Are You a Self Sufficient Camper?
self-sufficient camper what does it mean what it means to me is be able to take your vehicle and all your gear out for an adventure or holiday so everything's on board you don't have to rely on going to get a coffee from the motorway to get something to eat from the motorway services it's all on board so in turn that saves you money and the more self-sufficient you are the more money you're going to save in your vehicle which then allows you to extend your holiday trip or go on more adventures your your time frame of your holiday so me and my wife we can go away and we can relax knowing that we have everything on board to keep us happy for the duration we went to Scotland for four to five weeks and we stayed in a campsite for three nights which then enabled us to top up our water and you know use their amenities and then we're back on the road and then we're self-sufficient again so depending how you want to plan your vehicle you know summer's here now and you you're thinking about going away and you might be thinking about buying a camper or a vehicle such as a car and you want to go on an excursion so i wanted to put this video out and explain you know what i do and you can combine it with what you do and get a happy medium the land rover is great it's small it's compact it's comfortable it's got a great payload if you see somewhere you like and you can't gain access with another vehicle this vehicle will get you there so self-sufficiency for me is having a vehicle that can go pretty much anywhere with all your gear on board the beauty of it is you can go away and save loads and loads of money by being self-sufficient when i mean self-sufficient carrying your water you don't want to be going and buying and paying for water when you can carry your own water on board you don't want to be going and stopping for coffee in shops especially you know some of these coffee brands they're they're mega expensive and i drink a lot of coffee so that's two ways you can you can save a lot of money you don't want to be staying in accommodation that you don't know it's going to be comfortable the views not great or the beds lumpy or you know there's loads of possibilities when you hire a room or a hotel you never know what you're going to get when you've got your own vehicle you know how you're going to sleep because you've slept on that bed multiple times you know you're going to be comfortable you know what you're going to be eating you know I've been away before camping we've had our food on board we've stayed on the road we thought let's treat ourselves to a meal we go out for a meal and hey ho we get food poisoning so we're ill for a couple of days so by being self-sufficient you eliminate all them possibilities of being uncomfortable or not happy with your accommodation or you don't like what you're eating and you're paying top dollar for it so that's that's what i love about doing this it's all about the enjoyment spending as much time as you can outside with as least amount of money as you can throw at it i'd rather spend that money on the vehicle and the accessories than i would to spend in a restaurant or multiple times in expensive campsites or hotels and b and b's but this vehicle has enabled me to access the woodland that I'm in at the moment like i said you can pretty much get anywhere all my kit is here so if i was staying here for three weeks i know i would be really really comfortable in this vehicle I've got a double bedroom upstairs as i call it see many camper vans and motorhomes haven't got the two levels so i love the downstairs upstairs option upstairs is is great if you've got a beautiful view you parked up somewhere you know visualize this you parked up somewhere and there's lakes and mountains which which are my favorite so you can go up there and it's like a observatory you can just sleep up there and look or read a book or something and you've got all that for you so that's what i like about the the rooftop tents plus you're well off the ground you're well insulated that's a great you know a great addition to to this vehicle and downstairs as i call it you may laugh i've got a nice seating area and a sleeping area in there so you can mix and match when there's one of you or there's two of you you can chop and change i i can hold about 50 60 liters of water and if i do require water i'll have a door knock and ask for that to be topped up or i'll go into a petrol garage and ask if they could top this up if they let me top this up then i'll say any chance of topping up my bigger water container which is 20 liters on the side so then i've got water for nothing it doesn't cost anything to ask for water but why pay for it you know i know some of you probably like drinking bottled water but but i don't i can i can make do and if you're that worried about the water that you're getting you can run it for a purifier which i have in there anyway as long as you know it's coming off mains pressure when when you go around someone's house or a petrol garage then you know you're fine fine to access that water and hasn't cost you a penny and water is everything when you're on the road you know i drink me and mrs bushwhacker probably drink about six to eight liters a day and if we take the dog as well you know where he drinks a couple of liters on top of that depending on the weather really and how many brews that we have but don't forget water is your main necessity for self-reliant camping have a 20 liter can on the outside with a great running