This morning I met up with S and after a bite of breakfast headed north. We had a quick dash into IKEA to take back some lights then jumped on the M6. It was grim weather so we agreed to meet at Tebay services rather than travel in convoy.

After coffee and pies at Tebay the next stop was GoOutdoors at Penrith to pick up some new lights for the van.

The lights are awesome! Lighting up the whole van. An impulse purchase of a camping toaster has revolourionised my van life! BEST THING EVER!

After the excitement we carried on to Carlisle, after a bit of food shopping we found a geocache then headed for our rest stop.

I put up the lights then started cooking dinner. S meanwhile obsessively tidied my van and hid all the lighting wires.

After dinner we got very excited making toast. Seriously it's amazing, watching the bread and turning it to make sure it's the right level of toasted.

Tomorrow it's off to Edinburgh and Hogmany. I probably won't be posting tomorrow.

Happy New Year!

Well this morning I found myself sitting in a local garage waiting for the winter tyres to be put on my big brown van. 

After several hours of waiting they were on and I was ready to go. Well ready to go home anyway, despite having a van full of kit I also had a van full of wheels, which needed to end up back in the garage. I also had to load up the van with Nana's luggage. 

after saying around of fair wells I chucked the last few bits and bobs in the van (I am always surprised at how many bits and bobs there are) and headed off North.

It all went swimmingly until I attempted to return some stuff to IKEA. This was a bad move. Apparently people want to go sale shopping between Christmas and New Year. 40min later i was still on the first roundabout. Eventually I managed to get back to the M25 and head north again, still with the IKEA stuff. 

It was just traffic the whole way. Car after car after car. Horrific. 

Eventually after many hours of driving I made it to Nana's in Culcheth where I have called it an evening and am crashing out to sleep. Night All!

Well so it begins... 

I would like to begin by apologising for being such an antisocial person for the last few weeks and month. This is an attempt to explain why. 

In short I bought a Van.

The long of it is that I have been converting it to a camper van... 

It started with a crazy idea, followed by a crazier business plan.

Then came the building. I bought the van and then took it to Scott Campers to be insulated, lined and carpeted. While I had wanted to do this myself I just ran out of time to mess things up so decided that as I wanted a window put in the back anyway this could all be done by the professionals.

So with a little help from my brother i started making a bed. 

After building a fairly passable and quite secure bed, I started building a cupboard to house the stove and food and cooking stuff. I can safely say that having a brother who likes power tools became exceptionally handy.

One advantage of trying to do all this over christmas is that various family members were around to help, or to be honest, being volunteered to help by having jobs sprung on them. Nana and mum rose to the challenge of making the upholstery for the bed (and mum got to buy an new sewing machine). 

To cut a long story short and because its getting late, everything came together in the end. I find myself writing this blog on the eve of my departure. But where am I going? 

Well... I will be moving, in the new van, to Scotland. To climb, Ski and Mountaineer until work picks up again in the spring. Honestly this is possibly on of the biggest, scariest things that I have under taken.

The idea is to meet as many friends and colleagues as possible while in Scotland and to log as many days in the hill as possible.

So wish me luck, and feel free to come visit while I'm away. Ill try and keep the blog updated this time.