Have you ever been sat watching something, a television programme, a documentary or even an item on one of the news programmes or perhaps even just reading a newspaper or magazine article and the content, or part of it, acts as some sort of catlyst in your brain that sets your mind racing ? Or is that something that just happens to us retired folk as we find ourselves with a bit more time on our hands these days ?
I remember five years ago, which is good for me personally, as it just confirms that dementia has not yet set in fully, well not yet at least, but at that time, we were only into our second year of our new lifestyle adventure, but even so, even at that time we had noticed a substantial increase in the number of Vans that were ‘on the road’ from what we had seen just the previous year.
In these rambles, for ease, I will just refer to everything by the more general term as ‘Vans’ wether they be Large Motorhomes, Small Motorhomes, Self Builds, Production built etc.
So, you do not need to be a rocket scientist to realise that, if the same principle were true around the rest of Europe as we were seeing at that time in Portugal, then the obvious question was, ‘Where were all of these vehicles going to find to park up ?’ There would not be enough ‘official’ camping pitches available, either on Campsites or Motorhome Aires, to accommodate the rapidly increasing number of vans on the road, so even those who may not have initially intended to park in ‘Free Camping’ locations would more than likely be finding themselves, willingly or otherwise, headed into that particular option. Now of course that had eventually got to result in these ‘free camping’ locations themselves becoming over populated, so then what ?
“Surely though”, I say to myself, their must be enough ‘public’ land in every individual Country on this planet for each of us to be able to find just a small corner somewhere to park up for the night, or perhaps two or three ? I guess, on the face of it, the simple solution would be to just expand the number of pitches available on existing campsites, or open more campsites and likewise, increase the number of ‘Aires’, but my recent experience of managing a Campsite informs me that even that is not as straightforward or as simple as it may sound.
Now, at this point in my current ramblings, I could easily go off at a complete tangent, away from the main subject matter that I started out wanting to ‘ramble’ about, that tangent being the subject of the vast number of Motorhome Parking Apps that are now freely available with the question, are these Apps now a ‘Blight Or A Blessing’ within the wider Vanlife community ? But, that really is a completely separate subject that I shall leave for another one of my rambles as, like a lot of things, there are always pro’s and con’s and it could end up being a very contentious subject depending on which side of the Motorhome community fence you sit on, so perhaps keep your eyes open for that one, when I do find the courage to approach that subject and publish what will purely be my own ‘personal’ thoughts on the matter !!
Now back to the main subject of these particular ramblings and of course, I do not try to fool myself into believing that this nomadic lifestyle is anything new, it has been going on for very many decades all over the globe and, although production camper vans as we refer to them today, were around in those earlier days, the leisure van industry was obviously nowhere near the level that it has grown to today. I am perfectly happy to be corrected on my next statement by any reader who has much more knowledge or experience, but to the best of my memory, the small VW Camper van that we now consider to be classics, were probably at their height of popularity in the Nineteen-Sixties and Seventies era, and probably moreso either as the original ‘Surfer Dudes’ preferred mode of transport, although also attributed to the Hippie movement of the times, their vans often being gawdy hand painted vehicles. But their were others, Ford and Bedfords spring immediately to my mind, although once again the camper van experts out there will probably know of a lot more. But in those days, in addition to the popular but much smaller VW’s, it was more likely to have been the conversions that were on the roads, anything from small trucks, mini-buses, vans and even buses, although I blame Cliff Richard and his chums myself for starting the big craze on the bus conversions, fancy driving to, and around, Europe on a ‘Summer Holiday’ in a converted red double-decker London Bus, surely that was just pure cinematic escapism, it would never catch on, large vehicles like that would never be viable as pleasure leisure vehicles !!
The popularity of this nomadic lifestyle has grown consistently, all around the world, over the preceding years, with the ‘real’ nomadic explorers taking their adventures much further afield and to the next level, challenging their normal road vehicles to take them to a vast array of Countries taking them on ‘roads’ and ‘dirt tracks’ with questionable surfaces and terrains that in all reality, they were never built to go.
