Driving to the Mountains Alone With No Plan

This week I'm driving to some of the tallest mountains in Europe. It's a place I've been wanting to go for years. I've planned the trip three or four times now and every time something has got in the way. But this time I spent a month getting my van ready for high elevation and eventually deep snow. If you're new here I'm Jessica and I travel solo and full-time in my campervan Frodo with my pup Heidi. Three years ago I got tired of spending my young years making ends meet and not truly living so I sold most of my belongings and hit the road with no plan, no money and no idea what I was doing. Join me as I embark on this new adventure and grow roots in the wild. I'm on a five kilometre hike through some very hilly forest, first thing this morning. It's very steep in places but there's a beautiful waterfall at the end of it and I could do with a shower to be honest so hopefully it'll be worth it. Here in the hills it is now the height of spring and because the place I'm going to will be quite a bit colder I've been making the most of the warm temperatures while I still have them. The sun always makes me feel more like myself again and it's a lot easier to follow the routines that keep me well. Moving my body every day, swimming in cold water to clear my mind and worrying less about getting everything done before the light fades which is a real problem when you live outside. Some of the best parts of my last few days here were the small everyday things like walking the same hills I'd been walking for weeks, washing in a waterfall and letting the sun dry my skin. There is genuinely no better way to start your day than with a hike and a cold water swim. I feel like whatever the day throws my way now I am ready. If I'm completely honest with you guys I probably didn't need a full month to get ready for this trip. I was just tired after my last one, driving from Scotland to Greece and back and then backpacking across Patagonia for a few weeks and I just found myself procrastinating a little. These hills are so familiar to me, I lived in this area for a few years, that I got a bit stuck in what feels familiar and safe even though it's not necessarily where I feel happiest. But knowing that these were my last few days here for a long while I soaked it all in as much as I could. The lush green of spring, the tiny rivers weaving through the forest and waking up to the most incredible bird song. Hello friends, I hope you're all doing well. It is finally time for my next big road trip this week. I'm going to be off for six months and this time I'm particularly excited because I'm driving into a mountain range that I've been wanting to visit for years and years and years but something always got in the way and I've been telling myself 2026 is the year I finally drive to those mountains and that's what's happening this week. I've had about a month of getting a lot of work done on the van, catching up with friends and spending time with my partner and it's been weirdly non-eventful and hectic at the same time because I was doing a lot of stuff basically cramming a year's worth of life admin into one month and at the same time I wasn't moving around so much and I'm really missing traveling and although it's been nice to catch up with loved ones over the last month I'm also just really craving to be alone. There's just something that my soul deeply craves that only being alone can give me, you know what I mean? It's like I just really enjoy being alone in nature and getting to know myself better, overcoming my fears and pushing my comfort zone and I haven't had that for a while because I was traveling with friends in Patagonia and then obviously I've been here for the last month and around people so I am going with no plan whatsoever. I haven't picked any campsites, haven't made an itinerary, nothing. My number one priority is just getting to those mountains and then I'll see where the wind carries me and I'll just take it from there but for now I just want to get there so nothing's going to stand in my way this time. It is going to happen for real, fingers crossed and yeah I just need to get a few things done on the van so I'm going to spend the next couple of days doing that and then I will be off on my way. My vintage cabinet which you can see behind me has been falling apart a little bit. It was already damaged when I bought it and I wanted to save time during the build. I don't know how much time it saved me in the end because I've had to repair it quite a few times now but I am rather emotionally attached to it so recently the drawer fell apart so I'm fixing that now. I think I'm just going to give it a bit of wood glue and hopefully that will do the job. As soon as the clocks change in the spring and the days are long again it's almost like someone's flicked a switch and put van life on easy mode especially because now I have pretty much unlimited electricity. I frequently get asked how I manage to power an induction cooker, power tools for fixing things myself and high speed wi-fi for working on the road so I want to take a minute to talk about Bluetti who are kindly sponsoring this episode. I've been running my entire van on Bluetti the entire time I've