I can't believe how quickly time flys. It doesn't feel like yesterday we were in the Van as a family exploring Scotland and the rest of the UK and here I am writing The End of our Full Time Vanlife journey!
We spent nearly 2 years on the road and quite frankly it was the most fun we've had in years, for many reasons, but being on the road like that pretty much forced you to create memories and live on the edge together so often and honestly when we look back we had more ups than downs :P I think a lot of that is credit to Mitzi, Jak and Zyra being so open minded to my wild ideas like this.
The van was always supposed to be a stepping stone to where we would find "home" next. We didn't imagine finding that so soon, and honestly we wasn't really looking but all things aligned and here we are "quitting" vanlife and moving into our own Scottish Croft.
The whole vanlife Journey started in around 2019 when we decided it would be a good move for us, but in the past 5 years things have shifted quite considerably in the Vanlife world, at least in the UK. Vanlife isn't as welcomed as it used to be, its too popular and too many people are not being respectful enough of the areas they are staying, in turn tarnishing everyone in a van with the same shit brush.
That and the cost of living shooting through the roof, campsites went from probably around £10-15 a night to sometimes over £50. Its still not too bad if you're a solo traveler but for a family of 4, its at least £30/35 a night. You get charged for the van and then per person... Some campsites even charging you for having a dog!! I get it, everything is more expensive, electric, water, food, etc and that cost has to come from somewhere, but with my need for electric and running the PC for work, it felt like we were camped up more often than not because I had to work more, to cover the rising costs of being in the Van full time, counter productive to the original plan of saving money!
In the end as you can see from the videos we ended up at a beautiful holiday park on the West Coast of Scotland where we ended up staying for over a year! We became apart of their crew helping with filming, marketing and all things in the branding world - even some trips down the London to pick up their new Food trailer! However this "break" from the Van allowed us to make a decision and we put the van up for sale and in the end sold it to a lovely chap and we've used the funds from the Van to purchase the Croft!
We've decided to leave these channels up rather than continueing them because we've created a lovely memory around "Overland Gaming" and maybe one day if we get back on the road we can post some content here but for now, we've left this up as a memory to our Vanlife adventures and I will be continuing to post some content when I can over on "The Fairweather Crofter" channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv4ONQdOQiLLMmaYNRgysbA
The name comes from me enjoying my motorbiking days, in the sun, as a Fairweather Rider... I'm quite looking forward to Crofting most of the time in the Sun, but hey, we're in Scotland, can't hide from the rain :P
Thank you again for all the lovely comments, support, suggestions, meeting some of you on the road was amazing and just generally had a wicked time sharing our adventures with everyone!
Jak & Zyra, I hope you guys had fun and you can see what crazy shit your parents did while you were growing up to try and enjoy our time together and make some fun memories!
