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?

Seeing as this is supposed to be a travel blog I thought I might actually get some travel stories up here.

Seeing as I still have three weeks left at work and that I’m not actually on my travels yet, I thought I would add a little review of a Bank Holiday weekend away that changed a lot of my expectations.

Luxembourg – the little country that is famous for…… being small?

Yer, that’s about it.

So when I had a Bank Holiday / three day weekend and needed somewhere to go to that was within easy distance of the Port of Dover my first reaction was to look at everywhere else first.

I had been through Echternach once before, returning from a road trip down to the south of Germany. It was a good overnight stop and I remembered that the town was rather nice actually. So there we were, booked the campsite and then waited until the fateful weekend.

So, after booking my crossing on NorfolkLine.com (£19 each way – Excellent!) I left on a rather warm Friday evening after work and drove across Le Channel and on to Echternach.

We arrived quite late, partially because I forgot that Europe is 1 hour ahead of the UK, so my calculations were out and partly because Norfolk Line coffee is very strong and makes you need to stop at every motorway service station. After erecting the tent we settles down to a quite nights sleep at 4.30am – at 5.am the birds started singing. Bastards.

Honk! - yes ladies and gentlemen, the bread van is here. Despite being tired the lure of warm bread rolls and cakes could not be ignored. After a scrumptious breakfast it was off down to town.

We walked down from the campsite to follow the river into town. The square that makes up the centre of Echternach is another “picture perfect” place, so good in fact, we didn’t actually bother to take any photos of it (that and we forgot the camera and I wasn’t walking up the hill again)

We spent all of day one looking round the town and the nearby lake that hosts the ruins of a Roman villa. Also we found an amazingly new looking hostel that we made a note to check out again at some point.

(You can find more photo’s by clicking on the following click……CLICK ME)

In the evening we found a traveller’s nirvana – an ice cream palace, well OK not a palace in the literal sense – but you all know what I mean. If you go here make sure you got a Hot Amaretto, you will sleep very peacefully, no birdsong will wake you. (Bastards)

Day two, the day of THE WALK!

Yes, this is what we were really here for. Luxembourg, believe it or not, is home to some amazing geological features. Quite near to Echternach is a place dubbed “Little Switzerland” (Kleine Schweiz), which we didn’t go to – but it looks worthwhile. Anyways, we headed north west out of our campsite and up a bloody steep hill.

SUPRISE – massively forested hill, craggy grey rocks, steps in and out of deep craters, rivers running fast whilst walkways criss-crossed them and wound under, between and over the landscape. FAN-BLOODY-TASTIC

This is why you should come to Echternach, it is so close to an amazing array of walks and natural features that you really could be in Switzerland (albeit smaller as with everything in Luxembourg). The hiking routes are all signposted and your free walking guide (Tourist Office find) will give you all the routes. The trails are suitable for all ages and skill levels, although many do include stairs and one includes a ladder to get up to the top of a cliff.

We took 8 hours on our walk (including an hour for yet another ice cream!). You can make the routes smaller or larger depending on what you’re up to and you can even walk around the Whole of Luxembourg (“Yes – I walked around a whole country” boasts will gain you no mates at the pub if they find out it was Lux.)

On the third day we had to unfortunately pack up and bugger off home again. But this small weird little place will remain a favourite haunt of mine.

(You can find more photo’s by clicking on the following click……CLICK ME)

And as usual please add a comment, even if it’s just to say hi!

Happy Travelling
OverlandSi

Hello faithful readers,

Well I’m pretty much committed to the idea of becoming a working nomad.

Below is a list of all the things I believe I will need to get sorted before going.

Remember to please leave a comment, or get in touch, even just to say hi! I will have probably missed some off though! In which case you can let me know by commenting, and feel free to call me a numpty as well, this may be the only chance you get!

So starting with stuff for the van:

• Van - yer kind of essential really, need to buy a van
• Insurance - another essential, need to find some insurance that will cover me for being abroad for long periods
• Kitting out the van
• Tyres - some good tyres that will last for many miles
• MOT - the van will probably need a new MOT certificate before I go away

Travel things:

• Books / Guides and Atlases. We will be using a mixture of campsites and wild camping, there are a few guide books for these
• Sat Nav – this is already purchased, my wonderful Garmin Nuvi will navigate me all the way from the North of Norway to the South of Greece and almost everywhere inbetween
• A list of all Wi-fi hotspots in the countries we are travelling to – so as to keep in touch with you guys and gals
• Clothes – kind of essential, I won’t go into detail here, seeing as I will just throw my wardrobe into the van.

