You join us on the first day of November. Come on in out of the wind, there’s a storm building outside and it’s cosy in the van. We’ve got the Anevay Shepherd stove going, burning ash wood we foraged from windfall on a golf course in the summer. Drying out on top and all around are metal baskets full of maple logs, cut to length by me and Oak with the electric chainsaw, split and stripped of bark by Tara and the children, using our Husqvarna hatchet, which technically belongs to our nine-year-old Oak but is now employed by the whole family when we process wood.
The maple is filling the van with a smell much like freshly baked bread as it is warmed and dried atop the fire. There are numerous problems with this, the most self-evident being that it is a fire hazard. It is also precariously balanced and could come crashing down at any moment. Finally, the moisture evaporating from the wood is put into the atmosphere within the confines of the van, creating condensation, which leads to a host of other difficulties.
There is one valuable benefit opposing all those problems - a good supply of dry firewood to burn through the cold months and keep out the wintertime chill, without which we would be facing wintry conditions perhaps difficult to endure.
Today we’re parked on a lay-by adjacent to the River Deben, in tranquil Bawdsey on the Suffolk coast, awaiting the overnight arrival of 80 mph gusts of wind and scaturient rain courtesy of Storm Ciarán1.
Bawdsey was originally an estate village, much of which was built by an English baronet, stockbroker and art collector, Sir William Cuthbert Quilter, to supplement his family home and hereditary pile Bawdsey Manor and serve as model cottages for his estate workers.
It’s set in an area of outstanding natural beauty on the Deben Peninsula and the main street winds its way down to Bawdsey Quay with a tiny, sandy beach, most of which disappears underwater at high tide.
It’s long been popular with owners of camper vans and motorhomes and continues to be so, despite the restrictions imposed over the last few years - shortened seaside lay-bys, wooden bollards preventing parking and most recently, no-return-within-4-hours parking signs.
When we’re in the area we often seek out the solace of Bawdsey. It’s quiet, relatively unspoiled and puts you in close proximity to river, ocean, sand, shingle, wetland wildlife, big skies and a public toilet that is open night and day.
As I write the southwester bringing in the storm is still strong but the rain has eased and the sun has come out. It is blinding-bright over the Felixstowe Ferry hamlet rooftops across the water.
Airborne gulls face into the wind but slowly lose ground, although they don’t seem to mind.
The tide is on the way out, revealing first freshly levelled yellow sand, then syrupy mud and finally succulent brown seaweed. The surface of the water is choppy and broken.
The light here seems to be infused with élan vital itself, awakening both the inner and the outer landscape - casting clear and lucent across anything it cares to enlighten.
While the sun is out we’ve got all the doors open to get a good flow of air through the inside of the van. Tara is pulling out the children’s mattresses and emptying the boot space to expose it all to the wind. As a result, it’s cold in the van and we’ve all got our jumpers, coats and hats on. We’ve also got hot cups of tea and biscuits.
I’m writing this in the front cab with the laptop on my lap and Oak is next to me listening to an audio book on his iPad. Our four-year-old North is building a crane out of Duplo - inspired by the infrastructure at the Port of Felixstowe, just visible on the horizon.
Six-year-old Red, our only girl, is singing a song about herself, a pastime she enjoys, and crafting paper snowflakes. Our eldest son Thor, who will be eleven in December, is making mischief, teasing his younger siblings and changing his mind about wanting tea after I’ve finished making him a cup.
It’s a benign, busy, excitable atmosphere with a few choice words from me and Tara when they overstep the mark. As dusk comes in we will close up the van, stoke up the fire and settle in for the evening. Once again Tara will come up with something delicious and nutritious for dinner, cooked on a two-ring hob and made with budget ingredients from Tesco.
We came back to Suffolk in the second week of October for the most mundane reason - the van’s first MOT and service under our care. It was unfortunately a rather costly affair, setting us back a couple of grand. Mercedes Benz maintenance costs are pretty expensive compared to other manufacturers. You get what you pay for and we have certainly paid for it, as the new credit card balance shows.
The van is in good nick and these repairs were not unexpected. We also have a proactive approach to the upkeep of this vehicle because it is our home so we had to bite down hard and swallow the debt.
Our first night sleeping in the van was four months ago, Sunday 2nd July. We crept nervously and excitedly into a farmer’s field not far from here in a village called Waldringfield.
The inaugural Audacious* Six overnighter was an arrive-late-leave-early affair with a small amount of kit, plus coffee and breakfast supplies for bacon sandwiches in the morning.
It was Tara who led us to the field, awash with golden wheat, the river Deben half a mile down the hill, a buzzard calling out with a cry and a skylark rushing up into the air when we opened the door.
A little later, at bedtime, there was a lot of bed shuffling as restless children adjusted to the new experience. Once the little two were snoozing, Thor, Oak and Tara climbed over the bulkhead to get into the cab and snuggled up in their new blankets leaving me peering over their heads from the back.
We were all watching a nearly-full mead moon rising above the old oak tree at the far end of the field when Thor spotted a badger bustling out of the rustling wheat and into the open. Ten minutes later, another one - smaller this time.
Sleep that night was a mixed experience. Tara had to get up frequently. I was both restless and relaxed in turn. I had moments of sudden wakeful alertness, similar to what I feel when I bivvy out in the woods on my own, my senses more acutely tuned in to my surroundings, causing me to wake up sharp, focused and ready.
It was on that first night that North uttered these sublime words:
“We don’t have a home Daddy. We live in a van and the whole world is our garden.”
Since that opening night we have spent the summer dawdling in Dorset and Devon, wandering in Wales and Wiltshire before circling back to Suffolk last month.
All of which I will expand on, next time.
Thanks for reading my work, if you enjoyed it, you might like to send me a little gift to keep The Audacious* Six family show on the road and help me continue to write the book about the adventure. Every donation that drops in, no matter how small (a single shiny pound coin for example), makes me very happy indeed…
Named after Ciarán Fearon, a civil servant who works in the Department for Infrastructure in Northern Ireland, whose job is to ensure key information is shared on river levels and coastal flooding. Is this an example of workplace bullying in the Met Office?