A day in the life of a nomad

Real life, not the Instagrammable stuff

[Lire en français ici] Listen to me narrating by clicking the audio above !

So you’ve heard about Vanlife and the digital nomad lifestyle ? You’re sitting in your favourite armchair dreaming of giving it all up to hit the road with next to nothing to your name. And I’ve written about the wonderful life I’m experiencing, so here I am contributing to your dream days. You’ve also surely heard people mention the “Real Vanlife”, it’s a sort of gimmick, a debunking of the insta-pictures to give you a good laugh. Luckily the real life isn’t all about disasters and leaking toilets. You get the in between days. Where it’s not Caribbean-blue happy nor dark-brown shitty either. Some days sticks get in the wheels of your perfect plans and you find a way to pull them out. And that’s kind of satisfying.

So I had one of those recently, and I thought it was worth sharing. When things don’t go your way, go their way and it might all end up hunky-dory. After all, the bending bamboo fares better in a storm than the over-rigid stick.

The plan was to get myself off the European continent and on to the tiny, beautiful island of Jersey. Nope, not an idyllic summer holiday visit this time, but sadly to attend a family member’s funeral. So there was no way I could miss the boat, literally.

Wednesday: I had stopped over to visit some dear friends on the way through Normandy and spent the morning working on my laptop in their kitchen. The offer of lunch before hitting the road is one I can never refuse, especially when it meant digging in to last night’s leftovers… So I said my goodbyes in the early afternoon, with plans made while we munched, to visit the Second World War Battery at Grandcamp Maisy, only 30 minutes away. After all, my ferry to Jersey was only on Friday morning, so that left me the whole of Thursday to drive the last 100km and get ready. Might as well get some sightseeing in, and, with a bit of luck a swim in the sea perhaps ?

I set my GPS to the little town square spotted on the Park4Night app that was meant to be a good spot for camping-cars. Just in case, it being still summertime after all with lots of holiday-makers around, I set a second destination in the vicinity, if the first spot was full: there’s usually no time to sit there and do a full-blown search if there is no space to park and other vehicles are behind you.. Really looking forward to visiting this German Battery, discovered 60 years after the end of the war by total chance…

Little did I know that Grandcamp Maisy is a tiny coastal town with narrow lanes currently overrun with beach-goers. Of course the minute parking was already full of campers. I’d squeezed through between high walls to get there only to continue on my way, right through the beach front promenade and shop-lined town centre. Just like that it doesn’t sound like much, if you were on a bicycle or in a little car it would be a mere inconvenience. But picture yourself at the wheel of a three-ton tin can, two-meters wide, three high, and six-and-a-half long. Negotiating café tables, toddlers on push-bikes and scowling grandmothers. In the summer heat, sweat running down your back, forcing a sorry-I-didn’t-do-this-on-purpose-smile under your bright red sunglasses..

I made it to the little supermarket just outside of town, parked across two places and took a deep breath. Decided today was a good day to indulge in a cold bottle of rosé, which I would have two nights to finish before leaving - not that I make a habit of drinking on my own. So I went in and bought just enough food for tonight and tomorrow - salad, a red pepper and that bottle of rosé. But I had lost all enthusiasm for staying in this town, so I then sat in the parking working out where to spend the night instead. Decided on a large parking next to a large sandy beach which wouldn’t be so crowded. Utah Beach, one of the famous D-Day invasion beaches. Off I drove, resigned, music playing loudly, here we go, on the road again, another 35 minutes of joy behind the wheel.

Twenty-five minutes in, as I was admiring the Norman countryside around me on this narrow but newly tarred road leading up to this famous beach, my telephone rings. I don’t like speaking on the phone while I’m driving, but my phone never rings, so I answered, and barely heard the lady on the other end - until I realised she was saying my ferry on Friday was going to get cancelled because of a storm and there wasn’t going to be another one for a week, and I would miss the funeral ! Unless I took the one tomorrow morning ! She barely managed to hear me say Yes ! Yes ! I’ll take it, please.

