Spending the Winter season living in a Caravan

So this has been my home for over a year now! We just arrived in Zillertal Valley and it’s my 3rd winter season living in a caravan! This summer me and Simon were lucky enough to get a summer job working at a campsite in the New Forest in England. The job was fun and the site is beautiful with fishing lakes and walks into the forest. The best thing is we got to live in our caravan for the summer and be totally independent for the first time. 

It’s really nice knowing that when we travel to Austria for the winter we can take everything we need with and it only takes us a couple of hours to set up on the campsite. The main reason we looked into buying a caravan was to save money during the season. Last winter for 5 months it cost me and my boyfriend around £700 each for site fees, gas electricity & water etc. Compare this to the cost of renting an apartment for the season and you can see why we chose to do this.

We have met some awesome people along the way that also use caravans as accommodation in the winter months. It’s always nice at the end of the season to get the bbq & beers out on an evening. It hasn’t been easy all the time, towing a caravan half way across Europe is a daunting experience but it’s all worth it in the end. People can be negative towards the idea but at the end of the day we can travel all over Europe knowing we have out own cosy little home to park up and live in. 

Also the main thing everyone thinks is that its FREEZING. Yes when it’s -10 outside it will be cold but there is that good old thing called HEATING and in the caravan we have gas & electric powered heating. Being such a small space it only takes a few minutes to heat up when you get back from the mountain and your nice and toasty in no time! 

This lifestyle doesn’t work for everyone but we have found it is the perfect way live together and keep doing winter seasons abroad.

Simon even fitted a lush new carpet down so it really is homely in here now! 🙂 Our Caravan is a Bailey Pageant Vendee, it has a fixed double bed with tonnes of storage underneath. Full kitchen with oven, grill, 4 cooking rings, fridge etc. Bathroom has a large shower, sink, cabinet & toilet. The living room has a nice and comfy ‘U’ shaped sofa and we have a dining table we can get out when we need to. The layout works great for us as the heater is right next to the bed and you can slide a wooden door across to keep the heat in the bedroom at night. We have a full size awning too which double our space and give us loads of room for storage and waxing our snowboards! I just wanted to give you guys a little insight to my life and share our story. 🙂 

Tiny houses are my latest obsession! These portable houses are awesome and so cosy inside. Unfortunately they are a lot bigger than a caravan so towing one of these bad boys around would not be easy at all! A lot of couples have built tiny houses themselves and live in them happily which I think is great. Living in a small space is not as hard as it might seem!

I hope you enjoyed this little post! 🙂