Life In The Woods

Living off grid has its merits. The lack of bills for one. Not for me the sense of aggrieved helplessness as the Big Six continue to keep their prices nicely plumped up, the better to keep their shareholders happy and their upper management in serious wealth. My electricity comes not from a coal or gas power station but from the sun's rays falling on my solar panel, connected as it is to the caravan's battery. My washing water comes from the stream via a long pipe and my drinking water is the rain, falling on my greenhouse roof and then into a water butt. My kitchen waste goes on the compost heap, sink water drains to a mulch pit, and my human waste goes in a compost toilet. 

Only the energy for my cooking and heating is paid for, when every few months I go to the local petrol station with my trailer and buy a new 47kg bottle of propane gas. Getting that back and in position by the caravan is not the easiest thing but at least it warms me up without needing to use any gas!

Another advantage is the peacefulness of it. I'm not rubbing shoulders with anyone here. No adjoining walls with rowdy students or violin practice. It's just me, the land, and the creatures I live amongst. I do occasionally have people visit, but it's a rare occurrence. When I want to see people I can go out and see them. I'm just a few hundred yards from my nearest neighbours, and the local shop is only a mile away. I have my phone with me at all times (helpful if I broke a leg or something) which does usually get signal, 2G only but at least I can text and call people.

It's not all rosy though. My caravan is getting older and things don't work quite as they did. The water heater stopped working about two years ago. The front door has a catch which joins its top half with the bottom half, but it broke so now I have to open both halves individually. Somehow damp has got into under one of the couches where I store stuff. The awning leaks in places onto my things I store there. The whole caravan is tilting slightly as one wheel seems to have slipped a bit off its stone rest - I will have to jack it up and reposition the stone.

The polytunnel is also a useful clothes-drying space

The lack of warm water means I don't use the caravan shower, so to stay clean I either pop into other people's showers when I'm round, pay for a shower at the Mach Leisure Centre, or give myself a bucket wash. I do have a “solar shower”, a black bag that you fill with water and let the sun warm, but if I hang it in the polytunnel the shower head is at about waist height so it's not had a lot of use. I guess I could clean my lower half at least.

Also my laptop has churlishly begun to refuse to charge up. It's a new Lenovo that my parents generously gave me for my last birthday and there is no DC adaptor available for it, so I got myself a cheap inverter which converts the 12V DC from the battery into 240V AC, and normal 3 pin plugs fit it. The inverter whirrs away keeping itself cool with a fan. It did seem to be doing the job, charging my laptop to full strength. But now, after a few seconds the laptop's “charging” light flicks off and on a bit then goes off. The problem could be the inverter, or the caravan battery, or, who knows, the laptop itself. So I'm having to type this quick before the power runs out!

Sometimes the sun shines