hey, finally worked out how to sign in as me!!! i've just been thinking of a few more realities for you guys to have a ponder over. i started it as a new thread coz it is different issues to the ones discussed in the other post. this one is more about the being on the road rather than the getting vehicles together etc. so lets say you have decided on whatever vehicle it is you're going to travel in, you're on the road , surrounded by mates and ready to have a blast..... where are you going to park? finding park-ups is generally a bit of a nightmare. if you've gone for something under 6 foot 9 then it might be a little easier coz you'll get under height bars, but you dont have a living space you can actually stand up in. and even if you get under the height bars there may well be limits on how long you can stay in the carpark. i have just spent 5 days in a car park besides a beautiful section of canal and it was lovely. if i'd had the caravan with me i would have had nowhere to park. but as a rule carparks that nice are hard to find and if you do find them they might not let you stay there that long anyway. most fields and woods are blocked by gates with big locks on them. a good set of bolt croppers is perhaps a wise idea for emergencies, but not always a great plan coz it does little for the reputation of travellerse if you go round damaging other peoples properties. laybys are harder to evict you from, but its not always great being parked up next to a road, specially if there are kids and dogs with you. it's noisey and you often get abuse from passers by in the form of shouting and chucking things, beeping horns in the middle of the night etc. there are other things that people tend not to think of at the time. i know it seems obvious, but you will not be connected to a mains water supply. you will have to go out and full great big water barrels and lug them sometimes quite far. most garages are ok about you filling up water but its still a big hassle. and its something you have to do regularly, coz unless you plan on being a very smelly minger you are gonna get through quite a bit of water!! another thing that is more of a hassle in winter is warmth. the main ways of heating your vehicle is gas heater or wood/coal burner. gas gives off a fairly damp heat and for that reason alone i wouldnt use it. you also need very good ventilation so you dont risk poisening yourself. burners are a great option. they keep you very warm, they're very efficient and they give off a dry heat, which is alot healthier and good for drying clothes and stuff. it does mean you have to regularly collect fuel though. coal is easier coz you can buy it in bags which are very cheap, but you still need wood to get it started. and wood has to be collected, dried and sawn up no matter what the weather. walking out in the woods in the freezing cold rain is not loads of fun, but you have to do it coz otherwise you'll be freezing later on. another thing people often dont realise is that there is alot of predudice against travellers, even if they aren't the type of travellers that the sun is busy inciting racial hatred against at the moment. you will get pulled over by the police ALOT! i got pulled last week just for being in an old van with three young people in it. we asked them if they were having a quiet night, thinking they may have just been bored, but they said no, they were having a busy night, yet they still found time to pull us over coz we look different. as luck would have it, my van is completely legal and they couldnt find anything to do me for. i managed to avoid a producer coz my tax disk is only a month old so they figured everything else was uptodate, but it is still a regular pain in the arse you have to face. and if you're thinking of trying to avoid things like tax, insurance, mot etc, my advice is not to bother. you WILL be pulled on a regular basis. its just a fact you have to accept. i've been pulled about 8 times in the last year and luckily everything was legal. if it wasnt i could have been looking at big fines, losing my licence or even time inside. none of these are great options if your life revolves around being free and on the road. so at some point you're gonna have to find some form of work coz keeping a legal vehicle isnt cheap. and finding work when you're living on the road isnt easy. if you're thinking you can save up the hundreds of pounds neccessary to pay for these things just by busking then you're either the greatest musician ever or a little deluded. busking is great for earning enough to survive on, but it wont pay for big things. these are just the little things i can think of at the moment. there are probably loads more. like i said in the last post, i am NOT trying to piss on your dreams. i really really want it to work out for you, but it will only work if you go in with your eyes open. it wont work if you're living in dream land. the more travellers on the road the better, there are 101 positive reason for being on the road, and the good times far outweigh the hard times. it will be great when you all make it on to the road, but i just want to help make sure that it happens for you and give you a few things to think about. peace and love stardust xxx
Ain't that the truth. Check out Glastonbury and the surrounding area - or as it's known locally, the Traveller's Graveyard. Lot's of hideous sites full of smacked and brewed up crusties who manage to regularly travel about as far as the job centre. Life on the road's not what it used to be.
would you say perhaps that a lot the the hardships you might encounter on the road are due to 'stuff'? stuff as in your material wants and other objects you cart around with you; that includes the caravan. The desire for a concept of luxury that is the product of your upbringing in this non-nomadic society. If your priorities toward stuff could change, wouldn't some (only some) of these problems not occur?