It would, I believe, to be fair to say that it is only since the advances in modern communications technology, and the advent of the numerous Social media platforms, that these adventures have arrived en-mass onto the computer screens of people who, under normal circumstances, lived ‘conventional’ lifestyles and who could only dream of having such adventures themselves. It wasn’t just the financial aspect that prevented most of them from replicating this exciting nomadic lifestyle and following in their footsteps, but more importantly, actually having the courage to go and do it !! I mean, lets be honest, for the majority of people born before the start of the Eighties era, I think it would be fair to say that the normal priorities in life were simple, The Opposite Sex, Education, The Opposite Sex, Career, The Opposite Sex, Mortgage, Family and then Retirement and finally leaving the Kids everything that they, as parents, had just spent the last 4-50 years earning and saving so that they could provide an Inheritance !! Only the ‘rebellious’ individuals in an otherwise stable society would dare stray from those long held ‘Bare Necessities of Life’ traditions, now why do I want to start singing that song from the ‘Jungle Book’ 🤔
Things like taking a ‘Gap Year’, for travelling to all four corners of the globe are, I would argue, a relatively new and modern concept of life, at least compared to the scale at which it happens nowadays, but other changes in our modern lives has had a dramatic impact on being able to travel whilst still be able to continue with the likes of Education and Careers, and those things are the leaps and bounds in modern Technology, the ability of being able to conduct ‘normal life’ on-line, and from ‘virtually’ anywhere in the world, has certainly enabled these new found freedoms. Children can now be taken out of a normal learning and teaching environment and go on global adventures with parents, on both land and sea, and be ‘Home Schooled’ from the middle of the Pacific Ocean for example, or other remote places on the planet, people from all over the world can continue to work whilst continuing to earn a living from a Van, located high up in the mountains, or perhaps even on a nice sunny beach and, for those who have an ounce of IT know how (which these days certainly rules me out), can even make a living and earn an income from documenting their own personal travels !!
The vehicles that are now in production, to meet the demands of some extreme Countries with their harsh, and often unforgiving terrains, has grown enormously, from the much improved 4×4’s and ATV’s to massive six wheeler expedition vehicles, and everything else in-between, so the possibilities of where you can now go, if you are brave enough, is almost limitless and all of this is aided by the advances in Solar technolgy to meet the increasing power demands from a life spent ‘on the road’.
But for Shazza and myself, we consider ourselves only sufficiently brave enough to travel around the civilised areas of Europe and brief excursions into Morocco, and we are quite content for this to be ‘our’ particular ‘brave new world’ of nomadic travel, not needing or feeling a desire to cross deserts, or narrow ledged rocky mountain roads and passes, no, we are not, and I doubt we ever will be, that brave, and why should we be, there are so many wonderful places to explore, to see and do things that we have never been to before, and where our own production built ‘Little Fokker’ will take us.
But that of course does not stop us from watching other, much braver, individuals from having those adventures on our behalf, and we say a very big thank you to all of them for that, for although we may now be fulfilling our own nomadic adventures, it does not prevent us from also enjoying those of other’s.
Now I am not meaning to be ‘ageist’ here, but generally, or should I say previously, with some exceptions of course, unless you fell within what would probably have been classed as the ‘rich’ or ‘priviledged’ category, the type of people who had enough money and time to go on such adventures were referred to as ‘Grey Nomads’, those that had worked for the majority of their lives and had subsequently retired and now had the time, opportunity and freedom to venture away from those Conventional lifestyles. As much as my mind often wants to trick me into believing that I am still only 35 years old, unfortunately, I do have to somewhat reluctantly accept that certainly I, if not Shazza just yet, now too fall into that category, not the rich and privilidged one I hasten to add, but the ‘Grey Nomad’ one, but I make no apologies for telling you that I do fully intend to enjoy every single minute of this new found freedom, albeit on a limited ‘Grey Nomad’ budget !!
