Up next in 10
The Van Gals give us a tour of their Citroen Relay, Travis
Jul 25, 2020
Carly and Emma take us on a tour of their van, Travis, before heading off into the mountains to show us the kind of days out that living in a van lets them enjoy.
Emma and Carly – the ‘Van Gals’ – are two of our newest contributors, but they’ve quickly gained quite a fan club among our readers. If you read their stories without laughing, we really can’t help you. We’re pretty sure you’ll be delighted to know that we’ve persuaded them to bring us a series of videos from their latest road trip. First up is a tour of Travis, their van.
Of course, you may well already be well acquainted with Travis having read about him in Issue 131 of Singletrack, where Carly told us all about the expertly devised and executed plan to take up #VanLife. Subscribers can hop on over there now and read all about it.
Read more here https://singletrackworld.com/2020/07/video-van-gals-tour-of-the-van/
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0:00
hi i'm emma and i'm carly and this is
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our van
0:16
[Music]
0:27
our van travis is a 65 plate l3 h2
0:30
citrine really
0:31
which means it's kinda long and kin at
0:33
all a bit chubby but perfect for us
0:36
carly and i found the van in 2017. when
0:38
we got it it was a complete empty shell
0:40
it was basically just a panel van
0:43
and it took some pretty hard graft over
0:45
six months to get it where it is now
0:47
previously we've had absolutely no a diy
0:51
experience
0:52
didn't know anything about plumbing
0:54
electrics or carpentry
0:56
literally all of our research and
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information came from youtube
1:00
when we built travis we told him he
1:02
could be anything he wants to be
1:04
sometimes he's a kitchen
1:08
sometimes he's a living room
1:11
and even a toilet
1:16
an office
1:21
even a gym yeah
1:24
we weren't keen on running the van on
1:26
one sole power system
1:28
so we wanted to split it up when it came
1:30
to cooking we thought gas would be the
1:32
best option
1:33
and for that we chose to get a gasolo
1:35
branded refillable system installed
1:38
from reading a bit about people's
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experiences it turns out it can be quite
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tricky
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to exchange an empty gas bottle for a
1:44
full one in a lot of countries across
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europe
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so we decided to go for a permanent
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fixture that we can fill up with lpg
1:50
at most gas stations we gave up quite a
1:53
lot of space for the kitchen area
1:55
we built this huge worktop that we use
1:57
for prepping food as well as another
1:59
desk
2:00
underneath this worktop we've got this
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flop down drawer that holds all our
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kitchenware and everything
2:04
and then directly underneath there is
2:06
our fridge we managed to squeeze in a
2:08
fully sized sink into this van
2:11
we also salvaged some taps from our
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neighbor's skip at him don't tell them
2:14
that
2:14
underneath we have two 25 litre water
2:17
tanks one for fresh water and one for
2:18
wastewater
2:20
so tucked away in here is our battery
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it's a goal zero
2:24
yeti 1400 and it's powered by two 200
2:27
watt solar panels
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this battery is a source of all our
2:30
power it charges our laptops our phones
2:33
our headphones our
2:34
kindles it powers our lights our fridge
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and our water pump
2:39
so above the battery we have a little
2:41
sofa a fixed end table
2:44
and a set of drawers from ikea's baby
2:46
range this little grill here is for our
2:48
ebay special heater
2:50
it's situated in the garage but the air
2:52
blows out here
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and on the cold british winter it
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actually heats up the van really well
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one of the reasons we can fit so much in
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this van is that we're small enough to
3:01
sleep in woodways
3:02
which saves a lot of room now you might
3:04
be thinking
3:05
carly your head's a little bit close to
3:07
the ceiling and you'd definitely be
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right
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underneath us is a ton of storage space
3:12
including space for two
3:14
full-size mountain bikes
3:19
so here we are at the back of the van
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this is where we keep all
3:22
our junk everything it kind of gets
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really messy when we're on the road
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as you can imagine this is our living
3:29
space to shove everything
3:31
so on this door we've got like bottle
3:33
mounts we've got baskets which hold our
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towels
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we've got a little wooden thing that
