Flexibility on the move

Initially when we set off on our travels, we thought, since we’re travelling with our car, we can fill it up to the top and bring everything have we need for comfort. However, after travelling for 3 months, we have decided that, although all of this stuff provides certain comfort during our adventures, it drags us down massively. 

Early on we realised that with a car full of stuff, we are not as mobile and flexible as we wanted to be. Firstly, we cannot stop in hostels, which pretty much crosses out most cities from our destinations. Hotels and even Airbnb apartments are too expensive for us to stay in in cities such as Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid, Malaga. Hostels would be the only possibility if we were to stick to our agreed budget. However, sharing a room with strangers, we cannot leave all of our stuff in the car or take it into a shared room. Which is why we can either stay in very remote locations, where a hotel room or an apartment is affordable enough, or stay in campsites, which is essentially what we planned to do for most of the time. However, it would have been good to have an option of staying in some cities from time to time.

Another annoying factor that a car full of stuff causes is the constant packing and unpacking. Every bag has to go in a specific place, or it won’t fit. The packing and unpacking is also very tiring if you’re moving around often. For instance, if we’re camping, it takes us about 2 hours from waking up, packing the tent and loading the car to leaving the campsite.

So far we have stayed in 3 campsites (a week in El Chorro, almost a month in Siurana, and a week in Camarasa, Lleida), we plan to do more until we leave Spain in September.

Camping is great if you’re staying in one location for at least a week. The costs we encountered so far vary between €7 per person per night to over €15, depending on location and facilities. That’s one of the reasons we got so much camping stuff, to bring the travel costs down. 

However, once we leave the car back in the UK, it will be a relief to continue our travels with just a backpack-full of things on our backs.