As Autumn is well and truly upon us and the colder months are settling in, I thought I’d share some of our HOT tips from our 6 week Wicked UK adventure last Winter.  These are a few tips I can think of:

- Winter travel means the van gets COLD at night! Rugging up makes everything worth while because you’ll get enough good sleep and get a full next day. Plan for a few layers of thermals, a beanie, gloves if necessary, a few pairs of socks and a sleeping bag over the top of it all.

- If you don’t have any set itinerary – joing English Heritage! If you have a few weeks in the UK it’s totally worth it. Navigating by the closest castle, priory, or ruin is exceptional. It gives you entry to every English Heritage site (including the major ones like Stonehenge, Pendennis, Tintagel) and half price entry to sites in Wales and Scotland. Membership also gets you a book listing information on all the sites, times of openings, cost, directions and a brief history. Mind you – half the sites are ‘Open any time’ but you wouldn’t know they existed without the map and the book!

- When on the road for a while, it can get annoying to stop every few days to find a caravan park (and in winter it’s even harder as it seems nearly all of them are closed!) but rather than staying in hotels or motels, (that’s what the bed in the van is for right?)

- If you find a main motorway (usually the blue ones on the maps) they’ll have locations of ‘Services’. The big ones, aka a “Welcome Break” (Starbucks, Burger King, Waitrose) or one of the others, (Little Chef, Maccas) will have showers in the bathrooms. Easy enough to wash a few things while you’re in there, and dry them while you’re driving. The services also will have areas with access to powerpoints, so if you need to charge a few things at once and don’t have an invertor in the car then this is always an option.

Cheers, have fun!
Laura