A Different Kind of Vanlife… Working Evenings & Living in My Van 🚐

Well, van life is looking a little bit different for me this week. No spectacular road trips. I am working in the evening doing fostering support, but I'm still living in my little van. So come along and see how I get on. I'm going to another foster carer's house, taking care of their foster children for a few hours, a couple of evenings. And then rather than going home, I'm going to stay out in the van. I'm leaving a little bit earlier because it'll be dark by the time I'm finished because it'll be like eight o'clock by the time I'm done. I don't really know the area So I just want to suss it out and see. like find a park up for tonight so when i'm done i can just like literally just you know go and drive there and park up like i know exactly where i'm going i went on park for night and found this place i just thought i'd come over and see yeah i'm uh i think i'm pleased with this i'm glad i did come now though just so i can just check it out make sure that i that i have got a place for later on because i just don't i don't want to be driving around places in the dark particularly Right, let's go do a bit of fostering. I am done with that fostering. It's 8 o'clock. Actually, no, it's a little bit earlier than 8 o'clock to go to my park up. This is where I'm going to park, I think. I think I need to get the diesel heater on and just relax for the night. I think I'm really going to like this balance. So I didn't think, so it's Tuesday today. I thought I was going back on Thursday to do some more fostering. I'm actually going to go back tomorrow because I'm going to have this baby. I'm actually going to have them the following week at my house. And so because of that, because there's some issues like... just medical things that i need to know and be more comfortable with so i'm going to go tomorrow as well but i feel like this this could be a really good balance for me i know i kind of maybe flip-flop around a little bit but of like going on a road trip and maybe the foster work wouldn't won't always be there but going on a road trip coming back doing some fostering work whilst being in the van or whatever and then you know maybe doing more road trips and so my income my money can come from fostering the van stuff and the food stuff and if i can combine all three i feel like i'm on to a winner here but anyway i'm gonna i'm not very hungry i haven't eaten my dinner but i did bring i bought a jacket potato and chili from home but i don't think i'm gonna probably eat it i think i'm just gonna get into bed and relax for the evening because i'm gonna go on a hike tomorrow i think oh what might be out there quite late now for me it's like half past eight i had a um a bit of an okay sleep but then i think it started getting noisy about four o'clock I think that there's loads of shops there, I don't know if it was like deliveries of things I didn't fall back asleep till um I woke up at four and I didn't fall back asleep till quarter to seven, so a bit of a lie in I'm just gonna heat up the chili that I've made at home that's on our food and I'm gonna heat that up for breakfast The jacket potato because that sounds lovely, I am hungry after not eating any dinner. I say chili, it's a loose, I use that term Loosely, but it's big I've just burnt my tongue on that chilli That was ridiculous. I've just took it off the stove and then ate it, and then, oh, ow, going to go Going to eat this, get dressed and stuff Find a little walk or something to do Sit outside and enjoy the sunshine. I finally found a little daytime parking spot. Having my side door open and sun streaming through in November feels like quite a luxury. All right, let's do this little hike. Left the van back there. I've got a little bit of a walk before I get to the start of the hike. My legs are actually sore. I think, I don't know what I did yesterday, some sort of workout. My legs are sore from it, but that's okay. I'm doing the Beacon Country Park Summit hike. I'd look on my AllTrails. I nearly need to. I used to have AllTrails, like the paid-for version, but I cancelled it because I got lazy. But now I'm out more. I think it's when I'm fostering, I don't really get out and about, but I cancelled it. But I need to pay for the paid version because then I get offline maps. I did get, talking about like getting subscription things and stuff, I got the National Trust membership yesterday. I think it was like 108 pounds or something for the year. You can pay annually, yearly annually and yearly are the same, monthly, but I just thought I'll just pay annually, get it done. So I've got that which will be good for you know just car parks or like you can never usually stay overnight can you in National Trust places but just for like day parking or like visiting places. I thought it would be definitely worthwhile and I think a few of you recommended it to me as well so. Yeah, I got it yesterday, so that's good. I've gone off plan. I was like, I was looking at the map, I was walking around and I thought, why am I doing the Beacon, whatever it's called, Beacon Country Park Summit Circular? I want to go up to the top and obviously I was just going around it, so I've gone off plan. I'm going up. As it