Van Life, Bad Ideas & Going Back to Portugal

00:00 — David:
Hello, this is Episode Four. Woo! We've had an exciting time trying to resurrect Episode Three. We recorded it, spent 49 minutes recording it, and guess what? It vanished.

Riverside. We had transcript notes, the whole thing, no audio, no video, and I pulled my hair out. But finally I've logged in today and there it is. Alison is mortified. So you might have already watched that and understand why.

Alison:
Yeah. I don't like this being on camera.

00:30 — David:
We've both got faces for radio, haven't we?

Alison:
Speak for yourself.

David:
Alison's drinking a massive cup of coffee. I bought an Aldi milk frother for fifteen quid, and now we have luxury coffees at home.

Alison:
Should've been a toaster.

01:01 — David:
We live in a van, but we've been given a static caravan to use from where I'm working in Scotland and we're currently sitting in it.

This is probably nineteen-eighties decor. It's pretty salubrious. Can't knock it. It's got a flushing toilet and we've got room to swing a cat.

Alison:
We haven't got a cat. We've got a dog.

01:31 — David:
Was selling everything actually worth it, do you think?

Alison:
No. Next.

David:
Well obviously yes, otherwise we wouldn't be here.

Alison is quite happy living in the van. She says it doesn't matter where we are. Open the door, let the kids out and she's happy as long as she's got a crochet hook.

02:26 — David:
What's the biggest "what the fuck have we done?" moment?

Alison:
Probably listening to all the advice saying you can't use your house, you can't use your business, you can't do this and can't do that.

We listened to it all, sold our business, sold our houses and then thought: what are we doing for an income?

03:28 — David:
We need a regular income, which is one reason we're doing things like this. We've spent about sixteen pounds setting up the podcast, got it onto everything and hopefully we'll eventually get more than three listeners.

We've got three listeners. Thank you to all three of you.

03:57 — David:
Four kids in a van. How does this actually work?

We have four kids and live in a Mercedes Sprinter long-wheelbase van with a high roof. On top of that high roof is another pop-top roof.

A lot of people ask how we get up there. The answer is: not very often.

04:27 — David:
At the beginning I slept in the roof. The kids commandeered most of the other sleeping space. Alison was wedged into whatever space remained.

After I broke my ribs I modified the front seats so they swivelled around and built boards across them to create another double bed.

05:11 — David:
Hello. That's not a water pistol.

05:21 — David:
Our three-year-old has just appeared.

Alison:
They're not coming in with that water pistol.

David:
It's lovely sunny weather, which is quite rare in Scotland.

05:50 — David:
For the first year I was cooking outside because we'd prioritised bed space and storage inside the van.

We had loads of storage boxes under the bed and carried far too much stuff around.

06:25 — David:
We had sixteen plastic storage crates under the double bed. The weight of the van was horrific.

Alison:
The ones that say "this has been stolen from Next".

David:
We bought them from Facebook Marketplace.

06:54 — David:
We've refitted the van about six times and now we've got it pretty much right. We can actually cook inside it now.

Alison:
Last year in Scotland we were relying on Dave cooking outside every day, sometimes in rain and snow.

07:22 — David:
Alison doesn't know how to cook pasta and beans.

Alison:
I do. You do it wrong.

08:04 — David:
I've got the kids' noodles down to a fine art. They're not actually Super Noodles.

I don't use the flavour packets. I add courgette, lentils, broccoli, miso and proper spices, and they still think they're eating Super Noodles.

08:33 — David:
I've just finished a ten-day stretch at work and this is my day off.

08:42 — David:
Is this lifestyle genuinely cheaper? Or have we just swapped mortgages and bills for diesel, repairs, Starlink and random eighty-six-pound cables?

Alison:
It has the potential to be much cheaper. It's just not necessarily cheaper for us.

09:11 — David:
We have four children, so it's difficult to compare our spending with people who don't.

We probably spend around eighty to a hundred pounds a week on the main grocery shop, with some top-ups.

10:07 — David:
I made pizzas yesterday because the little pizzas we used to buy have changed. That's probably an entire episode for another day.

Meanwhile I've apparently created a cup of coffee roughly the temperature of lava.

10:34 — David:
The Aldi milk frother was fifteen pounds and it's brilliant.

Alison:
You're supposed to put a bit of cold milk in afterwards.

