Imaginary travels, actual costs.

True travellers never stop, either they are on a journey, planning the next one or reminiscing about a previous trip. Trapped as we are for the foreseeable future in Boris's land of ' Do-As-Your-Told', then actual journeys are impossible, all that remains is anticipation or reminiscence. Facebook's 'on this day' has bombarded me with too many opportunities for reminiscence, last week filling my screen with winsome images of lunch in the cafe in Procida where Il Postino was filmed, yesterday with pictures of us in Vinci with Sarah and Rob back in April 2016.  Under the present circumstances looking back doesn't help, it just makes me sad.

What our 'new normal'  prompted initially was flurry of planning. Apart from  occasional short trips in the UK we never venture out without a plan usually recorded on an Excel spreadsheet containing the details and GPS coordinates of each stopping place. We carry it as a Google sheets document on Gill's phone.  Accessing them as we drive along  is a bit of a faff, so over the past couple of weeks I have tranferred the information into Mymaps which is much easier to download on the go. So right now we have many plans but no idea whatsoever when we might realise them.

Now, as the end of April approaches all that effort seems futile. It is unclear when travel restrictions may be lifted locally.   Travelling abroad feels like an impossible aspiration, months away, impossible perhaps for the remainder of the year. Among all this gloom last week brought one brighter moment. We managed to arrange access to the van. The owners of the storage site finally recognised that people needed access to their vehicles in order to check if they were ok. It was fine, no damp, mould or mouse infestation - all good.

Into the bargain we managed to collect the food, clothes, wine, beer and olive oil stashed in the van. The packs of toilet rolls, pasta, rice and tins of tomatoes would have come in handy three weeks ago in the midst of the Armageddon shopping spree, nevertheless we were glad to pick these up anyway even though the local supermarkets are slowly getting back to normal. 

It was the first time in over a month that we had driven beyond. Buxton. Even though the farm where we store the van is less than two miles from the edge of town, somehow it felt slightly transgressive to be heading up the A6 in the opposite direction to our nearest supermarket. It struck me that the 'lockdown' is as much a state of mind as a set of legally enforceable 'instructions'. Totalitarianism is as much about psychology as politics.

 Trips - past and future

Back in 2013 when a travelling life was still an aspiration, one of the things that concerned us was the question of affordability, particularly as we had both opted for early retirement which had reduced our income by more than two thirds. It was an issue that often came up on the motorhome forums we read. The problem was that every contributor had a slightly different method of working out costs. There were people who recorded every single item they spent, assiduously accounting for repairs, maintenance, insurance, road tax as well as the direct cost of travel. Others made a guesstimate based on back of an envelope calculations. I suppose our approach is somewhere between the two. We limit our calculations to the direct cost of travel - ferries, fuel, and accommodation. We don't include everyday living costs like food, drink and entertainment because we would be incurring those anyway at home. We don't eat out when we travel any more than we do at home, which is not very often and never anywhere swanky.

Our planning spreadsheets go back six years. When I looked at them the figures seemed a little odd. As a way of comparing the cost of one trip with another I work-out the cost per day. Two things were striking. Firstly that there is little variation in the daily cost of long term motorhome travel in Europe irrespective of where you go. Secondly that the cost per day in 2019 was less than it was when we started travelling in 2014. This seemed counter intuitive, so I looked into it a little more.

Almost all the trips we have taken over the past four years have ended up costing between £32 - £36 per day. So our budget to live long term in a motorhome in Europe outside the months of  July and August, tends to be between £1000 - £1100 per month. Thinking about why the cost of travel has changed so little led me to the conclusion that it was more a question of happenstance than anything else. Some costs have remained broadly stable - such as the Europe-wide pricing policy you get with an ACSI card. With other items, as you travel across different countries costs can even-out. For example on our last trip, compared to the UK fuel was more expensive in France but somewhat cheaper in Spain. Over the 3200 miles we travelled in January and February the average fuel cost worked out much the same as in the UK. This rule of thumb applies elsewhere. On our longest trip to the Peloponnese in 2015 the cost of fuel was significant, but campsites were cheaper and free places to stay plentiful and even with the euro worth at a now unimaginable low level of 78p,  taken overall daily costs were broadly the same as the trip to Scandinavia last year. 