So, that leads me nicely into the other major change that we are now seeing in this nomadic lifestyle within today’s modern world, and that is in the age category of the people that are undertaking such adventures. Not discounting us ‘Grey Nomads’, who still continue to enjoy vanlife in great numbers, there are now a regular flow of younger generations who are not just taking up the nomadic lifestyle, but who are buying Commercial Vans, stripping them out to their bare shells and then rebuilding them and turning them into Camper vehicles, each one unique to their own individual specifications and on-board requirements, I cannot help but be mightily impressed with their skills in doing this, and indeed many of the innovative ideas and space saving ideas they come up with so that they can go off and have their own adventures. The distinct advantage to self-builds, over production builds, is that of course, if, or when, they want, or need, to make modifications or repairs, they know how they built the conversion and where vital Electrical cables or Plumbing pipes and joints are located, they can, with much less effort than with a factory built vehicle, change the internal layout and their individual storage requirements. This age group is by no means ‘strictly’ limited to just what we may consider as youngsters but, primarily, I would say that the age range is probably those ranging between the mid-twenties to probably somewhere in their late thirties and, unlike ourselves, who spent six years thinking and planning such a nomadic lifestyle, before getting to the stage of actually doing anything about it, these days the ‘youngsters’ just make the decision to do it and then get on with making it happen, and I take my hat off to them I really do.
Documenting travels is not a new concept either, but thanks to the advances in Technologies, the way in which such travels and adventures are documented have changed tremendously. When I commenced writing this particular series of ‘Lifestyle Blogs’ some seven years ago, they were the popular ‘In thing’ and it appeared that everyone and his dog was publishing one, not just about travel but also many different subjects and activities. However, in what appears to me to be a very short period of time, whilst many people like myself do still continue to write and publish Blogs, these have now been rapidly overtaken by the creation and publication of self made Video logs, hosted on a variety of on-line platforms, these are better known by the shorter term of ‘Vlogs’, and like the ‘Blogs’ they do not just cover Vanlife, or travel in general, but on any subject under the sun that you care to mention. The added advantage to Vlogs, over Blogs, is that, subject to careful editing of course, it actually shows people actively engaging in these activities, showing the scenery, the weather, the activities, whereas, generally speaking, Blogs just provide still images in the form of photographs, the nice view of the solitary van on a clifftop, overlooking the sea, whilst managing to edit the photograph so as not to reveal the other 25 vans parked alongside or behind !! And Yes, of course, the same editing techniques can also be true of the Vlogs.
Now I have to confess, and as you already well know anyway, I do have a fascination for lots of these ‘Vlogs’ and I have a lengthy list that I subscribe to, although they are not all totally dedicated to vanlife and are not all just about travels in Europe. With my love of boats you may also realise that I also enjoy watching Vlogs about people either living fulltime on Narrowboats on the waterways of the United Kingdom, or Mono Hull Sailing Yachts and Catamarans cruising around the Worlds Oceans and, much like today’s vanlifers, there are a growing community within the younger generation that are finding the means to purchase yachts, strip them out and renovate them before setting off to sail away into the sunset to explore numerous far away shores.