11:32 — David:
I've shaved my head. I started going bald at twenty-seven, which is why I've got this ridiculous beard.

One day I'm going to grow it long enough to pull over the top of my head and tie into a bun.

Alison:
That'll be the day you don't see me again.

12:02 — David:
The midges here are terrific. We've been eaten alive by them.

12:30 — David:
We're still talking about money. Diesel is probably around fifty pounds every two weeks at the moment because we're not moving the van much.

I've agreed to stay and help where I'm working because finding staff in the Highlands is difficult and they've been really good to us.

13:00 — Alison:
They're letting us stay in the static caravan. They haven't actually given it to us.

David:
Apparently you have to be specific on the internet.

13:35 — David:
Our biggest recent bill has probably been Starlink.

We needed it for uploading the podcast and running the website because doing everything through mobile data wasn't working.

14:05 — David:
Starlink is brilliant, but in the van it's incredibly power hungry.

In the static caravan we've got mains electricity, so it's now running constantly and everything is connected to it.

15:02 — David:
Three-year-old toilet break. This is recorded live and we're leaving almost all of it in.

16:04 — David:
Our replacement Starlink cable cost eighty-six pounds.

We could have returned it and bought a shorter one, but it'll eventually be useful on the mountain.

16:32 — David:
Welcome to my Brilliant Ideas Graveyard.

Alison is going to list all the ideas I've abandoned, resurrected or inflicted upon the household. I get a right of reply.

16:57 — Alison:
There's the T-shirt printing.

David:
That's still happening.

I bought twenty-one white T-shirts so the kids can collect flowers and plants and make natural prints.

17:27 — Alison:
What about the old T-shirt and mug business?

David:
I bought hundreds of pounds' worth of mugs, shirts and hoodies and hardly printed any of them.

17:56 — Alison:
What about the kitchen sink?

David:
We put a water filter on the kitchen tap and now it leaks everywhere.

We've bought a new tap. It's definitely going to happen.

18:26 — Alison:
The tap is more likely to happen than the T-shirts.

David:
The T-shirts are happening.

18:51 — Alison:
There's also the solar panel sitting upstairs.

David:
That's happening as well.

The problem is we're in Scotland, and every time I've had time to fit it, it's been raining.

19:36 — David:
Just so you know I'm not talking bollocks, here's the solar charger.

In Scotland our old solar setup wasn't producing enough, so I was having to run the van for an hour and a half or two hours to recharge the lithium battery.

20:31 — Alison:
By the time you've fitted it we won't be in Scotland anymore.

David:
That's fine. It'll still work in Portugal.

It's a massive 500-watt panel.

21:01 — David:
The water-filter tap is too heavy for the old caravan fittings.

My temporary engineering solution involved cocktail sticks, until Wolf pulled them out.

I need adapters before I can fit the new tap properly.

21:58 — Alison:
Your ideas also come in the form of courses you've bought online.

My ideas graveyard is visible because it's bags of yarn and craft supplies. Yours just vanish somewhere.

22:27 — David:
Alison also wants to tattoo me.

That's not happening.

22:46 — David:
Then there are the two apps.

They're not dead. We simply don't currently have the money to develop them.

Alison:
Filed away for someday.

David:
The someday filing system.

23:15 — David:
Stomplings is the children's walking idea, where kids can log birds, trees, animals and other things they discover outdoors.

It's built conceptually. It just isn't live.

23:44 — David:
Scotland versus Portugal. If you had to permanently choose one tomorrow, which would you choose?

Alison:
Portugal.

David:
Weather and affordability make that an easy answer.

24:13 — David:
In Portugal you can still go out for a coffee for around a euro. We need to find somewhere locally that sells proper fresh milk.

24:43 — David:
Scotland is stunning, but it's expensive and the weather can be brutal.

We recently had an eclipse and I set up the camera to record it. Naturally, the clouds arrived.

25:13 — Alison:
I showed the kids and they looked out of the window, said "look, moon", and then immediately lost interest because their friends were having a water fight.

26:22 — David:
What has living together twenty-four seven done to our relationship?

26:41 — David:
I think it's probably made it stronger.

There is absolutely no privacy when you're living in a van with children, but that's become normal.

27:10 — David:
The kids have made friends around the static caravan, so this is actually the quietest we've had it for ages.

27:39 — Alison:
People used to ask how I coped with you when we had the pub. The answer was that I barely saw you.

