Living without a car – the story continues.

Hello and welcome to the latest blog from The Olivia Rose Diaries on October 28^th 2023.

As some of you may recall we are experimenting with a car-free year, relying on our bikes for shorter, local journeys and on trains and buses for the longer distances. Our old campervan failed to pass its French CT, equivalent to an MOT in the UK, at the beginning of the year and so we had a few months without it before we left for the Netherlands in the spring. Now we are back and facing more challenging times as winter approaches and we can’t expect bike-friendly weather seven days a week.

To set this in some sort of context we live in a rural situation: getting to any one of the three small towns in closest proximity to us requires a round-trip of around 15 miles and involves hills in every direction. We don’t have a local bakery and there are no other villages with shops. Some things are easier to deal with than others and we have tried to foresee the difficulties and equip ourselves to minimize them. An obvious example is the washing. We can boil a couple of big saucepans for the hand washing but the problem comes with getting the clothes dry, especially in the winter when the days are shorter and the sunshine intermittent. We have invested in a German-built electric spinner that we use with the generator, big enough to take a sheet or duvet cover and it is working a treat. Now we can get clothes dry on the line or, if the weather turns cloudy or wet, we can hang them up above the wood burner.

We rely on our bikes for food shopping. Larger household items, such as the gas cannister for cooking and the fuel cannister for the generator, are not so easy to transport on a bike, but we are lucky to have friends in the next village with a car who help us out on this. We always keep a back-up cannister so this only needs to be done every 4 – 6 weeks.

Occasional trips to the dentist or the doctor and my regular weekly yoga class are all done on the bike and we keep everything crossed for good weather on those days. We know that health has always been the potential weak spot in trying to live without a car and this has proven to be so. Michael has just had minor surgery on his right hand and it is healing well but it has required a re-think as he won’t be able to use that hand for a while. We cycled to the consultant for the first meeting, a 70 km round trip, but we knew he wouldn’t be able to do that for his operation and subsequent check-ups.

Our solution has been to barter services and once again our friends Ev and Sue have come to the rescue. Michael does odd jobs for them around the house and garden and instead of paying us we get the use of their car for one day a week. It feels a very satisfying way of doing things as we both benefit and it gives us peace of mind as we know we can get to important appointments. That particular day of the week is always a busy one as we make the most of it, stocking up with heavy food items and getting any DIY or garden products that we need – a bag of potting compost and some pansies just won’t fit in my bike panniers!

As you read this you are probably thinking we’re mad and that we have made our lives too hard. There have been times when I would agree with you. But these instances are rare and mostly I feel happy about what we are doing. We knew when we started on this that it would be a real test, perhaps the biggest test so far of trying to lead a life that is kind to the planet. Living off-grid has been a relatively easy adjustment to make, and relying on bikes whilst being on the boat has become second nature, but living without a car at Le Shack so far from everywhere was bound to inconvenience us at times and be difficult in others.

It helps that we both enjoy cycling, with or without a load of shopping on board, and it certainly wouldn’t work at all without the bikes. It also requires us both to be fit and healthy. Will it be harder to maintain a positive disposition as winter approaches and the weather gets worse? Probably. Could we do it without having a car one day a week? Some weeks we don’t need a car at all, but we certainly couldn’t have managed Michael’s operation and recovery without one. What it has shown me is that we don’t need a car all the time and that there is much to be said for car-sharing. I also recognise that a car is a necessity if you have a family to ferry about, and need to travel to get to work. We aren’t in that situation and it allows us to experiment with different ways of doing things.

How long is this experiment going to last? Another question for which I don’t have an answer, but for now it is workable and so it continues and we shall make adjustments as we go along.

We have just returned from a wonderful day trip out to the Pyrenees with our friends Tracey and Jim and I have the photos below for you to enjoy.

I’ll share another of my ‘why or what or where’ questions on the blog next week. Hope all is well in your world wherever you are and see you soon.

MJ