turns out, there's not much of a summit, but there is a sculpture trail, so I'm going to follow that. The summit is just here. I think the summit. I've done the summit. Going down the summit seems a little bit dramatic, to be honest, but we're back on the sculpture trail. We've made it to the owl. The sculpture trail. It's severely lacking in sculptures. I mean, it's nice wandering through the trees and that, but all I've seen is that owl. Oh, sculpture spotted. A dog, a wolf dog thing. I'm gonna collect a little souvenir. I'm gonna make some sort of like souvenir wall thing or something in the van. I've got my shell from Shell Island, my rock from Thingy. No, what are these called? Fern. Do these last, actually, or will it go manky? Can you dry them out? I don't know. Look at what they're doing here. Oh, OK. This is what they're doing. Picture frames. Can you make a picture in the wooden frames? You wouldn't use any natural material. Oh, that's nice. I had to come back and have a look. Oh, yeah! I was going to come and do that, a little smiley face. Obviously not a very original idea. This is such a lovely place to come for a little walk. There's a play area here for kids. Ooh, what's this? What the heck? It's a shame this place has loads of uh little car parks like this. Like loads of them. You're not allowed to park after 10. It'd be a lovely park up. This isn't the best thing ever. Oh he flew away and my phone got full of storage but there was a robin sat on there. In fact I see him over there. Where's he gone? He's flown away now. I didn't know whether he was part of the sculpture or not and then as I got closer he flew away. It's starting to feel a little bit like uh like rain's on the way so I might head back. I've no idea how to get back but oh I just felt a drop. Yeah. Head back to the van. We'll figure out how to get back to the van. Oh, this is just on my way back. This life for a life thing. A memory of people. It's like the life of a person for the life of a tree. Nice thing. Well, not nice, you know what I mean. All these trees are planted in honour of someone who's died. It's only going to start to rain. I have got my coat in my bag, but I found the van. It ended up not raining in the end. The sun's coming back out now. Well, it spat for a little few seconds. I'm going to have some lunch. I have got my kind of Mexican bowl that I made at home. I'm looking forward to this actually. It does look like a ton of food but mainly vegetables. There's tofu and black beans. I'm going to spend about an hour or so doing some laptop work now before I head back over and do my fostering this evening. I'm just sitting here replying to some comments on my latest video. And I have to show you this, just in case you don't know. Like I said, I've just become a member of England and Wales National Trust. But someone in my comments, Matthew, said that if you become a member of Scotland National Trust, you can visit the England ones. And look at this. It's so true. If you get a... Use your membership card to visit international national trusts, organisation places around the world. So not only. So you can see, like, England, Wales, Northern Ireland is on there. But there's also places all around Europe, Americas, whoa, it's too late for me because I joined the England one, but if you're thinking about it, let me just check actually what the England one gives me access to. Oh no, hang on, okay, look at this, International National Trusts Organisation. This is on the English National Trusts website. You can do the same with the English one. Yeah, National Trusts for Scotland, so you can do the National Trusts, so it doesn't matter whether you get the English one or the Scottish one, you can do the other countries. I'm pleased about that, because I couldn't believe it. I was replying to the comments, and I saw that comment, and I was like, oh, no, I've literally just bought my English one. So, yeah, that's interesting. It makes it even more valuable as a membership thing, so excellent with that. Oh, okay, I've got to be leaving. I'm early leaving, but I was just thinking, oh, I've got to drive through Preston to get to where I'm going, and I, if you know anything about Preston, do you not want to be driving through Preston at, like, school time or, you know, rush hour or whatever? And I have managed to land it. Kind of perfectly to go through right around school time, so good job Sarah. So hopefully it is only an hour's drive and not any longer than that, but yeah, let's go. Please traffic, be kind to me. I came anyway. I need to accept about myself that I like to go places with single track roads, so I just need to become better at it. That's one car, success. Maybe it's not actually the single track. I don't think it is the single track that bothers me. It's the hills, isn't it? And it's quite flat around it. Well, not flat, but like it's not. Bumpy. No, what's the word I'm looking for? Hilly. Hilly is Wales. Yeah, I think it's the hills that are my issue, not the actual single track. Although, yeah, it's just a big old scary car. The more I do it, the more it will be second nature to me. I'm here and I made it with no traffic, so that was wonderful. It's a lovely evening out there. I wish I was parked up somewhere