Welcome to our little bit of the internet, the blogs will all be relevant to our motor homing experiences and sharing the ups and hopefully not too many downs, how we cope with everyday situations, cooking, park ups and the odd hints and tips.
We will add links to everything relevant to our adventures, where we got advice from, including the best vlogs on YouTube that helped us along the way with information, maps and sites of all our favourite walks.
The blogs will be updated as and when we get to go out in Evie, and we will also be adding some of the tours and walks we have done prior to starting the blog back up until we catch up
Our Journey
Steve and my journey started back in 2013, Steve, mine and Evie’s journey started in 2018, and this is our story.
Steve was going through a bad divorce and I had already been divorced for a good few years earlier. I had always enjoyed walking and wildlife, but as it does, life takes over and I never had the time to fit the walking in, it was always work sleep work, and with 3 boys my life was put on hold for a while. I will admit that I have never really been a camping/caravan kind of girl, I like my luxuries a bit too much, which is really only having a shower and a toilet were no one can hear you do what you need to do, I used to go with my Mum and Dad in a touring caravan up to Scotland and used to love that, but when your young things like that never bother you. Apart from the journey up there, it seemed to take forever as there wasn’t many motorways then, it used to take forever to get to the shops in the small town were we lived as the A55 was not built then, never mind up to Scotland in a Austin Maxi towing a caravan in the height of summer.
Steve and I met on Friends Reunited which was a school social media site, which was similar to Facebook, but not as big and it didn’t really take off, we started chatting and after a few weeks eventually went on a date, we decided to go on a walking date to Llyn Brenig Reservoir, that was the start of our walks together and eventually the start of our walking holidays. Steve had said on quite a few occasions that he had always fancied getting a campervan/motorhome so he could just go off with his camera and see were the road takes him, I on the other hand thought of holidays in little country cottages with roaring fires and of course a shower and we could plan walks, explore the local area and have lunch at a country pub (you can still do that in a motorhome), then go back to the cottage with the roaring fire or in the summer sit in the garden with a glass of wine, well depending on the good British weather.
I moved in with Steve, after not so long and we started to plan our future together, the subject of the campervan/motorhome never came up again and we had some lovely holidays in some lovely cottages, none with a roaring fire as it was either too warm for one or when we did winter ones they had central heating and we couldn’t be arsed lighting a fire after a long walk. We had a holiday in Devon in October 2014 where Steve proposed and so began our plans for a wedding, we got married on a beach in Scotland on August 25th 2015, it took a lot of planning as we are in an North Wales, but it was a fantastic day and everything believe it or not went right ,we had family and just a couple of friends, 25 people made the long journey up to Scotland to help us celebrate our big day, and all of them made a holiday of it and stayed for a week, or some just a few days. One set of friends even hired a motorhome and toured Scotland for 2 weeks after the wedding and even went to Harris and Lewis.
Round about the end of 2017 the subject of buying a motorhome came up again, we started looking at a few, but really I was doing it half-heartedly, even with the few we looked at I started to warm to the idea and started to think about what sort of lay out I wanted, I was sure I didn’t want one in which you slept above the cab, too claustrophobic for me I thought, I wanted a lay out were you could function even with the bed made up, i.e. with a fixed table and you could get to the kitchen and of course a shower and toilet. After looking for a while we decided that we couldn’t afford one and we would look in a few years maybe when Steve retired and we had saved enough money, so we continued having cottage holidays. We had bought some good cameras by this time and started to enjoy photography a lot more, we aren’t fantastic photographers by far but we take a mean photo sometimes.
The beginning of June 2018 Steve was asked to go with his manager on a business trip and during that trip was the first mention of Evie (she had no name at this point), the managers Mum was selling her motorhome. Steve came home from that trip with all talk of this motorhome, I agreed to go and see it, so the next day Steve made arrangements to go and see it, it was in a caravan compound, with a lot of other motorhomes, some of which were lovely and some of which looked bloody awful, we had no idea which one it was going to be. Our first sighting of Evie was relief, she was in good nick, paint work, wheels, lights etc., so that was a good start.
As we stepped inside we were pleasantly surprised, she didn’t smell musty or damp like other motorhomes we had been to see. She is of course an older motorhome so all the cupboards doors were wood, but not a dark wood. The tiny kitchen was on the left of the door with a 3 ring gas hob plus a grill and small sink, a fridge, a cutlery draw and a cupboard under that and 2 cupboards above, why does everyone have the urge to open a cupboard door I really don’t know but you do and we did, no work surface at all, which did worry me, but as Steve pointed out that I’m not going to make a 3 course meal for loads of people in her, right next to that there was a door, behind it was a small bathroom, toilet, sink and oh yes a shower, I’ll compromise the fact of no kitchen work surface for a shower, next to that was quite a big wardrobe. There was a table with two seats on each side of it by a large window, on the opposite side was a long settee and a window above that, then I looked at the cab noticed that the bed was above it, my heart sank a bit but I didn’t show it, it was a 5 berth so we could make the bed where the table was so that was ok, I could cope with that too.
We were left on our own for a while to look around and discuss and quickly came to the decision to buy it, Steve was so excited, I on the other hand was a bit more apprehensive, we discussed a price which suited both parties and the deal was done. By the time we went to pick her up I was quite excited about the prospect of holidays and weekends away when we wanted, and if we didn’t like it we could sell it on. I filmed Steve pulling up outside our house and from that moment on I had believe it or not fell in love with it, we had to think of a name which was quite easy as on the back left hand corner there was a sticker saying Evelyn, so we just shortened that so hence the name Evie and so the next chapter of our lives began.
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