28:00 — David:
I've done something to my foot and walking is currently killing me.

Yesterday I intended to spend the afternoon with Alison, then ended up lying down before work instead.

29:12 — David:
I have to offer Alison a drink.

If I don't offer, I'm in trouble. If I actually make it, I'm also in trouble.

The compromise is that I offer, she declines and makes it herself, and I make sure there's enough water left in the kettle.

29:42 — David:
What drives each other insane?

My biggest complaint about Alison is that any flat surface becomes completely covered in stuff within about three minutes.

30:12 — David:
We currently have a box full of leaves collected for T-shirt printing, somebody's hair, sheep wool, cleaning products, random sticks, plates, pens and dinosaurs.

30:42 — Alison:
The sheep wool is going to become yarn.

David:
Another dead business.

31:07 — David:
The kids are also trying to hatch a chicken egg.

It isn't going to hatch, but apparently we're giving them the valuable life experience of being completely disappointed by something they've worked hard at.

31:45 — David:
What happens when the Scotland season ends? What's the genuine plan for the first month back on the mountain?

32:13 — David:
These questions came from AI after I fed it the first three transcripts.

Apparently this is the intelligence that's going to take over humanity.

32:55 — David:
When we get back to Portugal the first job is strimming everything because it'll all be overgrown.

Then we switch the house back on, bring everything out of hibernation and get back into olive season.

33:24 — David:
Earlier this year I hard-pruned the olive trees around the house.

Many had been neglected for years, with new growth coming up everywhere and most of the olives appearing far too high to reach.

33:49 — David:
The olives themselves were tiny.

I've been learning from the local farmers how to bring the trees back down to a manageable shape.

We've got around six hundred olive trees on the mountain, so this is not a small job.

34:18 — David:
The trees around the house should now produce a much better crown of growth.

Because I hard-pruned the whole tree, this year probably won't produce many olives, but next year should be considerably better.

34:48 — David:
One of our oldest olive trees is enormous and is said locally to be several hundred years old.

It's split through the middle and has been held together using wire and old tyres. Yet it just keeps growing.

35:27 — David:
Fire is another reason we stayed in Scotland this summer.

Large parts of Europe are dealing with extreme heat and fires again, and after last year's experience we decided cooler Scotland was the better option for the family.

35:54 — Alison:
Scotland is notoriously wet. We knew what we were signing up to.

36:22 — David:
The BBC recently came to where I'm working to talk about people choosing Scotland to escape the heat elsewhere in Europe.

French and German visitors were saying exactly that: they wanted cooler weather.

36:52 — David:
The fantasy version of returning to Portugal is that we get back and immediately do everything.

Last time we ran a pizza shop, worked on the olives, pulled floors out of the house, repaired things and grew vegetables.

37:21 — Alison:
There will always be more to do.

Farming and gardening never really reach a finished point. It's a cycle.

37:50 — David:
The long-term goal is still to create a retreat on the mountain.

It's beautiful. Within three to five years we'd like people to be able to stay there, reconnect and learn about some of the plants and food growing naturally around them.

38:19 — David:
Before any of that, we need to become more self-sufficient ourselves.

Solar is one major part. Water is the other.

38:48 — David:
We have a natural spring area on the mountain and need to work out the best way to access it.

We've been told several possible ways of doing it, including drilling or potentially accessing water horizontally through the slope.

39:17 — David:
The land naturally funnels water towards one area where we have marsh grasses and visible moisture.

Finding reliable water there would completely change how easily we can live on the land.

39:45 — David:
At the moment, going out to collect water turns into: shall we get coffee? Shall we get soup? And suddenly half the day has gone.

40:08 — David:
Our youngest has just woken up and joined us.

40:28 — David:
She's pointing and laughing at me.

She is probably the cuddliest member of the entire operation.

40:57 — David:
Beyla is my favourite Beyla, Wolfie is my favourite big lad, Zai is my favourite Zai, and the baby is my favourite baby.

41:29 — David:
Thank you very much for watching or listening.

We've got plenty more to talk about. If there's something you want us to answer, send us a message.

All three of you.

41:58 — David:
We're now on pretty much every podcast platform we can find.

And we've got three listeners.

42:15 — David:
You can see why we live in a static caravan in Scotland.

42:20 — David:
Anyway, thank you very much. You can see it's high-tech here.