nice, but nope, let's go and do this fostering work. I am hold on. I think I'm just going to go to that car park that I was in. That I went to yesterday you know. Okay a bit of a change of plan there's a big bit of a crash like at the junction by the um by the car park the police and fire engines everywhere so I don't know the fire guy said he thinks the fire the car park's closed if I had to come the other way I need to figure out where I can go I don't know. Right I'm doing a little loop I'm going to see if I can get to the car park from the other direction. I've just come to like the other side of the car park The car park I was in last night. It's kind of connected, it's like behind this shop. That was where I wanted to go, but I can't get there. There's a crash. I hope everyone's okay. I mean, I could stay here. It's a little bit more kind of busy. Let me see if there's any restrictions. This is where I was last night. The crash is just down there, so I can't get to it where I got to it. My van's literally just there. I don't see any restrictions so maybe I'll stay here, maybe I'll just hang around for a minute. Well I've been sitting in the back here for about half an hour or so. It's very noisy in this car park so I either need to, I'm going to go for a little walk and see if I can get into that other bit at the back or I think I'm going to move and try and find somewhere else which I'm not a fan of. It's half past, oh no it's not actually as I thought it was but it's eight o'clock. Let's go and see if I can get into the other car park. I think I'm seeing flashing blue, I think it's still closed. Yeah it's still closed. It's actually really frustrating because it's like there. I just want to come down here and get into here. Like the accident's down there but I'm not allowed. Which I understand I shouldn't have a little moan about someone's been in, you know, people have been in a crash. Maybe not being able to get into a car park is not the end of the world but it's just there. They won't let me come. I'm being insensitive, I'll shut up. This light is nice, hey? Red light. I found another little gravel spot on Park for Night that's just literally five minutes down the road, but if that fails, I do know this area, not well, but I drive through it, I've driven through it a lot, so I do know of a few other little side roads that I could go down if this gravel spot doesn't work out. We shall see. I don't want to be faffing around at this time of night. Little gravel spot. This is a road, hopefully no one crashes into me in the middle of the night. It's a beautiful thing. Well, I am chuffed with that. Nice little spot, I like this better than my other car parks. Well, so far, who knows what it's going to be like through the night. I'm just going to get into bed now. And, um... yeah watch them out and go to sleep i think or reply to some comments because i had a video go live this evening so i'll uh i'll have everyone chat to you in the comments i think this evening i'll see you in the morning oh dear this is all fun and games tonight isn't it window coverings up got ready for bed got pajamas on and everything and i was like went to go and reply to some comments no signal not even enough to pull up a web page i ain't staying here i'm going There's a place just near here, I know you can't see me very well, but there's a place, I used to drive this route to take some foster children somewhere one time, and there was a route, they would always need a wheel, like I'd just potty trained them and they'd always need a wheel, so we'd have to stop and there was this little side, like not side street, but like somewhere where I thought, oh, I could park up there, but it's literally just around the corner, so I'm going to see if this has got a signal, or is this the road, I don't know if this is the road. Good morning. I have been a lazy cow this morning. It's like 10 o'clock. A big coach has just pulled up in front of me. Yeah, I've been lazy this morning. It's like 10 o'clock. I'm still in bed. I went to bed too late. I need to, I'm someone who, no matter what time I go to bed, like my eyes just ping open at like latest seven o'clock, even if I go to bed at like three o'clock in the morning. So I need to, I think I'm about to get up and go on my little 45 minute walk that I said I was going to do every day. I need to incorporate some more good routines I think and some more good habits and one of them needs to be going to bed at a sensible time and getting enough sleep because it's just crap isn't it when you don't get enough sleep. Yeah I'm not being able to sleep in like I haven't I'm not doing anything specifically till sort of like three o'clock this afternoon I just I'm not a sleeper in it so I need to be going to bed on time and stop being silly and staying up late. But yeah, I'm just going to like, yeah, go for my walk, have a little van day today. I'm not really doing anything special and then go and do that fostering this evening. So I'm going to end this one here. Thank you so much for joining me and I will see you in the next one. See, look, this is why I hate cows. That guy's staring me out. Go away. I'm glad there's water in between us. They're all staring at me. I know they're just looking, but you know.