But 'stuff' includes basically everything that we need unless we're going to go back to the trees, surely? Isn't a caravan just a means of carrying around what you need to look after the basic essentials of eating, sleeping and hygiene? After all, even nomadic tribes carried 'stuff' around with them. Unless you're going to go naked and forage nuts and berries, isn't 'stuff' kinda inevitable?
ayemon. I'm not taking it to extremes. I'm thinking more of what might be a concept of luxury that is born of a stationary dwelling applied to one that is on the road. It doesn't have to be a different 'standard' just different priorities. Hmm. Just what is a standard of living anyway I wonder? How is it defined. Is not the observers paradox a problem here? What is one man's palace is another's vulgar waste of space. As you can see, i'm doing the old post-as-i'm-still-thinking type thing.
I see what you're saying, but I think most of the problems of life on the road arise from the need to find places to stay and from the need to cart your tat around - which generally means maintaining a vehicle, unless we're talking about short periods or extensive support provided by other people. And all such problems are pretty much inherent in the lifestyle, regardless of your attachment to materialism.
Aye, indeed. Especially in the private land ownership environment we have here. Hmmm.. nah, not in total agreement there. I still reckon that materialism is inversely proportional to ease of travel. ~
oh damn, a why. ummmmm, right.. An extreme for purposes of an anology: You can only eat your bread sliced with cold butter on a china plate with a golden shandelier(sp?) lighting your mahogany dinner table. You now have to carry these things to meet your material 'basic' needs. So travel has been made more difficult by having to cart all this around with you. yes, that was ridiculously extreme. i'm only using it to show how some peoples 'basic' needs differ from others. (certain victorian expeditionaries and their heavy boxes full of port and cigars {among other 'basic needs'} strapped to a mile long train of yaks comes to mind... ) ~
Yeah, I understand that, but my point was that the needs of most people seeking to live on the road are fairly basic and involve carting around essentials rather than luxuries.
no, most the hardships i was talking about revolve mainly around neccessity. food, warmth and water are all neccessary for survival. this means water runs, wood collecting and some way of getting food. these are al considerations that every human on the planet needs to take into account if they wish to stay alive. doing away with material things would maybe make life a little easier, but alot more boring aswell. i could get rid of everything, but in the evenings i like to sit and draw or read a book or do some juggling, poi etc if it is warm. if i got rid of everything i would have nothing to do and nowhere to do it. what is the point in that if it makes me bored and unhappy? i hit the road for freedom and happiness. getting rid of what makes me happy would defeat the purpose a little bit. peace and love stardust xxx
Ok, in agreement there. In today's non-traveller friendly society, their basic needs are hindered. So what remains of my question is Stardust's (as an individual) reply on her attitude to what 'essentials' are and has she questioned herself closely on this... ~ i best get back to my work. good debate sucks ye in! tara ~
Read it. Couldn't have thought of a better answer I've nothing to counter! Who wants to trade the occasional parking difficulty for sheer boredom of staring at the empty walls of your possesionless abode?! I suppose, as with many things, it's a question of balance... heheh Take it easy. Must dash.
Not really. Coz whether or not she wants to draw and do poi, she'd still need a vehicle - and that, plus the essentials of living, are what makes life on the road difficult. Thus, a lack of materialism doesn't make any difference.
these are all issues that need thinking about and kev you're totally right - its all about balance. having too much stuff is a pain in the arse. it takes forever to tat down and take off coz you seem to spend the whole time keeping the place tidy, but on the other hand if you dont take anything with you you have nothing to amuse yourself with, just blank walls to stare at in the evenings and thats not much fun atall. what i have started doing recently is leaving my caravan in a safe place for short trips and just living in the transit with the bare minimun now it is warm enough to not have to rely on the burner. this combination seems to work well for finding parkups coz height restrictions arent an issue and i still have the caravan to take with me for slightly longer trips. i am doing up the transit a bit more at the moment so that i can spend more time in it in the summer, coz it is a lot lot easier than finding parkups with a caravan, but its nice to know i still have the luxury of a caravan with a burner when i need it. there's loads of different options to chose from. when it gets alot warmer then i quite like the idea of travelling a bit with just a rucksack of bare minimums and sleeping outdoors. this is always fun, but not for long periods coz we dont seem to have long enough periods of warm weather, and seeing as i dont like the cold that much that is an issue for me! peace and love stardust xxx p.s. thanks all rhodesian reject!! glad to be of some assistance!
I'd love to live on the road ... the idea of waking up to whatever scenery I wanted is so appealing ... but I love some of my material stuff and wouldn't want to give it up. I don't just mean luxuries either, some stuff in my life is so much part of my existence that to not have it would frustrate me. Full internet access, cheap reliable phonecalls (incoming as well as outgoing), television, a bath whenever I want one, a microwave oven, decent electric lighting ... Plus the fact that I've got an address for receiving mail that gets to me when I wake up ... all these things would have to be sacrificed for life on the road ... The closest to get to that would be a canal boat with a mooring or a static caravan, but then you'd no longer be nomadic so there would be no real point. I'll just stick to my council flat and camper van for now ... a little bit of both worlds without the commitment
