11 things I didn’t know about the motorhome lifestyle

First of all, I don’t like doing these top 3, 10, 11 or whatever, I do it this way because it helps me organize my thoughts, but trust me, there were way more than 11 things that I didn’t know! When Mark came up with the idea of going away for a year in a motorhome, I had no knowledge whatsoever about anything to do with motorhomes (useless to say I’ve never been in one). But because I love to travel so much, I said yes and I absolutely loved it! Don’t get me wrong, I still didn’t know much about motorhomes until we actually departed, mostly because Mark is always doing an amazing job with researching stuff like that and I thought it will be a waste of time for me to do it as well (aka being lazy).

So here we go (don’t be surprised if most of them are pretty basic):

1. Motorhomes can have solar panels for a few years now, we keep trying to make small changes that are more eco friendly, but it never crossed my mind that you can have solar panels on motorhomes too. I guess I just never had a reason to think about this, but it was amazing solely because it gave us the freedom to be in the middle of nowhere, being able to charge our devices and yet not needing a socket. I found this just marvelous! Thank you, sun!
   Of course, we had a couple of times when we were really low on battery and so Mark either had to start the car to charge it, or we had to find a campsite to connect to electricity. But that happened very rarely! (You need to know that we needed solar battery also to run the taps or to help start the heating, not only to charge the devices. Excuse my lack of technical terms). The fridge and the heating were running on LPG gas, but somehow the heating also needed solar. As I said before, I didn’t do much research, I bet you can’t notice :)))
2. Motorhomes are so cleverly designed every single bit of space is used in a compact and clever way. For example, our bed was on top of the driving seat and so in the evening we would just pull it down and the bed was ready. The table and the sofa could be extended. The chairs were rotating so that you can sit at the table etc. Very clever indeed!
3. You need ramps to level the motorhome in case the surface that you park on is not levelled. And as we were mainly in nature, we needed ramps most of the time, otherwise you’d end up with the water staying in the sink and everything falling down from the table. Mark also had a spirit level to check if it was straight. I was supposed to guide him while going up on the ramps, but most of the time I would guide him wrongly. Somehow it would look good to me, but not right in real life.
4. You need to lock the cupboards, the fridge and put everything away before you move to a different place. Also, don’t forget to close the windows and the vents. I say that, because it did happen and not only once. The joys of going round a turn and hearing the fridge door open and a jar of something falling on the floor, breaking and splashing everywhere. Didn’t learn my lesson. By the way, we met a really lovely family at some point during our holiday (we saw other people too of course haha, even though we were mostly just the 2 of us in nature) and they had this type of a special mat that you can put on the tables and it had a grip so that you can keep your stuff on the table even when you’re driving.
5. That we will learn to appreciate natural resources, like water for example. According to South West Water (and with a few extra math calculations), the average consumption of water per day per person is around 180l. Well, we were 2 people, the capacity of the tank was of 120l and we had extra bottles for drinking water worth about 30l and we were refilling around every 5 days. What a huge difference! It’s harder when you move back to a place where you need to flush the toilet and you think every time of how many liters of water you just flushed, but I am much more aware of the waste and so I stop the shower often, when I apply soap, shampoo, I turn off the tap when I brush my teeth etc.
6. And talking about resources, living in a motorhome (which for some people might seem like a tiny space, for us it was perfect), forces you to notice more how the rubbish is piling up and how there was so much unnecessary packaging. And that prompted a new idea while brainstorming with Mark, and we thought that I can just use the cardboard from various packages to paint portraits.
7. That’s it’s ideal for recording podcasts. You probably heard about people recording podcasts from cupboards or putting the duvet on top of them, adding lots of furniture and objects to manage the acoustic of the room, or even going inside their car to record it. Well, being in a motorhome, the sound is just perfect for recording. If you didn’t know about my podcast, check it out.
8. That you can’t make fixed plans. You need to be flexible. That’s probably valid for all areas of life, but you never know what can happen and we had quite a few breakdowns (including this one) and other things happening that set us back and so we couldn’t visit all the paces that we were planning to. Of course, you need to be informed and have a general idea of what you want to do, but in the same time, it’s kind of part of the adventure to decide on the day where would you like to go next.
9. That it will be so amazing. I expected to love it, but it exceeded my expectations. Even with all the challenges that came along the way, we had the most incredible year in nature, waking up in remote gorgeous places and staying mostly free everywhere.
10. That we will meet so many nice and kind people (although when I say many, I need to point out that it now feels like we were preparing for the pandemic as we were mostly isolated all year), but we met really nice people and also when we were going through a certain challenge and there were strangers just willing to help without expecting anything in return (I will tell you another time the story of when we got stuck in the mud near a river in France and how we got out thanks to the kindness of strangers).
11. How to use the services for motorhomes again, had no idea. But it’s pretty simple, you go to these special places (that can be in campsites, near a supermarket, in a random car park or just in a random place). Don’t worry, you can find these places easily with an app (we, and when I say we I mean royal we, used park4night)). Some of them are free, for some you pay between 2 and 5 Euros. There is usually a tap for clean (and drinking water), one for washing the toilet; a drain for dirty water and a drain for toilet. Guess who was emptying the toilet? Not me, that’s for sure! Sorry, is it too much for this article? That’s the real life, folks, the real motorhome life :))) No pretty Instagram filters for this bit. At least I left this bit for the last one just in case you got bored by now.