The beginning of 2024 is all about the weather.

Now I realise us Brits do like a bit of a moan about the weather and being at the whim of the elements means fulltime vanlifers’ can be more pedantic than most. That said, this winter feels like it’s been worse than any other we’ve had with it raining, drizzling or bucketing it down and frequently all three together. We three have been cooped up in our little space for too long.

This year though, it’s the wind that’s been different.

For us, it started after Christmas in Gatwick as Storm Gerrit blew across the UK. We ended up manoeuvring Beatrix mid-afternoon to avoid the 40+ miles per hour winds battering us broadside all night. It’s not easy to sleep when you hear the springs creaking and feel your home lurching from side to side.

Still, I think we were happier than some of the poor people flying out of Gatwick must have been!

Then it was Storm Henk causing us twitchy moments and leaving plenty of flooded roads on the journey up to Norfolk in January.

Storm Isha arrived on the day we’d planned to drive across country to Exeter. The forecast 40-50 mph winds meant we chose to get an early start and were on the road by 06:00. In the dark. Thankfully, we met the steadily increasing gusts head on coming down the M5.

Given our aerodynamics, this did slow us down quite a bit.

Vanlife, it turns out, is more like sailing than we realised. We decided that we are prepared to travel if gusts are below 35mph. Anything more and we’ll just baton down the hatches and sit it out.

We’ve never watched the wind so carefully before.

North Norfolk, finally

If you read our last blog, you’ll know we didn’t quite make it to the Norfolk coast as planned last year. In January we righted that wrong and enjoyed a wonderful and quiet week in Stiffkey.

With a few clear days we walked on the beach at Wells and along the coast. Tim and Victoria looked after us with a lovely dinner and somehow we ended up with a lock-in at the Red Lion in Stiffkey. It helps when you know the locals I guess.

York, Holmfirth and a new mattress

Our Christmas present to each other this year was to treat ourselves to a new mattress.

Duvalay make a lightweight mattress specifically designed for motorhomes and caravans. As the products are made at their factory in Yorkshire, they can also make custom shapes. Even for a bed as oddly shaped as ours.

We received a warm welcome and choose our new mattress, with memory foam topper, which was in the January sales. After providing them a slightly wobbly template to work from, we headed out to a campsite in Holmfirth that had been recommended.

Holmfirth in Yorkshire is the home of Last of Summer Wine in case you didn’t know.

I didn’t either.

I had a pleasant walk around the town, which is very pretty, and found Nora Batty’s house with it’s famous steps. Sadly, the rain didn’t let up and most places were closed for the season so perhaps a trip back to Yorkshire in summer is on the cards.

Being so close, we enjoyed a long weekend in York, a city we absolutely love, before heading south.

On the way, we’d called a local garage to see if they had LPG available as we were almost out. (We use Liquid Petroleum Gas to cook with and also for our central heating).

Whilst there used to be loads of places to stop for LPG in the UK, the decline in gas powered cars has meant the number is steadily dwindling. As with most things, there’s an app to help you with this but we’ve found it’s worth calling ahead to make sure it’s available and working.

The helpful garage chap said he only had a little gas left as they’d not had a delivery. However so long as we come in the morning we’d be ok to fill up.

Excellent news.

Except when we arrived we’d been beaten to it by another motorhome! As we were absolutely out, we decided to try it anyway and thankfully we were able to fill up our main tank. Phew.

Life without a cup of tea would not have been easy.

Winter’s coming

Dodging the wind, we headed south to a favourite stop at Rosehill Cottage and the first proper freeze of the year set in.

Exeter, Essex and a few stops in between

January and February gave us chance to spend some time with our parents before heading out for the ski season.

Although the wind and rain initially threatened to wash out our week in Exeter, we had a couple of lovely days out, including a walk out on stunning Dartmoor.

Somewhere in the middle of a busy month, we found time to stop by Kimmeridge in Dorest to visit The Etches Collection. I’m not sure if you saw the David Attenborough documentary about the Giant Sea Monster over Christmas?

As we were quite close by, we popped in to check out the enormous fossilised Pliosaur.

We weren’t alone, as apparently the collection had seen over a thousand people a day visit in January, all due to the popularity of the documentary. It’s well worth a visit if you get the chance.

We managed to squeeze in a return trip to Duvalay to collect our new mattress. Remarkably our dodgy template proved to be ok, just, and wow, it was so worthwhile getting it.

In Essex we made it to Isabelle’s birthday party and had chance to catch up with Ryan, Jan, Martin and Janet which was great as we’d missed them at Christmas. We stopped over with Anthea and Kevin to collect the staggering amount of post and parcels that they had been very kindly looking after for us…. oops and thanks guys. Our final stop was with Sally’s folks to say farewell before heading to the aire at Canterbury.

France bound

Our next stop is Montgenevre, France. Home from home for us really and we’re hoping for snow and sun for the rest of ski season. We’re also looking forward to catching up with our friends from last year but that’s a tale for another time.