lived here and it's honestly been perfect for full-time van life. The model I've got now is the Bluetti Elite 200 V2 which is the one I swapped to after my partner took my old one for his own van conversion and the reason I did that is because it's 20% smaller but has the same battery capacity so it freed up a chunk of space for my camera gear. Essentially I run two extension leads from the sockets to my charging cabinet so everything I use on a day-to-day basis like my laptop, phone, camera, batteries and wi-fi lives plugged in permanently across the sockets, USB-A and USB-C outlets and I almost never have to think about it and there's also a 12-volt port which I connected to a splitter which powers my ventilation fan and water pump but the thing that's actually completely changed van life for me is the alternator charger. It charges 30% of my battery per hour of driving so in the winter when there's barely any solar it makes a huge difference and the rest of the year it just means that I never have to think about it. Bluetti currently have a spring sale across their power station and camping range and you can get an extra 5% off with my code BLUETTIJESSICA. A big thank you to Bluetti for sponsoring this episode and for keeping the lights on in here year-round. You're gonna miss the Welsh Elves. What's that face for? We had a few really beautiful weeks here in Wales. It was sunny every day, no rain, it was really gorgeous but to be honest guys I'm so happy that the rain is back. It was the driest April in probably one of the driest on record, definitely the driest I've seen here and the valley you saw in my last van video, it's been burning for days and I'm about 20 miles away from that valley now but even this morning I woke up and I was breathing in wildfire smokes. It's just been traveling across the valleys and hills and it's just so good to have some more rain in the soil now and hopefully the fires will die down in the next few days. And I don't know about you guys but I feel like places like Wales and Scotland look so much better in this gloomy and rainy weather. There's just something very atmospheric about it and often I feel like the sun looks a bit out of place to be honest. So yeah I'm absolutely loving it. Heidi and I are going to finish a walk through these hills and then I'm going to return to the van, finish my last bits of prep and then we will finally be on our way. Okay I'm at the mechanics this morning hopefully for the last time to have my new springs installed because my suspension suffered a little bit on my last road trip so I just want to make sure that I'm not going to face really high maintenance costs after my next trip. They were very kindly gifted to me by Super Springs and I've got these for the front. They kind of protect the existing coil springs that are there. We had them on the last van as well and they were incredible. They actually made the driving experience a lot more comfortable and also made the van shake less in very windy weather and obviously they protect the suspension which is really amazing. And for my van I'm also getting, oh my goodness, I've had these in my van for the last week and I'm really looking forward to them not taking up all the space anymore. These things, oh my goodness, I can't even fit them in the frame because they're so big. So we'll be here at the mechanics for most of the day and then Frodo will hopefully be ready for his next big adventure. So this is James and he's the reason I'm going to be on the road again soon so please do also thank you to James for getting my van ready for my next trip. Okay, my springs are fitted, all of my van repairs are finally done and I even had my chimney swept. I couldn't be more ready for this trip. So now all that's left to do is to drive a thousand miles to our destination. I have this habit of always getting sidetracked with side quests when I'm planning a trip to a specific destination. I randomly drive past a nice place and don't want to miss out on camping there. I spot a gorgeous waterfall on the map and delay my onward journey. And for me this is what really makes it feel like traveling instead of just driving. But this time I was determined not to allow any distractions apart from one. My family is from Poland but my mum and sister live with my stepdad here in Germany, about halfway between Wales and my destination. So I built in a couple of days to stop and see them. I went to school in this area and honestly I don't have a whole lot of happy memories here. It never really felt like home and I moved to the UK as soon as I could when I was 19. But I wanted to see my sister who is now the same age as I was when I left. We went on long walks together and I taught her how to forage elderflower which is now in full bloom and one of my seasonal favourites. Every time I drive south and the flat fields turn into hills and the hills slowly into mountains it feels like my heart starts beating a little bit faster the further I go. I had almost started to wonder if I was cursed because I tried to get here so many times in the past but this time the road kept going, my van carried me reliably and the mountains kept getting closer until eventually I arrived at the place I had always dreamed of.