And that’s the very basic list as far as I can think. But there are other things… As you all know I am planning to make money writing whilst I travel.

To this end I will be hawking my writing “skillz” to everyone, trying to write for what companies want as well as what I want. AND I will also be writing a bit of a book about it. So you guys could say you’re reading a free sneak preview. Not that I’m holding any secrets from you guys, so it’s less of a preview and more of the whole thing.

Worth It?

If anybody else has any ideas on how I can use my wonderful talents with the keyboard then please let me know in the comments!

To start with I thought I would just explain myself a little…

Why do i want to do such a “crazy” thing.

Well its damn well not actually – think about this for one second…

We live in a world where the amount of money that exists doesn’t really exist,

• Where everyday you go into work to make money yet seem to spend half of it just getting to work,
• Where adventures must be completed by Sunday evening at the latest so you can be back at work on Monday morning bright and early to give your all for the company
• Where most of your efforts at work do wonders for the company, but somehow not for you.
• Where you are so tired in an evening after your long day and long commute that family activities are limited to eating tea together.
• Where your ‘life‘ revolves around making sure this routine is carried out

Now i don’t want to sound like some sort of hippie (which I’m really not, I listen to German Hardcore music for christs sake!)

So I decided that this wasn’t worthwhile, nor something I really wanted to do.

Why have i got to where I am now?

Fair question, why have I not already made this decision already. Why did I not up sticks and leave straight after school?

Well really I believe there are two factors to blame here: Me and the education system.

Let’s start with me shall we?

I take 90% of the blame here for not shifting things on. I have always wanted to do things like this but have never really been able to plan anything in advance, nor have I ever managed to save enough money for a big old overlanding adventure.

So I went down the normal path without really saying anything. Off to Uni (Because the schools in the UK are all basically jusdged on how many people go to university this was the route that was “right for me”, hated that, left…

Off to work, started off Okay.. it was an ‘adventure’ in it’s own right as all of life is of course, but now I have come to the realisation that I could flit around ‘normal’ jobs treating each one as it’s own adventure or I could actually go out there and do what I really want to do and what I have always wanted to do.

Me and Trucks

Ask anyone who knows me. I love driving.

I also love any large vehicle. I grew up with my father in the army. He was in the REME (auto technicians in camoflauge). This meant that there were always lots of big vehicles around, from Landrovers up to Tanks and everything in-between.

Since then I just seem to have some sort of admiration for large vehicles, and a want for driving them! (please feel free to use the comments box to remind me how sad I am and the fact that I am compensating for something hehe!)

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Above: at the annual Campervan mecca (the Camping & Caravan salon @ Dusseldorf, Germany

Me and Travel

Whilst my sister and I were gorwing up our parents had a variety of caravans and campervans. Our holidays consisted mostly of travelling hundreds of miles, stoppping, travelling more miles, stopping and so on.

I have never really grown out of this “windscreen tourism” – traveling through Europe whenever possible in my own van, stopping off here and there whenever an opportunity presents itself and stopping over in campsites in a tent for a few days when somewhere that is ripe to explore presents itself, A bit of a European ‘softcore’ overland experience really.

Me and Overlanding

I have always wanted to travel, but i have always dreamed of actually being able to make a living out of it, passing on stories to others and generally providing a service.

This is where overlanding comes in. It provides all the things I could want. Endless scenery explore, a reasonable dollop of “windscreen tourism”, a group of eager travelers as companions and lashings of driving in a large truck.

Well thats how the ideal situation would go anyway…

The reality is probably more like this – ridiculously long drives, crap weather meaning hours are spent crossing just a few miles of terrain, eager companions turn into whining and rebellious and tired hordes and the scenery keeps on trying to kill you, especially the wildlife.

Wake up tomorrow morning, the rains gone and everyone is exhausted. But you’ve made it… Smile!