Does everyone keep a journal in their campervan? We started doing this early on in our campervan career and I am often glad we have a simple record of our camping life. We didn’t keep a journal for our first ‘van; we were newbies and it didn’t cross our mind … but once we got in the swing of being campervan owners we wanted a record of where we had stayed. I grabbed a spare exercise book [no expensive notebooks for two frugal travellers] drew in some columns and started our first journal.
In each journal I write the date, the name of the campsite and place, the overnight cost, the number of nights we are staying and a brief description and review of the site. I also use the journal to note things that we often forget such as when we last emptied the loo! These journals started when we bought our Devon Sundowner in 2007 and have continued ever since.
We are now on our third campervan journal. The notebooks all live in the ‘van and we refer to them regularly. We often arrive on a site we have been on before and wonder how long ago it was since we were last there [it is usually longer than we think]. At other times we might want to remind ourselves what we thought of a particular site while planning a trip to help us consider if it is worth returning to. Sometimes we just browse the journals for some misty-eyed reminiscing.
Although there is no journal from our holidays in our T4 we do know how many nights we spent in it thanks to photographs and diary jottings. On the front of the journals I keep a tally of the number of nights we have been away during the year and in a particular campervan as well as a total of our nights under a tin roof. Last summer we passed the milestone of 1,000 nights sleeping in a campervan in the eleven years we have been practising this van life.
We passed this 1,000 night’s milestone while we were camping in northern Italy. We were staying near Arsiè and although neither of us were getting flashes of déjà-vu I was looking through the journals because we were both pretty sure we had stayed nearby back in 2009. Flicking through the book to check where we had stayed we found we had been on the same site! We were flabbergasted! Where had the large sweet-smelling walnut tree we are sure we camped under gone? Where was the green gently-sloping field down to the lake? Either our combined memories were seriously faulty or they had re-developed the site beyond all recognition. We would certainly never have known we had been there before without the journals.
These notebooks are packed with happy and vivid memories that I don’t want to let go of. If you don’t keep a campervan journal then I suggest you start now.
Back on the road again 
We do the same. It is amazing how quickly you forget when you move around a lot!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Absolutely! My memory is dreadful and reminiscing about campervan trips is such fun!
LikeLiked by 1 person
what a wonderfully frugal souvenir to all the places you have been. congrats on hitting 1,000!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you! Frugal souvenirs sounds like us:)
LikeLiked by 1 person
I can completely relate to the frugal part! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Posh notebooks do the same job but cost more … this would mean less cash for travelling.
LikeLiked by 1 person
so true………..frugality allows you to spend more money in ways that you choose to do so.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi there! Would you mind if I share your blog with my facebook group?
There’s a lot of people that I think would really enjoy your
content. Please let me know. Many thanks
LikeLike
I’m truly enjoying the design and layout of your blog.
It’s a very easy on the eyes which makes it much more pleasant
for me to come here and visit more often. Did you hire out a designer to create your theme?
Excellent work!
LikeLike
An impressive share! I have just forwarded this onto a friend who was doing a little
research on this. And he in fact ordered me dinner simply because I stumbled upon it for him…
lol. So allow me to reword this…. Thank YOU for the meal!!
But yeah, thanks for spending the time to talk about this topic here
on your web site.
LikeLike
Great article! We are linking to this particularly great content on our website.
Keep up the good writing.
LikeLike
Heya i am for the first time here. I found this board and I find It truly useful & it
helped me out a lot. I hope to give something
back and help others like you helped me.
LikeLike
Hi! I could have sworn I’ve been to this web site before but after going through many of the posts I realized it’s new to me.
Anyways, I’m definitely happy I discovered it and I’ll be
book-marking it and checking back frequently!
LikeLike
When someone writes an article he/she retains the plan of a
user in his/her brain that how a user can understand it.
So that’s why this post is perfect. Thanks!
LikeLike
Hey very nice blog!
LikeLike
Hey there! I realize this kind off is kind of off-topic,
but I’d figured I’d personally ask. Would you gget interested in exchanging hyperlinks or maybe gueet writing a blog post or even vice-versa?
My blog moves over a lot regarding the same topics while yours,
annd i also believe we all could greatly
reap the benefits of every single other. If you take place to be interested, twenty-four
hours a day shoot me an email. I look forward to be able to hearing from you!
Excellent blog by the method!
LikeLike
It’s a shame a person don’t have a contribute button! I’d certainly give money for this brilliant blog!
I actually suppose for the moment I’ll giive for book-marking and incorporating your
RSS feed to be able tto a Google account.
I actually count onn fresh updates plus will discuss this blog page with my Facebook team.
Chat soon!
LikeLike