Is Van Life Hard on Mental Health? // S03E11

Living off-grid and on the move in a tiny mobile home is fun but also challenging. We know first hand because we've been doing it for years in all climates, in all weathers and at all times of the year. So with our ambitious plan to drive around the world we know that we need to take care of ourselves to make van life sustainable and what happens when we don't. So in this episode join us on the north coast of Spain where we're sharing what it takes to make this lifestyle sustainable. So this morning we woke up in the most magical place. To be honest with you I was like a bit skeptical when Leah said it's a cliff top parking. I was like oh can we not go to the beach but actually being elevated above this like and being able to see right down the coastline is actually quite special. I think this is the last time on a trip that I'll be able to see in a direct line across the ocean back to Jersey. Bye mum, bye dad, see you in a few years. Alaska are you coming with me? Alaska decided to follow me up the hill today so I guess she's coming with me to do some meditation. The one thing that I really wanted to start and take seriously on this expedition was to take care of our health, our physical health and our mental health because you've seen some of the videos where we've kind of been burnt out and not very happy, finding things quite stressful. So in order for this trip to be successful is really prioritizing our health, especially mental health, especially me with my mental health because I've been struggling a lot with depression and anxiety and doing things like meditation and taking time out for myself is so important to keep my mind healthy and strong. So the one thing that the Basque country has taught us so far is just to really appreciate, like slow down a bit, appreciate things a little bit more like the food and stuff, like don't just shove food down your mouth really quickly just because you're hungry, like sit, enjoy your food, eat smaller portions, eat great good food, good produce and take time to like enjoy the beauty around you, do exercise, go surfing, enjoy the ocean. This spot here is perfect for some reflection, it's really quiet, there's no one around. I'm gonna enjoy this meditation I think, I really need it right now. I usually put my timer on for 20 minutes, I definitely did not do meditation for the whole of the 20 minutes but I put it on 20 minutes because I know that I will get maybe at my best 10 good minutes of proper meditation, the rest of the time I'm just overthinking, thinking about what I have to do, thinking about the future, thinking about the past so really hard to get proper good meditation in. Living in a tiny space with a partner means you are together for almost 24 hours a day. Seeking solitude is key to ensuring that it's possible to cohabit in a tiny home. How do we meditation with a dog? I think throughout this journey we're going to be talking a lot about how we're developing routines I guess on the road and how we're dealing with things like mental health and physical health because they are the most challenging things to go through when you're on the road and living this lifestyle but we are learning and we're going to be learning a lot throughout this journey, we are going to be making mistakes on this journey and we will try to be our best and become our best person hopefully at the end of this expedition we will become stronger, better, wiser people so we'll see it'll be interesting to see how we go. I'm looking forward to burning off some of the pinchos I've been eating, one of the things I'm really enjoying on the coast not just the great food that's going into my body but the great opportunity to burn off those calories as well just being able to be out in the water is kind of like restoration for my mind body and soul it's like my form of meditation and it won't be available on the entire trip all the way to Australia but here in the Basque country it is available and it's plentiful and I am going to take advantage of it. Oh barrels, how do you get down there? Unfortunately on the route to drive around the world there aren't waves in all that many places, here on the north coast of Spain however there is plenty of swell and lots of opportunity to do my favorite pastime scouring the coast and hunting for empty waves. Couldn't get much closer to the beach than this literally wheels on the sand, nobody here. I can't believe a slice of paradise like this doesn't have a hundred people on it and the only reason that is is because you go two kilometers that way or two kilometers that way and there'll be another one but the waves not very good so I'm out of here. Next! So we are on our way out of Spain now to go into Portugal because we've only got a couple of more weeks left until we have to leave the EU so unfortunately we're leaving Spain. I know we haven't felt like we've been here that long and there's so much to see. The good news is we get to come back on the way back into Europe hopefully. One of the things that we wanted to do before we left Spain was to get Alaska sorted for her to enter into Morocco because it is quite complicated. More importantly though coming back from Morocco into the EU. Yeah so she needed some things done before she got to Morocco to head back into the EU because Morocco is a high rabies country. Yeah it is high risk and like there's been a lot of cases of rabies so like we had to get our paperwork in order for her to be able to come back and that had to happen strangely now before we get to the rabies country. Yes and as usual it's very complicated and nobody really knows what to do and everyone had a different answer to what to do so luckily my multilingual very clever fiancee here who can speak Spanish was able to speak to a vet here in Spain and we wanted to do that because obviously he could speak the language and could try to work out what to do. She's lagging behind because basically she knows we're off to the vet. Come on Chica. Time to get Alaska's blood test done so that we can basically get back into Europe after we leave for Africa. Very complicated. The vet doesn't exactly know what to do or what's going on but hopefully this works out. So basically Alaska had to have a blood test to make sure that she's resistant to the rabies virus that her vaccine is still present in her bloodstream so having a clear documentation of how many rabies vaccines she's had in her life is not enough. She has to be tested and unfortunately the poor little soldier had to have quite a lot of blood taken. It made me feel quite gross even thinking about it now. It's freaking me out. They took so much out of one leg that they had to stop and then I can't talk about it anymore. Poor little thing. So that's all done now. It is complicated traveling with a dog. Even the vets don't really know what's going on and every single time we've ever spoken to a vet about traveling to the next country