The journey begins…
3rd October 2019 was the day the adventure officially began 🤩
We bought our lovely motorhome, a RollerTeam AutoRoller 707, from Luke at New Marque Motorhomes, near Cambridge. It was an 18 month old ex-holiday rental van, perfect for our family in that it has bunks to the rear, plenty of storage and an overhead drop-down bed for Saul and me.
Click here to go to the post giving a guided tour of the Krystal:
Modifications and repairs to the Krystal – Krystal Ship Adventures
We named our van the Krystal Ship (a nod to ‘Breaking Bad’) and, after a crash-course in how to power a motorhome, fill and empty the water, work the electrics, Luke handed us the keys and off we went.
So there we were, on our way from Cambridge to Holyhead to sail home…but with no bedding, no plates, no cutlery! We stopped to buy some basics to see us through the journey and then spent our first night in the van at a farmyard en route. There was a storm that night and the van shook and rattled all through the night. I don’t mind admitting that I wondered that night what on earth we had signed up for…
Our second night we spent parked up overlooking Holyhead port and we then caught a 7am sailing back to Ireland the following morning. We then faced a dilemma – where to park a 7.4m long vehicle when you live in a housing estate?! Luckily, our kind, accommodating friends, Sacha and Ronan, were happy to have us park the van outside their house and they kept an eye on the Krystal while we got our many, many ducks in a row.
We had to import the van from the UK to Ireland, pay the VRT (nearly €7,000, argh, that stung!), get new registration plates, sort insurance – which is not as simple as you’d think, if you plan to live and travel fulltime in said van – pay motor tax (on the plus side, this is really cheap!) and, finally, the not insignificant task of preparing to leave … pack, pack, pack!
Three days left before handing over our house keys to the property management agency, here’s the Krystal parked outside our house as we moved things into the van
💛 Huge thanks 💛 to our many wonderful friends who helped us pack, clean, move, store things, who fed and watered us, minded the children, washed our clothes, and in general kept us moving! 💜
Some farewell hugs and kisses:
19th October:
Bye bye, Woodstock, for now!
Once we were in the van, we ‘moved house’ for a couple of days to River Valley Caravan Park, Redcross, to give ourselves some time settling in to vanlife in Wicklow before hitting the road. We were oh so aware that we had SO much to learn before trying to navigate a journey on top of it!
Campsite details: Home – rivervalleypark , 52.88966195091952, -6.144435423280806
Unfortunately, no sooner had we arrived in River Valley, than Saul was taken ill. A tiny cut in his thumb which he got while we were packing became inflamed and, before long, the infection was turning septic and tracking all the way up his arm. He needed 48 hours in the Emergency Dept of St Vincent’s Hospital, on a drip of high dose antibiotics, in order to get the infection under control. It was a very stressful and worrying way to start on our journey. A huge relief that all was well in the end, although it took Saul quite some time to recover fully in strength and energy.
💚Massive thanks to Claire💚 who came to the hospital and rescued Morgan and Olwen from hours of waiting in A&E, and then let us stay in their driveway for the coming week!!
River Valley campsite then opened again for midterm break and so we headed back down there for the week. There were lots of Hallowe’en activities being held, which was great timing and lots of fun for the children. We even had some visitors!
27th October: Autumn sun, the first day we put our new awning up!
🎃 Then came Hallowe’en, always a big deal in our family. First we celebrated with friends:
And then we went back to Woodstock to meet up with friends for trick or treating. Woodstock is famed in Kilcoole for its amazing Hallowe’en displays. It was strange, to say the least, to see our own house bare of decorations that evening. The tenants had not moved in fully by that point.
After the Hallowe’en midterm break came to an end, River Valley Campsite closed for the winter. So next, we went to stay for five nights at a caravan stopping point in Kilmacanogue, essentially some gravel in the garden of a very lovely and friendly retired couple 😊 They told us that they had been running the van/caravan park from their garden for over 30 years and that we were the very last family they were hosting, as they were retiring and moving down to Greystones.
We were parked in on the slopes of the Sugarloaf but due to all the rain we thought it would be better named the Soggyloaf! It was a very wet autumn, and not only in Ireland, as we were soon to find out.
4th November: Morgan’s 11th birthday! We celebrated this special day with a bowling and laser tag party in Bray Bowl. It was also a good opportunity to have a chat and a farewell hug with many friends. Tears were shed, but we also appreciate how lucky we are to have such fantastic and supportive loved ones! 💜
9th November: Finally leaving Wicklow. After a sumptuous brunch with Bernie and then a fabulous lunch with Ele, Garry and Grace, our dear friends certainly made sure that we were well fed before starting our trip! We then set Google maps for Portglenone and off we headed north…