tap that's awesome for filling up your kettle and having a wash underneath and then on the top of the roof rack i can mount another 20 liter jerry can on a plate that i fixed up there so plenty of places to store water so next we'll talk about the food aspect of self-sufficiency in a vehicle we've been away a lot i have done a lot of of camping and i've been to a lot of different places in the UK and Europe and it breaks my heart to see people paying top dollar for rubbish food it really you know it really hurts me i i went to a place last year in Scotland along the motorway or somewhere and it was a there was a farm shop and they were charging nine pounds for a pie and i think if you've got no food on board and you're hungry and you and you might have children with you and you go into this shop and everyone's kind of buying these expensive items in this farm shop you know herd mentality nine times out of ten you're going to be buying as well and i see people coming out they've stopped off they've been on a long journey they're they're quite fatigued they're hungry and they they have to feed themselves in in these these expensive shops so you know i went in had a look i fancied a pie but there's no way you know i'm not i'm not a tight bloke but i'm careful and no way am i going to pay eight or nine pound for a for a small pie and you know three four pound for a for a coke or coffee or something like that i just won't do it so this brings me on to food if you you know if you add up what you do spend from these places and from these restaurants over say you're going away three or four weeks you spend 60 70 pounds roughly a day if you're eating out and getting your and your your food or your drinks 60 70 pounds between the two of you per day so if you do the math over if you're going away say for a month it's a lot of money and that's the money you could be putting into your tank for fuel so you know it's up to you if you've got bags of money and and you want to keep eating in these places it's nice now and again as a luxury but you can carry luxury items on board you know bread and some filling for the bread to make a sandwich instead of going in and paying top dollar for a sandwich well it's it's down to you but i i won't do it that's why i wanted to kind of put this video out explaining you can go away really cheap or you can go away mega expensive and we'll both have the same time and adventure but it will cost that person a lot more money than it cost me you know a lot of people think camping you're gonna eat really rough food you're gonna eat like a pauper or a nomad or whatever you don't need to eat like that you could pop into the supermarket once or twice a week and and get some lovely steak some sausages and do some great barbecues my food stalls in here i'm gonna buy because of the warmer weather i'm thinking about buying either a call box or a fridge I've got a call bag which i load up with frozen items before we start the trip with ice blocks and that that lasts us depending on temperature it can last up to a week or it can last like a couple of days so you you've got to be clever with your planning for food but you know if you keep it in the shade and you've got a half decent cool bag or cool box you can keep food a long time so you can have all your meats on board fresh milk you know all your eggs your breads all on board in here i tend to keep a lot of dry food you know tin food because it doesn't go off it keeps long life bread they're in the the containers in this vehicle at the moment i haven't loaded up because I'm not doing a trip but I'd say I've got around a couple of weeks worth of food you know soups in here beans all tin goods in here chopped tomatoes fruit cocktail rice pudding tins of tuna see that that's a lovely meal on the road if you like tuna a couple of long life rolls and some butter a little bit of sour cream i like and an onion and you got yourself you know a lovely tuna sandwich so that's that's one option you know beans everyone likes beans what's wrong with a beans on toast if you're hungry or you've been on the road and you want to stop in in a lay by what's wrong with knocking up a little beans on toast or soup and toast which costs you next to nothing like i said i haven't i haven't loaded the vehicle up this is stuff that always kind of stays in here things like this long life rolls you just keep them up and you have lovely crispy rolls and you can make all sorts of sandwiches and that from them no refrigeration required but when we go away for a longer trip i'll be stacking these two baskets up as well with food so on the road eating really well i reckon we could load this up for a month eating quite poorly in this vehicle i think you could probably do three months with what we had in here you know rice's pastas sweet corn soups things like that but you know it's how you want to play it but definitely don't get ripped off down the down the expensive route of traveling on the road so leading on from the actual food aspect cooking same again don't pay for loads of coffees make your own so we've got a Cadak two burner electric ignition hob that lives in the landy all the time so we tend to use that for brews and and soups and quick cook-ups heating the rolls up on that hot plate up there so it's a very practical little stove and then when the better weather comes like it is now i can bring that outside and we can cook outside on if there's not huge amount of wind so very versatile piece of kit very light as well it used to have a