3:38
holds all our allen keys in
3:41
stickers from everywhere we've been on
3:43
this side we've got this
3:46
um dry bag screwed onto the wall this
3:49
took me maybe
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six days to work out how to do um but it
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basically just holds all our dirty kit
3:54
and smelly stuff
3:56
more pegs just to hold things so
4:00
in the actual guts of the garage we've
4:02
got the bike shelf
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this little thing pulls out it's got
4:06
bikes on it
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holds it in nicely for when we're
4:08
driving and the wheels are up there
4:11
on two hooks we've got another spare set
4:14
of wheels tucked away back there
4:16
got helmet hooks here for our half faces
4:19
and our full faces just live on the
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shelf
4:21
and then on this side which is a junk
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storage
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it's just kind of got everything we
4:27
could possibly need so we've got all the
4:29
mountain bike spares we could need
4:31
we've got our riding packs we've got two
4:34
full-size stand-up paddleboards back
4:35
there
4:36
got our diesel heater tucked away we've
4:38
got the tank for the diesel heater up
4:40
here
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it's just got everything and then my
4:44
little favorite bit that khali was
4:46
very against me putting in it's my
4:48
little tool wall
4:49
where all the tools are super nice and
4:51
easy to get
4:52
and it's just nice and easy to pick
4:54
everything up and grab it when we're
4:55
working on the bikes
4:59
it's our garage so you've seen where
5:02
we've peed
5:03
you've seen where we brush our teeth
5:05
you've seen where we eat
5:06
but you haven't seen where we shower
5:09
it's quite simple
5:10
all we do is attach a normal shower
5:12
curtain between these two doors using
5:15
some paracord
5:16
and some magnets and then with our
5:18
little jet wash here that we also use to
5:19
clean the bikes
5:21
we clean ourselves final feature of our
5:24
van
5:25
our light stands to music if everybody's
5:28
wrong
5:31
okay that's enough for looking at our
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van let's go ride our bikes
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so we've just got off the left and we're
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now at the top of evorias
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if you've been to the pds area before
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you might recognize this area as the
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start of this stash
5:43
it's a free ride snow park in the winter
5:46
and
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it's where all the cool kids hang out so
5:49
naturally i've never been there
5:51
and from here we're going to take a blue
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then a left and we're going to go to the
5:54
top of this hill over here
5:55
and that hill is called moisette's at
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the top of that hill there's
5:59
a nice a cafe called the cookie cafe
6:03
you can guess what they're known for uh
6:06
get a drink up there
6:07
uh we'll ride around the back of the
6:09
hill and then we'll traverse along um
6:11
this little this little trail in the
6:14
distance
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and that takes us down back to lindray
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so a nice little loop there's a
6:19
tiny claim as well emma calls it tiny
6:22
i call it substantial
6:25
climb involved
6:36
so we're almost at the top of the
6:37
chairlift right now but you can see the
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trail we're gonna do really well it's
6:40
just behind me
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so i will turn around and show you so
6:45
we come down a little trail it just
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scoots along here
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and then all the way across that kind of
6:52
green alpine
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meadow
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breakfast
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[Music]
7:14
oh
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i believe in you
7:31
[Music]
7:42
is
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[Music]
7:56
oh imagine falling on this ship
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[Music]
8:34
scary cows i come from the land of like
8:36
vicious highland cows like along ginger
8:37
fur
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they were
8:41
you know with the horns and
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oh
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jump yeah over
9:07
[Music]
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so that's our van we hope you enjoyed
9:18
watching make sure to like subscribe and
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hit the notification bell on single
9:22
track mag and we'll see you next time
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bye
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[Music]
9:31
oh my god where'd you go
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