So it seems that in December, Winter has properly gotten started in the UK and we’ve had quite a busy couple of weeks on the run up to Christmas.

As we left you last time, we were heading north towards Sheffield to a campsite we love called Wymingbrook Farm. It’s perfectly located just 10 minutes by scooter one direction to my sisters house and 10 minutes the other way into the Peak District.

It had been quite an easy but a long drive up from Hertfordshire and having navigated the bustle of Sheffield city centre, we were relieved to reach the farm and pull into our space. Opening the door and stepping out there’s that clean, clear and countryside smell that you only seem get in the Peak or Lake Districts. After years of holidaying here, for us, it’s like taking a deep breath, letting it out slowly and relaxing.

A word or two on energy

It’s fair to say that when we started this journey, we didn’t really have a clue about what it would actually be like to live in a motorhome fulltime.

Sure, we’d read all the blogs and brought all the kit but we didn’t have any real experience of motorhoming and, unsurprisingly, spending occasional weekends at a campsite that was 5 miles from our house with electricity, showers and toilets is not the same as being independent and on the road every day.

One of the main things that wasn’t really on our radar in the early days was our use of energy, which in our case means electricity and gas (LPG).

Whilst, with quiet satisfaction, we judged most things pretty well and have taken to and absolutely love our new life, we’ve found increasingly that we spend less time on the bigger, fully serviced campsites gravitating instead towards smaller and more peaceful stopovers, which often don’t have electricity.

Another influence has been the absolutely staggering increase in price of electricity in 2022, which campsite owners are having to pass on to customers in one way or another. For us for example, this has meant that the cost of staying at the larger club run sites is now often out of our budget.

As we gained this experience, we made a plan for 2022 to improve our self reliance, to see if we can live more sustainably and be off-grid for longer.

In April, we improved our solar performance with new panels and more modern controllers and this month we’ve increased our LPG capacity by adding a super big refillable tank, neatly hidden under the Beatrix’s skirt, that will double our existing capacity.

Through Summer and Autumn, we were super pleased to find our new solar set up has delivered exactly what we hoped, with our batteries mostly recharging each day we’ve even been able to enjoy ‘free’ cups of tea made with sunshine.

Winter is, however, a much bigger challenge.

Solar panels are much less efficient with the angle of the sun at this time of year and there are fewer daylight hours available to gather precious Amps into our batteries. Surprisingly, on bright, lighter grey days we do get a few Amps in but there are also those cloudy, miserable, wet days when there is just no solar gain at all.

The other side of the energy equation is no better either as the shorter, colder days mean that we have our lights on for longer and run the heating more often.

Now, of course, all of this is obvious and the numbers can be easily be calculated by a GCSE Physics student but the reality of living it feels different and we don’t yet have any experience of how it will affect how we live.

Why spend so much time explaining all of this?

Well, at our farm stopover in Sheffield, we’ve decided to test our readiness, and save some money, by not hooking up to electricity and will instead see how we can manage with our batteries and new super large gas tank.

Assuming all goes well, we’ll do the same as we travel around Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex too.

We get off to a great start, as the weather is absolutely fantastic and the only major change for us has been that we both spend more time watching the Victron App* on our phones than we do watching Strictly Come Dancing. The cloudy sun helps us to get some free Amps and although it’s chilly, the daytime sunshine warms the van too. (* The Victron App tells us about the amount of charge is going in or out of our batteries)

But of course, it doesn’t last and our sunny morning walk is replaced by a thick, low and freezing fog which sits over us for days.

After spending a lovely couple of days with Jacs and Chris, which included the creation of some imaginative balloon animals by Sally for our wonderful nephews, we bade everyone farewell and headed to the coast. We decided to stopover at Skegness on the way down to Norfolk as we missed the seaside and we’d never been to the Lincolnshire coast before.

Ending up in Winthorpe, we had that same ‘resort out of season’ feeling that we felt on the Atlantic Coast of France. The North Sea is a bit, err, browner this time of year and there’s a lot of wind farms on the east coast but the deserted beaches with their patches of long grass clinging on in the wind felt somehow wilder and our sunset walk had an amazing light.

The first leg of our East Anglia Christmas tour, was a stopover with friends for the weekend near King’s Lynn. It’s always such great fun and at this time of year we were lucky enough to be invited to a school Nativity/Christmas show too which was brilliant and we really enjoyed.

At this point, the weather really took a substantial turn for the colder with temperatures over night as low as -6c and barely scraping above freezing during the day. All of this meant our heating was on pretty much fulltime. Whilst the bright blue skies and winter sun recharged our batteries, using the heating like this burned off all of the LPG in our super big gas tank in about 5 days. Oops.

I admit I’m a bit disappointed as I hoped we’d be able to survive longer than this but I guess we wanted to live normally, for us, which meant not being cold or having to sit under a pile of jumpers and blankets all day to stay warm and the conditions are pretty ‘exceptional’ for the UK. It’ll be easier when conditions warm back up to average.

It does make me very glad for the electric hook up we get in the ski resort at Montgenevre as our time at 1800m would be pretty limited without!

Wishing Lucy and Ben a Merry Christmas, we headed out to a campsite in Sandringham for a couple of days to recharge and to enjoy the forest which was stunning in the Winter chill. The Luminate light trial was fun too with a welcome glass of mulled wine at the end.

Driving around the coast, after an LPG fill up, our next stop was on the North Norfolk coast at East Runton. We squeezed Beatrix onto one of the few remaining campsites that are open at this point in the year and enjoyed a cracking walk over the bump and into Sheringham.

While the sea always looks amazing, it was a lot less inviting than when I’d been surfing in Cromer over Summer that’s for sure.

After a few bright, cold days of beach walks and hot tea’s, we headed inland to another little farm campsite to see Tim and Victoria.

The coast, it turned out, had protected us from some of the cold weather and we were surprised to see that a few inches of snow had fallen over the last couple of days. We were definitely grateful to have our awesome winter spec tyres fitted on Beatrix as the smaller lanes were totally iced over in places. In fact, driving actually felt safer than walking as even Merlin, with four paws and claws, was slip sliding around when we went out.

The village of Gresham made up for it though with a perfect Christmas card view.

The final stop of our tour, was to see Anthea and Kevin and then to head over to Pullingers to get a few important little things sorted with Beatrix before we head up into the mountains next year. It turns out that there’s not really any need to tell our friends what dates we’ll be coming to see them as the increasing frequency of Amazon deliveries arriving at their address heralds our arrival.

We are very grateful to know so many wonderful people who are happy to have us stay on driveways, receive our mail or let us use their washing machines.

After our Christmas tour, we’re also really happy that this new lifestyle of ours allows us to see them more often and share more time and create new memories with them.

And so, it’s on to our final stop of the year and for Christmas with family.

Merry Christmas from Sally, Toby and Merlin