The send off and the first week!

We finally set off on Sunday the 24th of March! We traveled about two hours to Oliana, a huge destination that sport climbers from all over the world visit. David and I have some hard climbs here that we would both like to send and also it is a good place to get our cat, Nami, used to the van!

She did not like the first trip at all. We sprayed a product called Feliway in and around the cabin which is supposed to be natural pheromones which did seem to leave her a bit drowsy in the end but David didn't realise that you are supposed to spray it 1h30 before leaving. We have a seat belt and a harness for her and a couple of  days after arriving we did another 20min trip and she seemed a lot more calm about it all. Meows were down to maybe every 10seconds... Hopefully she will get used to it! 

We are now parked up below the crag and Nami has adapted quite well to vanlife. We have a GPS Tractive on her collar so that if she gets lost we can track her and bring her back. We have also been able to spy on her which has been fun! You can watch where she goes in real time. To be honest she hasn't gone that far but further than we thought she would so early on. I think it helped that she was around the whole time we were working on the van and many things that we had in my parents house we have taken with us including a wonderful cat bed that my Mother sewed for her (which of course matches the cushions).

Here in Oliana there are always other people and currently there are two or three others vans plus all of the people that come for day trips/weekends so we are not alone. As for the weather we have had quite a wet start to our trip and it has rained most days though that's actually a relief giving the drought like situation that there is in Spain at the moment...


We had to do a small reparation on the ventilation system in the van, only the maximum strength fan would work and it turned out to be a piece that was easy to order and easy to change. Miraculously David found a video online of someone with our exact same model of van who had had the same issue. The internet can be a wonderful thing! 

That's pretty much all for now! 

A huge thank you to my parents for housing us for almost 10 months whilst we worked though various stages of the van build! We couldn't have done it without you!

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