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Pebbles the Van | Luc & Shanti

@pebblesontheroad

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🌿 Pursuing life's scenic detours
🚐 Concrete jungle → off-roading in style
🎥 Stories, Tips | 365+ days of Vanlife
💛 Explore new horizons with Pebby ⤵️

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Wow so many new faces here, very exciting (and overwhelming haha), time to say hi!!! 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️

We’re Luc and Shanti, and we recently moved into our campervan Pebbles. She’s a small van with big dreams, finding happiness in intentional living, nature, adventures & scenic routes. Pebbles is a 4x4 Sprinter converted to an Innova Roadtrip campervan @innova_campers.

Pebbles decided to take her owners on a one-year sabbatical on the road through Europe. 🌿💛🚐 We left the ordinary behind for slow mornings and the open road. Not to escape life, but to meet it differently, seeking meaning over mileage. Finding a good balance between experiencing life, trying out digital nomading, and sharing about it online is still a learning process for us too. ☺️

Maybe this journey will lead to life-changing insights, about permanently embracing vanlife, or living in a sustainable tiny house or in some sort of community with a vision. Or maybe, it won’t? And we’ll return to our ‘same old’ life as it was before we left The Netherlands (aka concrete jungle 🙈).

We’re now 6+ months in and time just flieeees by. We’re excited about the journey and about sharing our thoughts and experiences with you (ever behind on posting though). Looking forward to learning from your thoughts and experiences too!

Our hope is that by sharing digital snippets of our own personal highs and lows along this (sometimes) wild journey, you might be inspired to slow down, spend more time in nature, reflect, and maybe... take a chance on your dreams too. 🌿💛 Who knows, maybe we’ll see you on the road someday.

Are you coming along? 🚐

…

#vanlife #sabbatical #europetravels by @pebblesontheroad

Even op bezoek bij @pebblesontheroad 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼

Ze wonen al 1.5 jaar fulltime in de camper.. en het bevalt heel goed 👌🏼

Als jullie vragen hebben, stel ze in de comments 👇🏼 by @pebblesontheroad

After a few quiet months on the farm (with only the occasional short hop), she’s finally properly on the move again Tuesday. And what a way to kick it off: yesterday afternoon she was still driving in France, and tonight the total solar eclipse sweeps over Spain. Cutting it close much? 😅🌙

She’s freshly washed and fully prepped for the chase ☀️🧽. The three sister farm cats (📷 Zorro, our true mouse catcher, elegant Koei (Cow) & clumpsy lovely patchwork Lapje) supervised most of the cleaning from a respectful distance (or rather, walked across the hood a few times and called it a job well done 😹). They’re staying behind to guard the chickens while Pebbles makes a run for it. 🚐💨

Will she make it in time? 🤭 A few weeks of soaking up summer in the beautiful south either way, our usual attempt of the vanlife combo with sunny mornings, sometimes behind the laptop and hopefully golden evenings chasing new views (her first time 🇪🇸!) and new adventures. Have fun watching European friends! 😎

#vanlife #solareclipse #backontheroad #roadtrip #vanlifeeurope by @pebblesontheroad

Vanlife x farmlife at its best… 🚐🌿💛

The farm where we stay is from our friends and they are starting a beautiful community here with people who want to share their faith. Not so much in their words but more so in their way of life. It’s a very special and inspiring place to us.

#vanlife #farmlife #breaktime by @pebblesontheroad

What didn’t make it to the gram last couple weeks while living vanlife on the farm: annoying issues with the van. 🚐😮‍💨 There weren’t any problems to begin with actually, but after a regular service check up at our garage when we picked up the van, there were major issues out of nowhere. 🫣

For almost a week Pebbles’ car battery got drained by some ‘lost’ software package in the ‘smart’ system, and our garage took little to zero action to even begin to acknowledge the problem or urgency of it.🪫 Even though the problem emerged in our absence in their workshop and we still have warranty, they didn’t want to schedule us in earlier than 2 weeks later.

Long story short: we ended up going to another @mercedesbenz certified garage where they did help us out very well. Shoutout to @mb_wensink location Doetinchem in The Netherlands for their service. 🙏

In the mean time we kept our car battery alive ourselves with the solid back-up electric system from our campervan builder: @innova_campers.⚡️🔋 When the voltage of our car battery gets low, the car battery gets trickle-charged through our @jarocells lithium household battery, which is connected to solar. ☀️

Yay for off-grid well designed campervans, and: never underestimate the value of your oldschool local mechanic. 🔧

Pebbles is all good to go again! 🚐

#vanlife by @pebblesontheroad

With our code PEBBLES10 you can get 10% off the @ecostoof. We have the model ‘adventure’. It works with any type of pan, but we use @sysaspannen (also recommended!). 🚐🌿💛

Share this with your camp friends and enjoy more comfortable and sustainable camp trips!

