry crossing ad then find a place to stay on the motorway for free overnight.

You can do this if you are in France or Germany, please remember that in Belgium and the Netherlands that stopping overnight in anywhere apart from deisgnated campsites is illegal.

What do I book for my usual ferry?

I use NorfolkLine.com – £45 for a campervan over 2.4 metres tall, each way. I book the ferry for midnight (but usually turn up around 8 and they put you on the next available for no charge). So it is usually around 11pm that I get to France, and a quick scoot at the speed limit later, we’re into AAchen in Germany, which boasts a wonderful motorway services, and plenty of trees to keep away the noise.. Good night all.

Yes – it really is worth three of them.

After a lot of research, mixed with two teaspoons of estimation and a dash of complete guessing we have forumulated our travel budget.

And our overall figure comes to…….

£6,318 (9,175 USD)

This will be split between the two of us, so is just about affordable!

The single largest part of this cost is the fuel. Our LDV van will be running on Diesel. This of course means better miles to the gallon for starters. Obviously a fair bit of economical driving skills will be needed, I am off to find some of those now. My heavy right foot is almost legendary so keeping a tight reign on that, as well as travelling far slower than the speed limits on the motorways (but faster than the trucks, otherwise they get annoyed, and they are bigger than me, and scare me…) will mean a better mpg figure.

So our fuel cost for seven and a half thousand miles is budgeted at… 1095GBP (1591USD). A good bit of guesswork went into calculating the fluctuating fuel prices. With the economic foul-up many people are choosing not to use their cars, or have no job to drive to anymore so there is less demand on fuel, meaning cheaper prices (that’s the theory anyway).

We worked out our average fuel cost to be 90pence per litre, or 1.3$ per litre. That allows for the more expensive fuel in Scandinavia and the cheaper fuel in eastern Europe.

BioDiesel

One thing that I am currently looking into is the use of Bio-Fuel. These is mostly available mixed with diesel and labelled as…. Bio-Diesel. How they came up with that name I shall never know. This is slightly cheaper than pure diesel, and is healthier to the environment or something.

Back to budgets though…

Daily Living Costs.

We have given ourselves an average of 15GBP for accomodation / camping pitches per night. Using wild camping in Scandinavia is free and fairly safe in comparisson to Eastern Europe where will be using only dedicated campervan parking places or anywhere that is guarded. Tales of campervanners being robbed at night in Eastern Europe are not rare.

As for food, well we have given ourselves 20GBP a day. This means that we will be able to buy some really expensive tinned food, wooo! By using the camping stove for as much as possible we will be able to keep within this budget quite easily. Buying fresh food everyday may not be possible so the traditional camping food of pasta and some tinned sauce will become part of our staple diet. Yum(!)

Activities - basically doing stuff. Well there is no point planning a trip where you do nothing. We have given ourselves 20GBP a day for touristy things. This is the only budget where we may overspend on certain days. Visiting a city will take more money than taking a hike in the countryside. My travel comapnion, Luke, has been given overall control of the budgets and will be in charge of making sure that the above theory is actually correct!

So there it is, our daily budget, excluding fuel, comes to 55GBP.

On top of that though we also have some other items to be added to the budget.

Firstly – Ferry costs. Obviously with UK being it an island we need to get our wheels across to the mainland. The return ferry trip should cost us around 100GBP, sailing with Norfolkine from Dover to Dunkirk. This is one of the longer crossings from Dover to France, but is also one of the cheapest.

Our second ferry will be from Helsinki, Finland to Tallinn Estonia. We have 100GBP in our budget for this.

Also needed is gas. Almost all of our cooking will be on our Campingaz kitchen stove. Gas bottles for this last roughly one week, a heating adapter is also available for the bottles and will probably be purchased somewhere in Europe (cheaper) to keep us warm on those cold Scandinavian nights. From previous camping trips I reckon a bottle will last us up to a week in colder climates and up to two weeks in sunnier places.

These gas bottles cost around 9GBP each to replace (hand in the empty bottle and get a new refilled one). And CampingGaz depots are available throughout Europe. I will probably be hunting down a list of places these are available from before I go so expect a post on that.

Also – a budget for clothes washing! Now this is where the generous shakes of estimation come in. We will be taking some powder with us for clothes washing, sometimes washing machines are included in the price of the campsite / hostel but more often it is about 2GBP per wash. So – we will probably smell a bit if we overspend on the budget for a few days.

And there you go. That is our budget so far. We will probably have a few “budgetary reviews” along the way to see what money is going where, but we cannot exceed out 55 GBP per day limit,  this current budget is at the far reaches of my current savings.

Is there anything you would add? Or are things a bit optimistic?

