"Volume 002" - Entry 003
Entry 03 - Sell Everything
Filed from The road - "van life"
So roll on a new chapter. Shall we leave England and start a new life somewhere else,
Elena said.
" Worth Remembering "
Let’s buy a camper and go, I said.
The rest is history. We sold everything. Cars, tools, TVs, guitars, furniture all of it.
What we kept, the screen printing press and my drift trike, my last real toy, clothes and personal items got condensed down until it fit in the van alongside us.
We bought an old 1995 Fiat Ducato and spent weeks gutting it out, building it back up as a proper little cabin on wheels. Solar panels went in. A wood stove got added later, once we realised what winter actually meant.
We drove from Sheffield to Dover, caught the ferry, and just kept going. Through the Netherlands, through Germany, then broke down in Poland and got stuck there for days with tyres exploding under us. That van broke down pretty much every single day of that trip. We ended up calling it Broken Teeth, because of the toothache it gave us.
From there it was Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, then the ferry across to Helsinki. We drove straight to Lee, Elena’s sister, and I picked up work at the international food market while we got our bearings. We spent that stretch travelling around Finland in the van, Elena working in a tattoo studio in Turku.
When the market season ended and winter properly set in, Broken Teeth couldn’t take much more of it. Minus fifteen, snow everywhere, and ice forming on the inside of the roof overnight from our own breath.
We packed up, cat included, and pointed the van south.