Again, there is a common theme amongst the ‘majority’ of those who I choose to watch on these variety of travel Vlog Channels, from all age groups, on both land and sea, and that common theme is that they are all attempting to make some sort of an income from their ‘Channels’, to help support these lifestyles. But of course, as is good business strategy, you do not put all your eggs into one basket ? So it isn’t just about the revenue from the Channel itself, and from what the majority of these ‘Vlog’ publishers have openly stated themselves, and which can be openly and publically verified on-line, their income streams from hosting platforms such as ‘You Tube’ often is minimal, but it can help to pay ‘some’ of the bills. They supplement this income by also selling a vast array of personalised ‘merchandise’, which of course is associated to their particular channel e.g. Clothing items, mugs, bumper stickers etc. Some have even have set up their own businesses which they can promote through their channels, health products, jewellery, ceramics, web hosting, the ist is extensive but also some are already in employment, and can, through the wonders of modern technology, continue this employment by working ‘from home’, home of course being wherever they choose to park or moor it. A lot do source incomes from what I will refer to simply as, ‘Crowd Funding’ for sake of an easy description (Patrons), or donations into what they may label ‘Coffee’ or ‘Beer’ funds, so all in all, many of these nomadic adventurers have some quite exceptional entrepeneurial skills, and continue to hone their existing skills as they move forward, which may, at some point in their future, after vanlife or boatlife, prove to be extremely beneficial. However, where the older generation do tend to ‘generally’ have a distinct advantage over the younger adventurers, is in this need to earn an income to fund their lifestyle, as, I have previously stated, that is because many ‘Grey Nomads’ tend to have regular incomes from former career related pensions, and/or State Pensions and some, although by no means all, may have ‘Savings’ pots to dip in and out of, if or when required.
For those of you, who like me, are fortunate enough to still have a good memory and can still remember the very first introductory paragraph of these current lengthy ramblings, the one which stated something to the effect about watching or reading something that acts as a catalyst in your brain that sets your mind racing ? You will know, especially if you are a regular follower, that somewhere in my usual lengthy ramblings, I will, eventually, get to the point, so here it is !!
Just recently, and I will blame the Covid situation and the Curfew for this, but only as a somewhat poor attempt to exonerate myself from watching far too many of the Travel related Vlogs that I have subscribed to. I am beginning to note a common recurring theme which is beginning to develop, at a slow pace at the moment, amongst the younger element of the vanlife community. It appears to me that after a relatively short vanlife period, and by short in the vanlife respect I am talking about anything from 1 year up to five or six years of travel, which, compared to many Fulltimers out there is a relativey short period, some are drifting away from vanlife as being their primary ‘Vlog’ lifestyle topic, to move on to other ‘projects’ or ‘adventures’, some do go from a van to a Narrowboat to wander the miles of UK Canal and River waterways, although to be honest, it is usually the other way around when it comes to Narrowboats, some Vanlifers are moving towards Yachts in order to explore new lands across vast Oceans and some more recently are making the move to other land based projects, namely buying plots of land and renovating, or building, properties so that they have………well lets call them ‘bolt holes’ for the sake of a better description. Now there is nothing whatsoever wrong with this, for who am I to even make comment on people who have seen more in one year of travel than I have over the past seven years ?
Now of course, there is nothing wrong with diversification, ‘a change is as good as a rest’ as they say, and I note too that many are now taking also taking breaks ‘within’ their travels to take time out staying in ‘Air BnB’s’, and why not, as I have always said, their is no right or wrong way to conduct this lifestyle, just your ‘own’ way. So, whilst I am certain that we are all familiar with the principle that food on supermarket shelves has a ‘Use By’ and ‘Sell By’ date on them, this current trend within the younger vanlife community to change direction after such a short time, has made me start to wonder and to consider the question, “Is There A Shelf Life to Vanlife ?”.
Could it be simply that vanlifers, after an extended period of time on the road, in their often quite compact homes on wheels, come to the decision that actually, whilst they may not want to stop vanlife entirely, they have realised that it may be a good idea to have some sort of a ‘bolt hole’ to go to when they just need a break from being on the road ? Perhaps, for the ‘British’ element of the vanlife community, it may be more of a concern to do with the upcoming reduced opportunities to travel within Europe that has been thrust upon them as a consequence of Brexit ? Or Perhaps, in light of this recent current Covid Pandemic, and the sometimes nightmare situations that has been created with the numerous short notice Lockdowns and Restrictions on travel, this has been a contributory factor in them wanting to have a more practical and readily available more permanent habitation to run to ?