So, this leaves the final conundrum of why our first trip in 2014 ended up with a daily cost of £42 per day whereas subsequent ones were considerably cheaper. The answer is all about fuel consumption. Our first motorhome was a built on a Ford Transit chassis, double-wheeled at the back, built in 2006, a classic builders truck with a bed and a bog. On a good day dear old Maisy might manage 22mpg. The Burstner Ixeo we have now built on a Fiat Ducato  chassis manages a steady 28mph as a rule, and in flat terrain driving long distances on  a motorway has managed an average fuel consumption of almost 32mpg. .On the face of it that looks like a modest difference, however, taking last spring's 50 day trip to Scandinavia as an example, a difference of 10 mpg makes a £275 difference to the total fuel cost. The layout, quality of fittings and general comfort levels are the things that people tend to concentrate when buying a motorhome. What it is like to drive and issues like fuel efficiency are often overlooked. If you are using it for months on end then they are equally important. Our first van was great, we had a fabulous time, but Maisy was expensive to run and the cab quite primitive, very noisy, the cloth front seats so uncomfortable it caused back ache after a few weeks of driving day after day.

In all the various discussions I have had with people over the years about the affordability of living half your life on the road, the biggest cost is rarely mentioned, it's the motorhome owner's 'elephant in the room'  -depreciation. Depending upon the type of van you own this can be eye-watering. Starting with our own experience. We bought Maisy in 2013 for £24,000. For decades owning a motorhome had been an unaffordable dream, but redundancy gifted us enough of a lump sum as to make it possible. Eventually we traded-in Maisy in January 2018 for £18,000.  

depreciation per month - £111 or £1300 per year

I guess a depreciation of  £1300 per year is no worse than most cars, but Maisy was seven years old when we bought her and a fairly basic van. Once you begin to look at newer and more luxurious motorhomes the depreciation costs are breathtaking. It was a moment of casual irritation with our neighbours which brought this home to us. We had just congratulated ourselves at bagging a particularly sunny parking spot  in La Caleta de Velez. marina when two enormous German registered Concordes parked next to us casting cruise ship sized shadows over our 'emplacement'.  After a couple of minutes of Basil Fawlty inspired fulmination curiosity overcame irritation - how much would something like that cost?  Autotrader to the rescue. An identical model plated 2019 but unused was available at a special discounted price of £249,000. A 2017 model was also on sale for £139,000. So the deprecation in two years was over £100,000 - or over £4500 per month.

A different enormous Cathargo (£300,000+) I worked out in the 30 minutes it took to manoeuvre the monster out of its camping spot and squeeze the inevitable Smartcar into the rear garage the beauteous pile of metal had depreciated by about £20...

At the other of the scale...

A beautifully restored classic VW camper from the early 1960s - we spotted it last spring in Finland. It is is probably appreciating in value. If I was a bit of a handyman and understood mechanics then owning a classic motorhome like a Hymer from the 1980s or 90s could be fun - these are beginning to appreciate in value as well. Otherwise, like the majority of motorhome owners it is probably best to quietly ignore how much your house on wheels is plummeting in value and assert that you can't put a price on freedom, an idea which probably does not stack-up either in terms of economics or philosophy. Nevertheless as way to cope with problems you have no control over, ignoring them is probably as good a ploy as any.

I began to write this post a couple of weeks ago, since then the prospect of any return to travel in Europe this year looks ever more uncertain. Indeed even the prospect of visiting the Peak District seems an impossible aspiration even though we live in the middle of it. Anyhow, on the basis on I've started so I might as well finish, here are the details all those the I planned over the past few weeks. We can  but dream....

Return to Greece - Thessaloniki,  distance - 4581 miles. 83 days, cost per day £33.25

Plan A. This is what we planned to do this September...




Return To Greece - Crete distance - 4233 miles.87 days  cost per day £39.20

Then I wondered - how much more expensive would it be to go to Crete as well....





Naples Sicily distance - 4027 miles. cost per day £32.09

If stepping beyond the EU proved tricky due to Insurance issues - a return to Sicily would be nice...




Green Spain and N. Portugal distance - 1762 miles, 55 days, £36.37 per day

Or if France seems problematic but Spain more open - there is always the ferry from Portsmouth..

 

Staycation option - The Hebrides 

Scotland maybe? Surely by the autumn travel within the UK will be allowed....





Spring 2021 Trips


Corsica//Sardinia /Rome  distance - 3618 miles, 76 days, £33.94 per day

Sardinia is one of the places we have always wanted to explore, but never quite made it, Next spring maybe?




If there one thing I have learned from our current predicament, it was the right decision we took back in 2013 to retire early and try to live on our reduced occupational pensions in order to travel. It would have been all to easy to convince ourselves to work a few years longer. So far as what the 'new normal' will look like so far as international travel goes  is difficult to imagine. One thing is certain, whatever the restrictions we will make the most of what limited opportunities exist.