Ok, so another thing I had to check out was what it would actually cost to take my mobile abroad. I am on a contract with 3 mobile, I got a bloody good deal so didn’t really want to cancel it and pay all the money to terminate the contract early.

Neither did I want to spend a fortune making calls here there and everywhere without knowing what the charges are.

Three.co.uk

For those of you unaccustomed with European phone usage it works like this: buy a phone / sim card in one country – easy enough. Want to take it past that country’s borders? You have to have roaming added to your sim card and then of course pay for the privelege of using it outside of your “home” network. I’ll bet people living in Lichtenstein get a bit annoyed, the border is only ever 5 minutes away!

So I found all my rates from my network provider and here are my costs for usage abroad. Just another thing to add to the ever expanding “budget”.

So my rates are as follows.  For Denmark, Sweden, Austria and Italy I can recieve calls and text messages for free, becuase three have partner networks here.  It is also cheaper to call and text to others, costing just 15pence per minute / per sms.

In all the other countries I am travelling through there are no “partner networks”  so it will be 15 pence per minute to recieve a call /sms and 34 pence to make a call and 25 pence to send an sms message.

I haven’t had look at any other providers as I find my contract useful when I am at home for “normal” living”. I would suggest you have a look at other options if you are planning to travel and not keep your home contract.

Either that or go old school.  Phone cards often represent the best value for calling outisde of the country’s borders and for long ditance calls I don’t think anything can beat them.

Or you can go new school, get your parents / family or whomever you want to talk to to get skype, login at one of the millions of internet cafes and talk for free.

Lovely Jubly!

Happy Travelling

Holy what!!!!!

It is only three weeks until I set off on to sunny scandinavia and I will admit something to you all:

I have been slacking.

Completely, totally and utterly slacking. My excuse is that I reached brain melt-down point.  When I get back from travelling I will be setting up my own business venture(s).  More of that to come later though, much later.

So here I am guys and girls, back once more into the travelling ring.  I actually put my laptop down today, after creating, editing, modifying and organising everything after the move from Blogger to this funky new Wordpress site.  You can see more about that here and here.

I have got news for you ladies and gentlemen. I can now officially announce that I will have a friend joining me on my travels, which may stop me from talking to myself half way round the tour, but I will still sing outrageously loudly for no reason at all.  That will never end, mwahahah.

And - I have worked out a rought budget. Then wished I didn’t.

And - I still haven’t bought a van yet, Time is indeed passing and I will have to get one soon.  Of course the economic downturn (disaster) means that I have not had as many people eager to buy my lovely Fiat Doblo as I would like.

And - I have virtually no time to convert the van, something that Rob at nomadofsoul.blogspot.com has rightly pointed out.  However my amazing carpentry skills (ok, those carpentry skills of my dad) will mean that everything will be sorted on time. Honestly, I believe that. Yes, I have been called optimistic before….. just what are you trying to say?

Pictures of the van will be post as soon as one is bought.

The travel route is already up – click here to see it.

As for me, I’m going to get an early night and then get back to travelling, stop trying to sort out too many things and deal with them one at a time.

That will be a first…..

And - while I think of it, you can get a free link (woohoo) by adding a comment to the bottom of this post (the one linked).

Happy Travelling!

As you know, not long ago this site moved from a Blogspot blog this this shiny new thing!

This is just a quick note to say that all of our feeds will be changing soon and if you’re not on the new feed you may stop getting all our wonderful information!

If you signed up on the old blogger blog then please subscribe to either the RSS or Email updates.

If you signed up on this new site (overlandwannabe.co.uk) then you do not need to do a thing!

Thanks for your support.

Good Evening everyone,

In my last post I was wondering what on earth Technorati is, how it works and how to increase your “authority”.

Technorati seemed to be a bit of a dark art form, with information hidden away and I didn’t really understand how it did what it did.

Well, I have found the answer.  And actually it is rather an anti-climax.  Technorati’s authority is worked out by looking at how many blogs link to you.

That’s it.

As you can tell I am a bit bemused and expected this to be a lengthy article on the inner workings of a secret internet traffic boosting bit of kit, but nope its just a link looker at-er.

One thing to note though is that it does not count comments.  So you can’t actually do anything about it unless people are linking to you in their posts.

So here’s an idea, I’m going to build a list.  Once that is done all you have to do is copy it into your own site and then add links to your favourite sites, tag them and then ask them to do the same.  This will result in more blogs linking to us through posts etc and will work well for the good of the blogging community, hurrah and all that and for my next trick I shall end all wars lol.

Ok – here’s the audience participation bit – Add a comment with your blog’s URL below and I will duly add you to the list in the hope that you will do the same… And don’t say I don’t give you nothing!

Happy Travelling!