Van-Life on Shutter & Stove

Switchbacks and Ragù

Sun, 15 Aug 2027 00:00:00 +0000

The van does not love a hairpin. Three and a half tonnes of home does not want to be flung up a mountainside one tight bend at a time, and it told me so, loudly, in second gear, all the way up.

Crossing the Channel

Fri, 02 Jul 2027 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a moment, rolling off the ferry ramp into France, where every instinct you own about which side of the road to be on quietly files for divorce. We crept out of Roscoff at a stately fifteen miles an hour, both of us saying “right, stay right, right” like a mantra, and somehow didn’t hit anything.

An Office With a View

Mon, 28 Jun 2027 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a photo my husband won’t let me publish of him on a video call with the whole team, dead serious about a deployment, with a goat investigating the wing mirror just behind his head. The goat won the meeting.

The Four AM Alarm

Sun, 13 Jun 2027 00:00:00 +0000

Four in the morning, in a layby in Glencoe, and the alarm I set the night before now feels like a personal insult from a past version of me who clearly hated sleep.

First Proper Mountains

Fri, 21 May 2027 00:00:00 +0000

The wipers were going full pelt and the map was telling me the view to my left was spectacular. I had to take its word for it. You couldn’t see fifty feet.

The Shakedown Trip

Tue, 18 May 2027 00:00:00 +0000

The first night in the van, properly in the van, with no house to retreat to, we lay there listening to a cupboard door we’d hung slightly wrong tap-tapping against its frame in the wind. Neither of us said anything for a bit. Then we both started laughing, because what else do you do.