Top 5 Skills You'll Gain From Campervanning

Hello Wonderful People!

 

When you pick up your campervan you're full of excitement about your new home and have visions of the amazing road trip ahead of you. Thoughts of driving songs, the open road and discovering new places jump into your head. However, there a few skill you don't expect to pick up along the way, but mark my words you'll learn at least one of theses life changing skills during your campervan adventure.



 Stealthy Showering

The shower in our van was pitiful. In fact, it didn't even deserve the title of shower. I think I used it twice and both times the water was absolutely freezing and I had to turn the tap on and off due to the fear of wasting all our water. As a result we all became extremely gifted at stealthy showering. We basically snuck into hostels and campsites in order to use the shower; I suppose you could call us shower thieves. Except we didn't actually run off with the physical shower itself, we just used it without permission. Sneaky. We actually became experts at blending in with the crowd and looking inconspicuous in order to quickly dash into a shower to become squeaky clean. If you're supper desperate then you can always pull over and bathe in a river. Please don't judge me, I am usually an honest law abiding citizen and upstanding member of the community (honest). We even once left an envelope with some money in at a campsite as we felt guilty for using the showers. The though of either not showering or dying from brain freeze in a cold shower turned me into a shower thief. I'M SORRY.

* Please note, we didn't actually bathe in a random river, it was a thermal one so we went for a dip!

 

Inventive Games

You'll be surprised how many games you'll be able to invent when faced with long nights stuck in the van in the middle of nowhere. Card games were obviously a favourite, and these became super competitive. They also double up pretty well as drinking games too, so bringing a pack of cards is an absolute must. We also invented a variety of games using a mere pen and paper. Old school, I know. One of my favourites was a categories game. You picked a letter at random and had to name one thing beginning with that letter from list of categories in 45 seconds. It got extremely tense and there were several arguments over the legitimacy of an answer. 'Yes the female name Xeingnol does exist.' We also came up with a few verbal games. One consisted of saying three things about yourself, two were true and one was a lie. The other players had to guess which one was the lie; this proved extremely difficult as we were all really good friends.  There were tons of other games that we invented during our trip and they made the campervan nights fly by.

 

 

Culinary Expertise

It's fair to say the kitchen in the van isn't the best. There was a gas hob with 4 rings, a sink, a small fridge and a microwave. Sadly, the microwave didn't work if the van wasn't plugged into power (which was most of the time) so we only had the hob to work with. As a result we all became extremely gifted in making meals out of the most rubbish food. Not having an oven or a microwave seriously limits what you can eat, and I ended up having very similar meals for the month. Soup or a sandwich were always a favourite for lunch and porridge was a winner for brekkie. Tea always proved to be a bit of a problem. We cooked a few bulk pasta dishes which were filling but didn't taste the best. I also ate my body weight in mash, beans and cheese. But I do love that combo, so I actually loved the excuse to eat it all the time!  

Pro Rally Driving

At first, driving the van was an extremely daunting prospect. Not only was it HUGE, it also felt like it would tip over every time it turned a corner. After a few days of driving I got pretty used to it and soon thought of myself as a pro campervan driver. Sadly the van did 0-60 in around 15 hours (this may be a slight exaggeration) and we were limited to drive it at 50mph, so my racing dreams were never really fulfilled. However, this didn't stop us revving at other cars at traffic lights to challenge them to a race, only to be left behind as our van chugged into action.

 Toilet Cleaning

 

Having a sink/ shower/ toilet in your van is very handy, but it also means you'll have to dispose of that waste. Yep, you got it; you need to empty out a nice tub of bodily fluids every couple of days. Fantastic. This seemed pretty gross at first and everyone tried to avoid doing it. However, this obviously wasn't feasible and as our toilet was nearly overflowing we bit the bullet and stopped at a dumping site to get rid. It wasn't actually as bad as we thought, thanks to the magic little tablets you pop in the tub to disintegrate everything and make it smell reasonably ok (as ok as a mixture of wee and poo poo can, ew). Sadly, while we started to regularly empty the loo, we completely forgot to empty our waste water tank. Imagine our shock when we got back to the van one night to find it completely flooded. The tank had overflowed through the shower room plug. Whoopsies. Once you've figured out how to empty everything though, it's really not that bad. And if you're camper vanning then there is no way to avoid it, sozzzzza.

 

 

Goodbye, for now!