#vanlife #slowcooking #slowtravel #ad by @pebblesontheroad

Today was a good day to get roasted as a digital nomad vanlifer in The Netherlands. 🥵🚐 The beach would have been the better choice but we have many practical things to get done first, because some chores just build up if you travel for a year.

Good thing is: our remote working days are oftentimes so flexible, we can determine our own pace and timing. And during the nights, the van cools down very easily with the Maxxvan. No aircon needed! 🌬️

Our 4th floor rooftop apartment would stay hot for weeks on end during summers, day and night… (sorry to our subletting friends 🙏🙃).

So for sleeping in summer it’s actually better than what we were used to, but for working on hot days it’s actually just best to get outside. Or go to the office to escape the weather but that also kind of feels like a complete detachment from the real world, a bit too artificial to my taste after a year of living mostly in nature. 🌿

Why I stayed inside the van? The chickens were pretty loud today on the farm, they have their own little society happening and it’s really fun to watch but not ideal in the background for calls. 🫠🐓

#vanlife #heatwave by @pebblesontheroad

Who is the most experienced passenger princess here? 🚐💛🌿

Just for anyone concerned, we don’t normally do this of course, promise this was an exception. 🙃 But sometimes… especially in traffic jams, it’s perfect to just be able to warm some leftover food and make a chai latte to go, fetch the knitting project from somewhere in the back, or just take a good power nap. Perks of living in a house on wheels 🤭

#passengerprincess #vanlife by @pebblesontheroad

Who’s done endless searching online and offline for the perfect campervan layout? We’ve been there too! 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️

Sometimes we dream of a long wheelbase van for some more space inside, but when we think about all the sketchy offroad trails we did (or all the tiny European parking spaces we’ve been at) we are glad we don’t have a bigger vehicle.

But we discovered that a comfy length bed in a short wheelbase van, is a pretty rare find! ✨🚐 It’s true that it takes up more space than a bed sideways, but then the upsides are:

🌿 no need to crawl over each other to get in or out of bed (very handy for couples with not exactly the same sleep pattern, or for a toilet visit 💤)
🌿 more storage space underneath the bed (it holds our household batteries, fresh water tank, diesel heater, boiler, inverter, e-folding bikes, and much much more 🧳)
🌿 if the bed is convertible to a dinette or lounge, a bigger bed at night means a bigger living room during the day (those 3 minutes of work to convert the bed are worth it! 🛋️)

What does your perfect campervan layout look like? And do you also have a rare particular feature you’ve been searching for? 👀

#vanlife #vanbuild by @pebblesontheroad

This one is for our followers in The Netherlands! 🇳🇱🚲

De combinatie camper + elektrische vouwfiets tijdens het reizen door Europa vonden wij super handig. 🚐 En onze twee fietsen wegen samen maar 25kg. We hebben heerlijk ontspannen gefietst in de binnensteden waar je met de camper echt niet wilt komen, en in allerlei natuurgebieden in Scandinavië. 🌿

Speciaal voor jullie hebben we een korting kunnen regelen!

Bij het familiebedrijf FIJN Fietsen in Nijmegen krijg je in de webshop en de winkel met de code PEBBLES 100 euro korting op de EMQ elektrische vouwfiets en 10% korting op accessoires.

@fijn_fietsen
@emqbike

#vanlife #europetravel #foldingbikes #ad by @pebblesontheroad

Spring time without rain is nice, but it means pollen everywhere… and pollen means dirty solar panels. 🫧🧽 We had almost no yield anymore! ☀️

🚐 Pebbles is overdue for an overall wash anyway, but cleaning the roof in regular car wash facilities isn’t really possible with her height.

But climbing on top and inspecting if everything is still holding strong up there out of sight, is also good to do every once in a while! 👀 Better to do some light maintenance now than heavy repairs later. 💪🏼 We now know we have one sealant edge that needs some love after we probably had a cable pulled by a branch. Nothing serious yet, very happy to have had a whole year without any issues on our rig! 😊

What are your typical spring camper tips and maintenance chores? 💭 And have you already checked out your pollen-covered solar panels on the roof? 👀 by @pebblesontheroad

Does it get any more Dutch than this? Flat landscape with green meadows for the cows, and a decent cycling lane along the road. 🐄🚲🌱

But: something NOT so common here is the legal free camp ground provided by the local government. 🅿️ Wild camping in The Netherlands is illegal and it is very proactively enforced in many places. This is why vanlife here is not as flexible and free as in most other European countries.

What’s your experience with vanlife in The Netherlands? Do you have any tips & tricks to share? 🫶

Discovering some legal free camp spots in our home country has been a great surprise! Thank you local government, and as vanlifers: let’s treat this place - as any place we visit - with respect 💛🌿🚐.

Oh what a beautiful morning! ☀️

#vanlife by @pebblesontheroad