they've always had to consult various government departments for us. It's not something you can just wing because if we were in Morocco and tried to get back into Spain without the proper documentation and it being done properly she would have either been quarantined or like left. Best case scenario. Or she would have been put down. They would have put her down. Yeah it's not uncommon for that to happen. They'll just say sorry she can't come in and we're going to destroy your animal. So that would have obviously been yes. So hopefully, fingers crossed, we can go to Africa and hopefully, fingers crossed, we can come back from Africa. Otherwise it's going to be Astra Africa. Oh you brave girl. You're such a brave girl. She had a treat? I got her some steak. Oh good girl. Look at her. She's got both arms. What happened? Why did it drop twice? They took so much blood out of one arm that they had to take it out the other arm as well. Was she okay? No I wasn't okay. She was all right. She was freaking out a bit. I don't like blood. How did you survive? Honestly I didn't. She was more worried about me than she was about the dog. It's a little embarrassing. It's for you. She won't eat it. She's like that's not for me. That's not dog food. We had planned today to go drive all day today so we can get a bit further to our destination but it is so windy at the moment that we have to just pull over and like just stop somewhere early and get off the roads because boomerang is just going everywhere on the roads. It's really really really dangerous. I don't know how strong the winds are but yeah we just can't drive like this so we're going to find a way off the road as soon as possible and just stop for the day. It's particularly bad at the moment because there's a lot of really high bridges and viaducts that we're going over so it's really really exposed. You can see from the trees that it's really really windy today but when we go over those bridges it's difficult to stay in lane. We're only doing like 45 miles an hour. We found a surf beach to stop at and I think Ben's interested in surfing here for some reason. It's making me dizzy. Okay I'm glad we stopped. That was insane. That was actually the scariest drive we've had in this Kombi. It's just that was way too windy. I was looking up the wind speed it says here it's 29 kilometers an hour so that's a good kind of reference to know that if there's anything over that then we really shouldn't be driving because that was quite dangerous. So I think it's we were going to do that anyway because we knew that this vehicle was a bit you know hard to drive in the wind and it wasn't the safest and we always promised ourselves that if it was going to be windy like very very windy and affecting our drive then we will just stop and wait until the next day or until it dies down. So I'm glad we made that rule for ourselves because it's not very nice driving like that it's really uncomfortable. Okay so I think Ben's going to go surfing now. I'm glad we stopped. It's amazing. No one out there either. Wind's blowing in just the right direction. Good choice babes. We're going to go She's a bit ill maybe from the all the injections that she's had to have. Poor thing. She's had so many rabies injections in her like the past five years. Are you hungry Alaska? Do you want to tell us something Chika? Where's your breakfast time? Neither Leah nor I have a watch but we don't need one because Alaska tells us what time it is and it's nine o'clock in the morning and six p.m in the evening. It's her dinner time isn't it Chika? We try to look after ourselves sometimes. Alaska what's wrong? What do you want? She's obviously not that sick even though she got up three times in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom because she had diarrhoea but she looks fine this morning. We lied when we said we were going to leave Spain and go to Portugal. We're still going to stay here for a little bit longer because there are some lovely beaches on the coast that we still want to see. So we're going to take the coastal road up and come down to Portugal instead of going straight to Portugal. Yeah I'm just checking out the combi crew map. Have you seen how many like recommended spots there are on here Leah? For Spain or Portugal? Europe. Look at that you can barely see the map. There's a couple of spots been recommended by the combi crew so I might go check that one out. There's surf. Need another reason? Yeah no that will do. Surf. What do you think of this camp spot? Great camp spot. Yeah sometimes it can be hard to sleep when you're in a vehicle and there's other vehicles around you coming and going or you're near a street or there's just people outside and you're always just a little bit on edge and sometimes it's difficult but when you're parked on your own on a clifftop this close to the surf and all you can hear is the white noise of the ocean honestly it's just the best sleep apart from for Leah who thinks about editing all night. Ben made a really good point before about sleep and because this whole Spanish trip has been we've been really focusing on being healthier with our mind and our body. Sleep obviously is a really important thing to start off the day well so it really dictates whether we're going to have a bad day or a good day and last night even though we're in the perfect location to have a good sleep I still was quite I was woke up in the middle of the night just overthinking things usually about work and stuff so I woke up this morning and I did some meditation it was raining this morning so I couldn't go outside and have that space so I did it inside in the combi with Ben next to me like doing his thing and it was a lot harder to do it with somebody so close in your space and just not being able to really get into the zone of meditation and with time it will get easier but at the moment it is quite difficult but I did it anyways I did 10 minutes of it and it did help and I just need to get over the fact that sometimes I'm just going to have to deal with Ben sitting right next to me. I can't let that stop me. I need Ben to help me with my hair when I don't want to get my whole body wet so he helps me wash my hair and if anyone's wondering this is all natural shampoo from Lush. The record I do actually prefer it when I get to help her wash her body but you don't always get it your way so today it's just hair. Next time though guys when it's body time I'll be sure to bring you with me. I'd be in trouble if I did that. By this point we're approaching the border with Portugal and we've loved our time so far in Spain. We are starting to find our rhythm with van life in Europe and these past weeks have been just what we needed to rejuvenate our mind body and soul and just as well because our routine is about to be interrupted and many problems in Portugal are on the horizon. I'm in the Portuguese vets trying to get a Portuguese passport for Alaska but that is a story for next time.