We have done the plastic free home and nailed backpacking plastic-free – it’s time for a new challenge. How about packing everything up to travel round the UK in a van? A plastic free van… a plastivan if you will!

Our plan? To travel high roads and low dives of the great and glorious U.K. It’s been a trip long in the coming but one of the advantages of advancing years is that I can finally afford to travel England. Before this it has been backpacking in Asia and I know Varanasi better than I knew Bath. In fact I didnt know Bath at all and while both places encourage bathing in the local waters, I was fairly certain Bath didnt do public cremations. Unless it was of reputations. Get that Jane Austin reference there?

So armed with a National Trust card we set off to explore our heritage. It went so well that when winter came, we decided to take the van to Spain to explore some one elses.

NB When I say afford, this is not luxury travel. It involves a good measure of wild camping and we can only look wistfully through the windows of the NT cafe (in the delightfully converted, scullions punishment room). But who knows? Maybe bed and breakfast and cream teas are the rewards of retirement.

The Van

Spring 2013 we converted the work van into a home. It was been something of a recycling, upcycling kind of project. The design was dictated by what was in the cellar, parts cannabalised from the old van and what was going cheap on ebay.

We insulated the walls with plastic bubble insulation as it was the thinnest most efficient and liner we could afford. Put in some lights that VB wired up to a leisure battery.

• We cook on an old, 2 ring camping stove.
• The sink and tap are from the old van the plate racks are from Ikea.
• The curtains are what we had in the fabric pile.
• The paint is from the cellar.

The overall impression is …. eclectic? Hendrix on chintz?

April 2014

we set off round England

Spain

We spent winter in Spain.

Plastic Free Living

Of course every month is plastic free for us but you can read our write ups of plastic free July, here.

You can find all our van posts here