Meet Elsie

We now have our very own car and we have named her Elsie! Firstly, a big thanks must go to Thomas Lane Thomas Lane and Hannah Kacary Hannah Kacary, who actually paid for Elsie… We had previously arranged with the seller to pay with our Revolut accounts, which would take a few days for the payment to go through. As we got off the ferry to Nanaimo it turned out they had changed their minds and we were left at the mercy of some really horrible exchange rates. Luckily, Ollie remembered that Thom and Hannah had nothing better to do than pay for our car with their Canadian bank accounts (other than a birthday weekend mountain biking in Whistler).

We wanted to see the number plates before coming up with a name. Interestingly, in Canada number plates are not associated with the car, but with an individual. Ours start with ‘LC’, so after a small argument over whether we should name her after Rosie’s sister, we decided on Elsie. Thom and Hannah own a van called Elvis, so that made Elsie seem even more appropriate as a partial tribute to our investors.

As well as day trips, we want to use the car as a mini camper-van for a few weeks at a time. Some people have asked us why we haven’t opted for the traditional cargo van, to live our best #vanlife. We did consider a van, but for what we wanted it didn’t seem as good a fit as an SUV as we are not planning on living in it for an extended period of time. We have really enjoyed the workaway experiences and would love to do more of these in the future. These always come with accommodation and occasionally other travellers, meaning having back seats would allow us to take trips with them. Also, more SUV’s come with 4WD capabilities, which may come in handy during a Canadian winter and up some steep mountains! Finally, it’s also easier to nip around in, and Rosie has a small chance of being able to drive it.

Of course, the SUV is much smaller than a van, so space and storage will be a challenge. Luckily, we are both fairly short. We have spent some time during the last week coming up with a raised bed frame design that should: support our weight, fold away into the boot/be removed relatively easy, and be big enough that we don’t fight too much over space. Luckily Rosie has a little bit of engineer left beneath all of the farmer. A few hours with the measuring tape and the (totally necessary and not at all ridiculous) CAD software resulted in this:

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We’ll be constructing the platform from 2x2s and plywood. The orange and pink panels are hinged, the purple panels are removable and held in place with drop pins. We can leave the bed assembled when driving (strapped to hitch points for safety) but the orange panel has to be folded up to move the front seats back to a comfortable position. The grey boxes represent plastic storage boxes which we can slide out of the boot for easy access to camping equipment. Construction begins this weekend.

We’ve driven Elsie the whole way across Gabriola island a couple of times so far (about a half an hour round trip) and are planning to go much further during late August and September. We’ll start with a few final days on Vancouver Island visiting Strathcona Provincial Park, then we’ll get a ferry back to Vancouver and head off on a road trip up to Northern BC.

First, we have our last couple of weeks working on the farm. Our friends and fellow volunteers for the past couple of months are leaving tomorrow. They will be replaced by two new people shortly after. We are sad to see them go and hope the new people live up to the high standards they have set! We said farewell with a final cultural evening of German tofu schnitzel, Dutch potato salad and British blackberry and apple crumble. All cooked in the glamping kitchen of course.

We hope you are all doing well and look forward to sharing our car/camper conversion progress next week.