back on it but i took the back off so it fits in there really good if you've been following my channel for a while then you know i love cooking outside so and any outdoor fire grill is perfect for for cooking outside so you've got two possibilities indoor cooking in inside your vehicle and when the weather's nice or you're undercover outdoor cooking i tend to carry in my trasharoo bag I'm you know I'm quite resourceful person i try to be as resourceful as possible so if I'm camping somewhere in a woodland or something i might pick up some wood and put it in my treasure bag i carry lump wood as well or charcoal any of them coals are awesome for cooking on always carry some of them you know they're really quick and easy you can stop off and give you get yourself a burger or something like that it's depends how far you want to go with your cooking if it's a quick stop you know you can do that and i always think well i'm saving money because i haven't stopped on the motorway so that evening i'm gonna i'm gonna have a really nice meal so let's let's crack open a steak and the jacket potato or something like that gorgeous mill on the road but later on i might do kind of a series of what me and mrs b cook on the road so you can get some idea for yourself and maybe you can share some recipes with us because you know i love sharing on YouTube like i saw my other channel it's why i started YouTube because it's just a sharing caring community i think some great people on there and some great knowledge I'm tending to you know try and share as much of what I've learned with you guys you know and i and what winds me up you know is people getting ripped off on the road and so many people are ripped off so alongside the wood aspect we carry gas to 3.9 kilo propane bottles they're very useful for our indoor cooking and an outdoor cooking on that stove that's a perfect place to keep that bottle 3.9 kilos of gas cooking one meal and a few brews last us about two to three weeks so you get a lot out of a little bowl and if you're combining that with with your wood prep as well you can draw one of them bowls out for a month so two of them in there will will last you for a for a good road trip and obviously if you want to be cheaper get the bigger bowls and my secondary bottle that I'm using now is under the vehicle so that all rigged up to my Cadak two burner stove so like now, let's just go for a little scenario we've been on the road four or five hours you're quite tired and you want to stop off for a coffee so what i do grab me kettle fill out the water which i haven't paid for and i'll wipe that on the gas which doesn't cost you an arm and a leg or if you want to be really cheap and save money if you're planning on a long term trip i would get a kelly kettle or heat it over her over a fire pit so that bruise on now that's cost me pence now the guy next to me in his camper he's gone in and bought two costa coffees that's cost him six pound and it's cost me pence so you can see the result of being self-sufficient in your camper just by having a bit of water having a jar of coffee and the facilities to heat that water up and it's far more enjoyable and at the present climate you've got to get out your vehicle out your camper you've got to put your mask on and you've got to go into a shop that at the moment i feel there's no atmosphere on it or anything in shops so i'd rather be in my vehicle making myself a nice cup of coffee of my choice of my brand of coffee than putting myself in in a situation that i don't like so another advantage about being self-sufficient in your camper so i hope you're finding the video interesting if you're interested in anything you see on this land rover me and the good lady are building a website with all the gear that we've installed on the land rover all the bits and pieces um we're gonna do like gear reviews and things like that so you can get an honest opinion you know i'm quite a straight honest guy you can get an honest opinion to the product an in-depth kind of review from me before you purchase there tends to be a lot of companies out there and reviews of products and you know they're not they're not completely true so you know you're going to get a good review from me if it's tried and tested by me then you know it's half decent i want to talk to you about the comfort side of your rig of your camper or whatever you call it depending on your age when you're younger you can rough it a little bit more i know me and mrs b we used to sleep in the back of cars and things like that so i roughed it with with the best of them and sleeping in you know really poor quality tents and things like that but that's great when you're young it's a great experience and it and it kind of leads you and connects you into the outdoors but as you get a bit older you want a bit more luxury you want a bit more comfort and a lot of people look at smaller campers or cars even as really roughing it with no comfort where i tend to disagree you know i have had a couple of really luxurious motorhomes and i think the landy you know is is far more not as far more but as comfortable as a as a expensive motorhome and if you do own a vehicle doesn't have to be a land rover definitely get yourself a hammock to put inside and a good timing point i've tied mine to my ladder rack so that just gives you one tie out point which i've got on on a tree here so i've got the Landy and the tree and i've got myself a great sitting area and sleeping area if it's gorgeous weather like this i'm not camping