first day | Chaos roaming the world

Hey – here we go again. Nina and myself are still not sure if we have the engergy to go for daily blogging again. No other way then trying. So I will give it a shot!

What trip kind of trip are we on this time? Well, its still with Puru Hiko, still with the roof tent and the whole family. We have 5 weeks, so we were looking for something a bit further off to make use of the time and enjoy some of that late-covid freedom. Our choice fell on Irland this time, with some light Brittany as a pallet clenser on our way back.

Everything until Belfast is pre-aranged, sailing on the 3th of August. A bit of a rush, but some slight post-Brexit resentment made the choice of dashing through England much easier. Then we have 24 days on the Island of Irland, until we get on another boat from Cork to Roscoff.

Day one was, dare I say, much of the usual. Packing drags on a bit, but we managed to leave before noon. Some crappy food and broken fast chargers later, we managed to make it to Aachen for a late coffee break. Nina wisely proposed to keep the first day on the shorter side, so from here on its only a short 30 minutes to the first campground.

Aachen, the short hour we spent there, was lovely. Number one had seen a bit about the cathedral on the “Sendung mit der Maus”, so we got him to buy into a tiny bit of sight-seeing after the massive piece of strawberry-cream cake. On our way back to the car (parked at charger try number 3) he even insisted that we must come back again as it was “soo nice”.

The last 30 minutes had both kids fully amped up, talking seemingly without even taking a breath in between. The camp ground is perfect for us, single field grass pitch attached to a small farm. No hedgerows, no permanet placements. Out on a lovely hill overlooking a few towns in the Limburg region of the Netherlands. A simple dinner with fresh bread, tent up, car charging. Let’s get this things started …

leave the house clean and return with a smile

Does it make it better to know that you are going to mess something up the first try? A little bit, I suppose. We are by no means greenhorns when it comes to travelling. Yet, it is inevitable. There will be mistakes. After all, we are trying something new for us. And most importantly of course, this is the very first time number 3 is experiencing anything like this.

First mistake: Our newest crew member has a LOT lower tolerance for chewing kilometres. No iron butt to win on this holiday. It obviously did not help that we allowed him to fall asleep for his mid-day nap while still at home. But look at him. So adorable, who could interrupt su… wrong! Sleep now means no sleep later – and the car seat is the only valid daytime napping place for this trip.

sleeping_linus — Bad mistake – should not let him have his nap before the car

So why did we tarry until lunch time? Well, our pre-packing over the weekend showed a fatal flaw in our overall packing strategy, which meant last minute adjustments and thus an early morning trip to the hardware store. What was the issue? We thought we could keep our sleeping gear in the tent. No chance in hell! With the thicker mattresses, the moisture barrier mats and the inner tent, there is not even enough space left for a sheet. I know, I tried. I think I opened and closed the iKamper Skycamp about 10 times on Sunday trying to somehow make it fit.

So without fully re-doing our luggage and throwing out a substantial amount, I had to find space some other way. I ended up taking out half the rear seats – something I intended to do anyway. But for that, I needed a bloddy T50 torx bit, hence the trip to the hardware store. It still is quite the squeeze. To fit everything in. But everything is secure and the rear view is not obstructed.

That left us with one final goal: Getting going – far enough away that if feels like we have actually gone. That was a bit of a known mistake from the get-go, given the afternoon start. In the end, we made it in a crunch. 340km to a super lovely campsite in the French grand balloon region. A bit too much driving in one go, a bit late on the arrival, but necessary for our minds to feel like we are actually on the trip for real.

Setting up camp was almost as easy as imagined. Even though we arrived at 6pm, we had a full spaghetti-and-home-made-sauce dinner and were all in bed by 9pm. The temperatures at night explained why almost no one else is camping here this time of the year, though. It was about 1° C when we crawled into our plushie-down rooftop cave.