But I do also have another theory, which I have to stress, is based purely on my own speculation and personal opinion, with nothing substantial or factual to support it, apart from perhaps listening to the Vanlifers own self-confessed pressures, and time constraints, that they have eluded to, from trying to generate an income from producing travel Vlogs on a regular weekly basis. Some have even be honest and open and published their personal issues brought about by the demands of travelling, filming, editing and producing content for their Vlogs, not just the mental stress that these pressures have created but also, the stresses and strains on personal relationships with their partners travelling with them. Why should it be so stressfull one may wonder, well that may, or may not, have something to do with the growth of competion that there now is amongst the vanlife community who produce these Vlogs, all of whom are competing with each other, trying to eek out an income from them and which is based on the number of Views they have on their channel, the number of ‘Patrons’, the number of ‘Donations’, the sales of ‘Merchandise’ and even the opportunities to attract corporate ‘Sponsors’, so whereas for us ‘Grey Nomads’ it is purely about a freedom to travel, for the younger element it is still really about ‘Working’ and generating an income source. If you saturate a market with the same product then the quality of that product will probably be the determining factor on who gets a larger slice of the financial pie.
On that note, many are now moving from producing and publishing just the one weekly Vlog to now publishing two, sometimes more, Vlogs per week. Now of course this could be simply explained by the fact that they film and record so much potential viewing content that they want their subscribers and Patrons to see, but which will not fit into the more usual 20-30 minute weekly episodes ? I can relate to that from my blog simply by the number of photographs that I often take on my cameras during my own travels and adventures, but I can only practically include a small selection of them in my blogs. Or, could it be that they want to try to increase the number of ‘views’ that they get on to their specific channel ? More views of course equates to more revenue, potentially more ‘Patrons, ‘Donations’ etc. etc. But with that increase in weekly publications is the question of ‘quality’ of product, even on my regular favourites I am seeing additional Vlogs that appear to have been pushed out just for the sake of it and unfortunately a severe drop in the standard and quality of the content. But apart from the viewers perspective, the personal stresses and strains on the actual producers of the Vlogs, that I mentioned above, must surely be amplified as well ? It leads me to ask another question, has the motivation towards vanlife for them moved from being, freedom to travel and have adventures and general enjoyment of the lifestyle, or does that focus change, to being primarily about moving from place to place on a regular basis solely for the purpose of filming, editing and producing Vlogs for an income ? I guess the more popular the channel then the greater those pressures become. So perhaps, the travel ‘Vloggers’ who are now beginning to diversify their activities into other areas, but who still continue to ‘Vlog’ using the same channel, have got a ‘jump’ on their competitors and taken the early initiative, perhaps managing to take their viewers and benefactors with them ? Wether that, in the long term proves to be a wise move, only time and their income streams will tell ?
So what about my Blog content ? My often frequent publications ? All I can say in my defence is that I do not write, edit, or publish my ramblings to earn an income. Neither do I publish them on any other social network platforms like Facebook, or Instagram, or Twitter as I intended these initially to be just a travel diary, to reflect upon, when we get to that certain age and can travel no more, and of course as a source of reference for our immediate family who could maintain a check on where we were, not that they are overly concerned about their future Inheritance, they are already aware that we are currently spending it 😂
As for Shazza and myself, the one big ‘Disadvantage’ that we may have is that of ‘Age’, it may be that living fulltime ‘on the road’ in our van travelling on a daily, weekly or even a monthly basis, may get too demanding as the years roll by, with the pressures associated to continually searching for facilities to service our on-board requirements, relying on Solar power to provide our energy requirements for our gadgets. So perhaps, even for us newly promoted ‘Grey Nomads’ with no real financial pressures like some of these younger vanlifers, there may still be a ‘Shelf Life to Vanlife’ ?
More Swerves In The Road 