tonight i'm just coming up for the day but you know i'd be more than happy to chuck a sleeping bag in here and spend the night and knowing that you're going to be really comfortable and you've got all your facilities just behind you that's that's what i love you know i love the passion of this and and building a a camper or a vehicle where you you're going to enjoy the outdoors that's that's what it's all about traveling around seeing beautiful places staying on the road as as long as you can having so many adventures and it's not costing you the earth inside the vehicle is a comfy sofa it's just some old cushions that we had with an existing sofa from indoors and we covered them and made up some pillows and that is a lovely seating area so this is awesome comfort you've been on a long drive you've been on the road for a while and you can just come in the back of the landing and you can just sit on this great sofa lean back grab one of your cushions like so and you've got great comfort and this conversion inside the land rover was just bits and pieces me and the good lady put together and it didn't cost us a huge amount of money i think the whole lot in here cost us about 100 pounds just bits of wood and bits we had indoors and thought we'd build this make it really really comfortable so like i said the older you get you like a bit more comfort and this is this is great in here and it's a lovely bed to sleep on you know mrs b sleeps down here a lot on this on this bed i've slept down here want to check my other videos out i was i was camping the other week and laying on this bed it's gorgeous comfort and then i'll take you upstairs as i call it and i'll show you the rooftop tent so that is ultimate comfort up there fully waterproof twin skinned easy to put up and you're totally self-sufficient with that you can park anywhere and he takes the footprint of the vehicle so you can go anywhere i love while camping so i can kind of go away and wild camp or stealth camp and put that up late at night or when it gets dark but the telescopic ladder that lives in that tent i put it in a bag just get up get the bag down erect the ladder clip it in lovely and safe you know once that ladder's clipped in that's not moving anywhere left or right is it's a solid ladder you've got three access points to this tent so depending on where you parked you can gain access into it but awesome in comfort there's nothing worse than going camping and you're not comfortable you're not getting a good night's sleep because you're not going to enjoy it and you're going to be miserable the next day and then the whole experience whole adventure on the road is just going to be a miserable one my advice is to get yourself a good quality tent depending on the amount you're going to be doing you know the soft shells are good i've had a soft shell it's a great tent but depending on what you're doing we traveled a lot in Scotland it was a case of putting out putting it down because we moved on pretty much every other day or every day so it's a lot of work and if the weather's bad you don't want to be outside for 15 20 minutes wrapping the thing up and then another 15-20 minutes when you pull up erecting the tent where this is ultimate comfort ultimate ease of use so great purchase sometimes i spend quite a bit of time just sitting in here rather than you know you've just got that extra bit of vision but this is a comfortable tent really comfortable it's a hot day today and up here because of the insulation it's really cool you know i've got all the the openings open but the breeze is coming through and the insulation you'd think being a black tent that it'd be absorbing all the heat and it'd be like a sweat box in here but it's so cool and being that bit higher up you are capturing more of that breeze so it's uh it's a lovely place to be it's a lovely you know it's a lovely place to wake up in the mornings so don't go spending huge amounts of money on hotels and b and b's get yourself a vehicle with a nice rooftop tent and you know look at that view imagine waking up to that in the mornings and your good lady's bringing you up a coffee and when you're up here i get up at night you know a couple of times i drink quite a bit of coffee what i do now is i i bring a little kind of container up here when it's bad weather or when it's cold so i can you know go for a number one in the tent so i don't have to come out there's nothing worse all the heat's built up in here because it stays lovely and warm you're opening the doors and you've got to go out in bad conditions and if you get up twice or there's nothing worse i love all these little bits that just make your life comfortable and really enjoyable just a piece of plastic and it saves you getting freezing cold and wet and then to warm this whole tent up again through your body heat it's lovely in the summer it's no problem but you know the last trip i've done in here we had 28 hours of rain and there was no way i was getting out of this tent it was just too bad driving rain and you open a door and the range just was gonna come in so definitely um definitely take something up with you but that's definitely what i'm talking about that is a great piece of kit for your vehicle brilliant for traveling or you're in a public place and and you've got to go there's nothing worse than wanting to go to the toilet and you don't feel comfortable that's how i know i'm in a good place when you can go to toilet and you're not worried about being seen you know you're in a great place when