Winter Camping Tips

During the winter of 2012 - 2013 we have made a conscious effort to continue with our camping trips as often as possible.   Winter camping in a small van has some challenges and it is clear is not something everyone does.  We have been pleased that a number of people have been in touch through our contact button asking for advice on winter camping, so we thought we would put some of our top tips on the blog.











Snug as a bug in a rug
We have found that a night-time combination of sleeping bags and duvets works to keep us warm in bed even in temperatures below freezing.  We use Snugpak sleeping bags that pack up small.  If it really cold, we also always have spare blankets and have used these in the side-door foot well to cut down drafts.  We have never left the heating on all night.

Concerns about water
Our fresh water tank is under the van and is not insulated or heated.  We always check the forecast and take no risks; if the forecast is for a frost, we don't fill the water tank and instead use a 10 litre water tank in the van.  This does mean we don't have running water and a flushing toilet but it is better than burst pipes.  The down-side of this is constant filling, when we think the frosts have finally finished and then draining when we see the forecast of more frosts.
In Cardigan in March, the forecast was for above freezing and so we filled up the fresh water tank.  However, we woke up to a very heavy frost, with ice on the inside of the van windows.  I leapt out of bed to check the tap, the water was sluggish, indicating they pipes had frozen slightly but no leaks have appeared, so we seem to have got away with it.
We also never use the waste water tank when it is freezing.

Light my fire
During winter we prefer to have a hook-up, we then use a 2kw fan heater which quickly warms up the small space in our van.  When we don't have a hook-up, our diesel heating keeps the van very warm, although it does sound like we are on a count-down to launch to the moon.  Having the two heaters means we feel confident that we will always be warm.

The sky at night
Living in Greater Manchester, the light pollution means we don't get much chance for star-gazing at home and one of the marvellous things about winter camping is being able to see the stars from a dark camp site.  We use the Google Sky Map to check what we can see; it can be downloaded to your mobile phone at no cost and is lots of fun to use.

I don't stay nowhere long

2012 has been a good camper van year; we have used the van for 59 over night stays on 36 different camp sites; many of these for weekends long and short from February until December, in various parts of the country, from Whitby to London.

During the summer we are strict with ourselves and make sure we go camping every other weekend, whatever the weather and however exhausted we are from work, occasionally we have been blessed with sunshine and always we have been glad we made the effort to go.

The van is only now starting to show some signs of wear and tear after 537 nights sleeping in it over the past five and a half years and we are bracing ourselves for the cost of new upholstery and flooring in 2013; other than this, it is bearing up to our usage very well and we are very pleased with the Blue Bus.  You might have seen our article in Motorhome Monthly Magazine (Summer 2012), Living with a Devon Sundowner, which tells of our experiences of living in the van.

Highlights from our weekends away in 2012 include:

The seals at Donna Nook

Camping with friends

Three Pigeons in Graigfechan

Cliff-side camping in Whitby

Winter sun in Norfolk

Howgill Lodge site Wharfe Dale

When you’re with me baby the skies will be blue

We celebrated our 28^th wedding anniversary by having a day of easier cycling in the sunshine on country lanes around the town of Pont de Vaux, north of Macon.  By easier cycling, we mean cycling where you cycle, rather than spend most of the day walking the bike up 1:4 hills (see previous posts about cycling).

The town has a cycle map of 20 routes, for walking or cycling; all fairly short at between 6 and 15 kms and we thought it would be fairly easy to string a few together.  This is a rural area with crops and fields of cattle and a web of narrow lanes joining picturesque farmhouses and hamlets.  The combination of a poor map, confusing signposts and the vast number of the lanes meant that we were soon lost.  However, with so many routes, it didn’t really seem to matter and we would eventually get to where we wanted to be.

Along the banks of the river Soane, we followed the dyke; we still get a thrill from seeing working rivers in mainland Europe and the Soane had plenty of large freight barges, as well as smaller pleasure boats.  Navigation along the river was straightforward, compared to the winding lanes, but at every field boundary it was necessary to carry the bikes overhead to get through the narrow stiles.

This is a lovely area for a day or two of meandering cycling; there are a number of campsites around the town and Pont de Vaux itself has cafes, restaurants and a supermarket.  Having written about our awareness of our own mortality in the last post, we now find ourselves on a campsite that has the air of an outdoor old people’s home; it is populated with retired English and Dutch caravanners and looking around we feel we might live to one day be celebrating 50 and maybe even 60 years of marriage.

Well tonight I'm gonna live for today

We cycled past a cemetery with a sign over the gate asking all who entered to be prepared to meet their maker, in French.  This seemed to sum up our days cycling by the River Drac, just south of Grenoble.

We had come to the campsite because it promised spectacular walking and cycling, including over the Passerelle du Drac, a 220m long suspension bridge high over the Drac River gorge.  We planned a cycle ride that included crossing the bridge, which proved to be a spectacular experience, particularly when, as we were half way across, the 40 strong French walking group behind us got on to the bridge and insisted on bouncing and running, so that the bridge swayed alarmingly; we were certainly glad to survive and return to firm ground.