So. Change of plans. It’s late afternoon already and I have to get myself all the way across the peninsula Tonight. Suddenly in a bit of a panic because I’d left myself a bunch of things to do tomorrow which I will now have to do tonight. And I’m on this narrow country road so I have to continue driving for ten minutes until I reach Utah Beach because there is no way to turn around, not in this land-boat of mine. When I do get there I see crowds of tourists come to visit the museum and memorial sites - of course, this year is the 80th anniversary of the event and everyone wants to come and be part of the commemorations…. Well I wouldn’t have had a quiet night on the beach then, anyway…

The plan is to get Gus the Bus into a campsite near the ferry terminal and leave him there for two weeks. I can’t take him to Jersey because you have to have proof that you’re staying in a campsite, at £35 a night, before getting on the ferry in Saint-Malo. Jersey is tiny and you can’t park just anywhere. I am staying with family anyway so there’s no point. I picked the Carteret ferry this time because the foot-passenger ticket is cheaper, and the campsite in town is cheaper than the one in Saint-Malo as well. Besides, it’s always nice to do things differently. And plus, this is where my parents met, back in the early seventies, my mum working as a hostess on the Deux Leopards ferry and my dad on the land crew in Gorey, on the Jersey side.

I’d already negotiated with the owner and got a half-price fee for just being parked and not using any of the facilities, to my great relief. But I have to get there before the reception closes so I can get a space allocated as the ferry is early in the morning. So sitting in the Utah Beach parking, I emailed them, and messaged my aunts and cousins to expect me a day early, then I hit the road again in the opposite direction.

I have to buy a new bottle of propane gas to have peace of mind that my fridge will stay on for two weeks, but of course I always leave that to the last minute and now it’s the eleventh hour all of a sudden. Pity I didn’t get one at the little supermarket. But I should find another on the way to Carteret. Yes, I do see one or two signs on the way, but I think, no, I’ll wait until I get to the town. And when I get to the big supermarket outside the town, guess what - they are sold out. I rush to the nearby petrol-station, and they are sold-out too. So I resigned myself to taking the risk that my fridge would die and I’d come back to rotten condiments and unfrozen veg.

The bubbly red-haired reception lady was just about to close and hadn’t been told of my deal with the owner, but she gracefully took my word for it and my credit-card. She asked to keep my engine keys in case a storm meant needing to move Gus, so I rushed around to empty the toilet tank and find a good spot without a tree that could potentially fall over, before she knocked off. And I discovered they sold gas ! So I drove around to reception again and we got one of the heavy bottles all rigged up in its little place under the passenger window. She jumped in with me and drove back to the quiet spot in the far corner where I finally gave her my keys and wished her good evening.

Now I had just stocked up on enough food and wine to last me two days. I wasn’t about to let anything go to waste, was I ? So I got started on that bottle of rosé immediately and made a soup with all my tomatoes, the leftover taboulé and the entire packet of lettuce, put the carrot salad and the red pepper in the freezer, hoping they made it. My evening was very jolly as a result of the pink stuff mixed with all the orange juice I had left. I was a little worried about how my luggage packing was going to be influenced by this concoction, having to consider all weather conditions, and most importantly to remember all my recording equipment so I could still work from Jersey. I hope I didn’t sing too loudly to the songs playing in my earbuds. I eventually got everything done and toddled off to a fitful sleep..

Thursday: waking up at 7am felt very early, with an unexplainable twinge of a headache… Just enough time to make three hearty sandwiches with the last of my home-made chilli sauce, goat and camembert cheeses. The rest of the bread went in the freezer and the cheese in my luggage. I planned on having my picnic while waiting for the boat, as I understand one is less prone to sea sickness on a full stomach - and no liquids, my mum used to say. That swayed my decision to leave the water bottle behind and take the Brittany cider in my bag instead as a gift for my uncle.

I hadn’t quite realised how far the ferry terminal was. Much further indeed on foot with my progress slower than anticipated, weighed down as I was with haphazardly packed luggage and pondering whether my stash of cheese, eco-chocolate and cider wasn’t going to get confiscated by customs... Luckily there were many day-trippers in the queue, double in fact if all the Friday people were going today, like me - so my tardiness went unnoticed. And I was lucky again when the customs officials for some reason didn’t check my bags when they had opened all the ones before me !

I am proud to report that I did not feel a single hint of sea-sickness in the one-and-a-half-hours aboard that high-speed boat jumping up and down over the big wind-swelled waves, listening to the old french fisherman next to me telling wonderful stories of his trips to the island back in his youthful days…

I made it to Jersey in one piece, waved to my aunt watching on the quay as we approached to dock, and prepared to have a mind-resetting two weeks away.

If this is your first time reading me, go ahead and subscribe below so that the next part lands straight into your mail box ! Wondering what I was talking about earlier, when I mentioned recording my voice ? Find out more about what I do on my website www.gaellegosselin.com You are also welcome to follow me on Instagram @gaelle.and.gus.the.bus or Substack Notes, where I post almost every day about the places through which I travel with Gus the Bus