you can just go freely but that is a necessity for for up there in bad conditions power's very important when you're on the road so i have a solar panel which supplies my power unit i don't have a split charge system in the van i was going to go down that route but decided against it as i prefer portable power split charge system really really expensive you know i've had a few quotes and they they're mega money but i like this system i can take it out of here i might want to camp down there and i can take the whole unit and the solar panel down to another area i might want to camp on the beach and i want some power down on the beach i'm not restricted to power in the vehicle i can be somewhere you know and go and charge from someone's premises that's a beauty of a portable power station power generator they're lovely and quiet as well my unit is a jackery like i said check all this out on my website i have several power packs that i use but the jackery explorer 500 is great for over landing it charges from their solar panel that comes with the kit charges from the car charges from mains so there's lots of ways to get power back into that unit and it's got a built-in inverter as well so you can run small electrical appliances off of it you know laptops razors things like that so which enables you to be self-sufficient on the road that's where the unit lives in the center console i plug it into the cigarette lighter so whenever you're driving you're charging and then you stop off and then out with the solar panel the beauty of this system as well you can put power into it and draw from it great system but you don't have to spend that amount of money you know i haven't had power packs for a long time i used to use a a leisure battery so i had a leisure battery in this vehicle when i went to Scotland and i spent five weeks in Scotland on a leisure battery and never charged it so it was uh it was perfect so you don't have to have a power pack like that go down the cheaper route and buy a buy a leisure battery but as I'm doing it more and more and you know and running more and more electrical uh bits and pieces i felt like you know i needed the power unit like that one but that was my worry in Scotland was are we gonna run out of power and eventually i might want to run a fridge as well so that's going to draw even more power from the unit so good investment for for self-sufficiency a power unit or a split charge system is a must in your vehicle in my opinion you know some people get away with with next to nothing but you still got to charge your torches and bits and pieces so you know you could go down the small power pack route that's great that solar panel position there not only am i getting free energy but it's keeping the sun rays from the front window so it's keeping the truck nice and cool inside it's having two purposes another aspect being on the road is how do you stay clean the weather's nice you know like this you're gonna be showering more you're gonna get hot and sticky depending on what you're doing so what i like to do i use like baby wipes these are great just you know you're hot and sticky you can just have a wipe down keep yourself nice and clean they're lovely and fresh they stay cool when they're moist so they're they're great but don't forget don't use the same one for downstairs and upstairs top tip there so these are lovely and then if I'm really you know it's after about four or five days you know i can go four or five days just by using these and then after that what I'll do is I'll boil some water in the land rover hot and cold mix or if you're near a river or a lake you can always jump in the river or lake and have a wash or if it's really warm go out when it's showering and have a wash or collect the water from the lake or the river and boil it this is what i do fill that up and then i put that in here in my like privacy shower and have a strip wash with that and you come out really clean really nice and refreshed this is great for being self-sufficient on the road you know not only to can you wash in it you can get changed in there you can go for a number two in there you can either dig a hole in the ground underneath or you can take a bag or something with you depending on how you do it same again you can be as luxurious or as primitive as as you want with being on the road where it doesn't bother me digging a hole and having a number two in places or using public toilets the same again you start using up facilities like showers and toilets you're charged for it so depending on what you want to do and how long you're going for and you know during long trips like our Scotland trip that we went on uh we used to stay in campsites we well i said we stayed in three campsites so then I'd use their facilities as I'm paying for it so i have a nice shower then but there's nothing wrong with a collapsible bucket that takes no room but you can just heat a bit of water up and and have a strip wash and also what i've got for this as well is a pump shower so i can do the same heat some hot cold mix and pump the shower and you get a nice shower effect in there which is which is lovely beautiful but lovely and roomy in here and it's got reflective sides so it kind of traps the steam so perfect for self-sufficiency on the road like i said if you want to get dressed or something outside you can just dive in here you've been down for a swim or something you want to put some fresh clothes on and you're dripping wet just come in here and get changed great zip there