After cycling through quiet French villages, woods and fields, we stopped for lunch in a small, remote cemetery.  These are often good places for a lunch break; in the van they usually have space for parking and we can stop and wander around the graves with a mug of tea; when cycling a cemetery is somewhere peaceful to sit and rest, there is always a grave or two for someone who died much too young and we can contemplate how every day we are alive is a gift we should make the most of.

Our cycle ride was only 30 kms, so should have been an easy day, but with 750m of ascent and temperatures of around 28C, we were barely functioning by the time we returned to the campsite.  Fortunately, tea and cool beer soon put the life back in us.

MMM pubished an article about our time in this area and our cycling trip in July 2013.  This link will take you to a pdf of the article if you want to read more.

He looks through his window, what does he see?

We have driven many kilometres over the last three weeks; of course, in the Blue Bus, ‘it’s not the destination, it’s the glory of the ride.’  Driving has given us an opportunity to consider the differences between the roads in the different countries we have travelled in and it seems to us that Italian hairpin bends are easier to swing around in a long wheel-base van, than French ones; we don’t know if it is physics, maths or engineering, but certainly the Italian’s have learnt a thing or two about building mountain roads and they are generally wonderful routes to follow.  We are also interested to see that despite the apparent European-wide recession, in Italy they continue to have a road building and road improvement programme.  As much as possible we used the main roads, rather than the Auto Strada, and we noticed new by-passes still being built around a number of small towns, keeping the road building industry in work, something not a current activity in England.

We have been taking photographs from the passenger seat of the Blue Bus as we move from campsite to campsite, this creates some odd looking photographs, but some of them are interesting, showing the differences in landscape we have passed through.  We are not only interested in the tourist itinerary, the local industry and agriculture is also absorbing.  Travelling north from Entrevaux to Gap in France we came through an area of intensive fruit growing, further north the farmed landscape changed to a  more pastoral one and we once again saw sheep and cows in the fields and farms selling home-made cheeses.

The scale of the marble quarrying and shipping was fascinating as we drove along the Italian coast around Massa.  Another area that attracted our curiosity was on the road between Orbetello and Volterra in Tuscany, where the geothermal energy is utilised to run power stations; for a few kilometres the smell of sulphur fills the air, pipelines roam up and down the hilly Tuscan landscape and large cooling towers dominate the landscape, until you are once again in the typical Tuscan scenery of vines and cedar trees.

Where were you while we were getting high?

Entracque, in the Italian Maritime Alps, is at around 900m and so still gets a bit chilly in the evenings and mornings and there is still snow on the mountains.  However, during the day it is over 20C and sunny, so we can’t really understand why early June is considered out of season and all the restaurants are closed and the campsites virtually empty.

This lack of other tourists does mean that we have the footpaths mostly to ourselves, although the roads are busy with the Italian cyclists practicing for mountain stages up and down the hairpin bends.

The walking around Entracque is delightful and we have had two good days walking in the mountains, in cool woodland, above picturesque mountain villages, through sunny meadows and under pink coloured cliffs and always surrounded by wild flowers, numerous butterflies and countless insects.   The diversity of the plant and insect life is striking; we have seen varieties of orchids, including fly orchids, saxifrages, geraniums, mints and juniper, to list just a few of the plants; Swallow Tail, Apollo, Orange Tip and plenty of other butterflies we don’t know the name for; alders, hazel, walnut, larch, laburnum, beech, birch and other trees we have failed to notice.  This richness of nature takes our breath away, nourishes our wellbeing and makes us wish that the UK had even half this diversity and abundance.   The only disappointment is the limited number of birds we have seen;  Jays are everywhere, but we can see these in Manchester, we have enjoyed hearing the distinctive sound of Cuckoos every day and near Entracque we watched two Black Kites gliding above us.

Entracque is a pretty village with a range of medieval fountains, a café and a few grocery shops; our favourite deli and bakery is run by the friendliest of women, who talks to us in a mixture of Italian, French and English and tells us the origins of the cheese, bread and biscuits we can’t resist buying.

Me, I'm just a lawnmower

Over the last ten days that we have been in Italy, we have noticed that a regular sound and sight on Italian campsites has been strimming.  This activity will usually start around 8.30 and except for a lunch break, continue through the day.  It is always carried out by men; strimming has yet to become an activity appropriated by women in Italy.  The strimming equipment used is generally an industrial scale strimmer, rather than the lightweight Black and Decker ones you can get for your garden in the UK, these Italian strimmers are petrol driven and heavy.  The strimmee will be sporting a boiler suit and maybe some fluorescent items of clothing, although the latter do not appear to be obligatory.  We can only assume that the stony and undulating Italian land calls for more strimming on its campsites than other countries.
Of course, in the mountain villages you will still see farmers using scythes, as the man in the photograph is doing.  You might think that we have only posted on this subject so that we can use this particular lyric; you could be right.