so you can access i can access indoor inside the vehicle so showering on the road keeping clean so tools for self-sufficiency in your land rover i have many tools in there but the two you know i use the most because i like outdoor fires there's a good forest axe good quality axe so that lives in there all the time for for wood processing like i said it's all about being out for a long time saving money and if you've got wood available then it's brilliant for processing wood and doing your cook-ups and making brews and costing you no money at all and to accomplish that you might be going to places that are quite remote it's good to have a saw this is a Boreal 21 this lives in the land rover all the time really compact saw bolts down as you can see it doesn't take up no space and awesome for cutting timber so Boreal 21 great saw to have in your camper so easy to to store and that's it and you've got a great cutting tool on the road great for processing wood for my Atago so it lives in your vehicle so another way of keeping self-sufficient on the road if this is going to be your primary source of fuel if you're going to a forested area for a number of weeks but it's great great to have these two they both accompany each other really well we both were planning to go to Sweden last year but obviously because of the restrictions we can go but these two tools would have been perfect for our wilderness we're going to do the wilderness trail in Sweden so any obstacles in our way with debris we could have cleared with with these two tools but you can't be camping in a a wilderness place or a remote place with an open fire i think there's something really special about it so you know when you're planning loading your vehicle out and you want to be self-sufficient then two tools are gonna really pay dividends in your vehicle and sitting around a fire on a chilly night with the stars out and you're cooking a couple of bangers it's great great experience this is my predominantly all my cookware you know eliminating the few pots and pans that we use for inside but I've got a dutch oven which is on now I'm doing a lovely stewing to the dutch oven on board you can do a manner of different cook-ups in that and the beauty of this fire pit that the dutch oven can sit in there I've got a heavy-duty carbon steel frying pan lightweight and really heavy duty you can put that on a fire and give it a lot of abuse so that's a great frying pan for outside and inside cooking a pie iron cast iron it's quite weighty for your vehicle but well worth the wait do toasted sandwiches pies in there you can do desserts in there so that's great that can go on the fire or on your coals i do like carrying that in the land rover and this other ribbed frying pan is great for steaks and pies i like using that as well nice large steak in there with a rib effect so it's pretty much the cookware that i carry in in the vehicle to be self-sufficient and like i said don't waste your money going to restaurants get out there and be inventive and get yourself a duchy because these are awesome lovely to cook on so the key to good camping is good cooking I'm doing a chicken stew at the moment although it's not the weather for chicken stew but smells lovely so me and mrs b we can go away and we can relax knowing that we have everything on board i started camping years ago me and mrs b had a camper in the early days and we toured round and that kind of started me into the kind of campervan scene and then we moved up from there we got a bigger motor home or a 20-foot motorhome we drove to turkey which is an awesome experience all through Bulgaria Romania and down into into turkey across the Bosporus it was an amazing trip and that kind of got me into this vehicle self-sufficiency stay on the road save money kind of attitude and then we came back from there and we we saved up and we bought a 27 foot eldest emperor with like an m bedroom huge walking roof on the top and we took that to Portugal and toured around Portugal and Spain that was awesome so again i progressed we became more more and more self-sufficient in a vehicle and then after that we bought a little a smaller vehicle because of the expense of staying in campsites where they would be charging us two pitches and things like that because of the length of the vehicle it became really really expensive it became really awkward especially in this country it was it was too large really because i like going down unexplored places and things like that and with a vehicle like that you never know if the road's going to be too narrow or it's going to be a dead end or oncoming traffic so that swayed me to where i am today well just before before this we had a Volkswagen Transporter that was a nice vehicle had a pop-top roof and bits and pieces and that that enabled us to to go to more remote places but a couple of times you know we got stuck and there's places we thought oh we couldn't go because of the you know the van had been you know vans quite low and it had been lowered as well low profile tyres so but it was a beautiful vehicle all the vehicles I've owned they've all had their assets I've enjoyed all of them chicken stew dumplings oh that's what you'll be when you're on the road and it's not costing you a great deal of money and you're really enjoying yourself thanks for watching guys hope you enjoyed the video i hope you found a few bits useful and if you got any tips yourself don't forget to to share them with me and I'll see you on the next one cheers guys
2021-06-13 20:08
