We did the sums and with a full bag of rubbish weighing on average 10kg and so far 75 bags collected, that’s a whopping 750kg of plastic waste removed from the shores we’ve visited in Greece, Turkey and Cyprus so far. That doesn’t include tyres, large ropes and other large pieces that don’t fit in bags either!
See further details with photos over at our Buy me a Coffee page (no pay wall or obligation to support)
Bags only – not including ad-hoc items that are not baggable such as piping or large hessian bags
While this is a huge achievement, more needs to be done to change things. Just because an item is recyclable does not mean it will be recycled, there needs to be better infrastructure and education around the impact of plastic waste.
We are looking for contacts and partnerships with people and business making direct impact in these areas.
Education
Innovation
Alternative products
Clothing brands
We want to work together to raise awareness, to change habits and behaviour.
We are all part of the problem, but we can do better, we can all be part of the solution.
We are super excited to announce our Partnership with Waterhaul!
We’ve been looking for a way to make more impact with our litter picks, which is still super important obviously, but we wanted to do more, so we reached out to Waterhaul, who are doing some pretty great things with recycled ocean waste!
So much of what Waterhaul does, from their mission of ‘Transforming Plastic From Our Coastline Into Purposeful Products That Inspire Action’, to their outreach programme PlaNET Action, aligns with our own values and mission to raise awareness and inspire the next-generation to understand the environment, why we should protect it, and to encourage innovative thinking.
Not only that but we actually need some of the equipment that they provide! From high-quality, performance sunglasses to take on our adventures, prescription eyewear for the everyday, to litter picking equipment and beach cleaning knives so you can make a difference in your communities; all products utilise recycled fishing gear, turning waste into a valuable resource.
Our followers get 10% off by using the links in the buttons in this article, on our website and link tree and using code PENELOPE10 at check out. We also get to measure our impact with our reach too! Win-win-win!
Also, for complete disclosure, we get 5% of each sale in commission, which we will put towards other gear such as black bags, gloves and other costs associated with our litter picking endeavours.
We have more things in the pipeline in this mission, so watch this space, but we are honoured and excited to have the support of Waterhaul on this endeavour!
Be sure to share your litter pick pictures, along with the gear you bought via the links above with us on Instagram and Facebook @penelopethetruck
Full time ‘Vanlife’ (truck life in our case!) can be an exceptionally Eco-Friendly Lifestyle, if done mindfully.
Before we start, it’s worth saying that the carbon emissions of living on the road should be assessed case by case. While some people travel with others, use solar power, compost their 💩 and never litter, others will engage in far fewer sustainable practices.
Like most activities, this lifestyle can be sustainable if done with consideration of our natural environment.
Here are a few ways we personally reduce our environmental impact.
Energy
We run on solar! Meaning that the sun powers our lights, fridge freezer and charges laptops and phones etc. We have 24v system, 230ah AGM deep cell batteries, with 900w of solar panels and a 3000w inverter.
Heating wise we generally travel in warmer countries but on those chilly evenings we put more layers on, snuggle under blankets, use a hot water bottle and if needed, pop the diesel heater on for 5 minutes by which point we’re thoroughly roasted, only needed to do this twice in 6 months.
Back up power we do have a petrol generator, used once so far before we upgraded our electrical system to a more efficient set up. If there is no solar for a few days we will take a drive and complete some errands which gives us the boost we need via a DC to DC charger.
Water
According to Water UK, 46% of people believe their household only uses under 20 litres of water a day when, in reality, the average person uses around 142 litres. That means a family of four will use around 500 litres of water every single day!
Here are a few ways we reduce our water usage:
Compost toilet
No flushing required! We have the airhead and we LOVE it.
Efficient showering (on, off, suds up, on again, off again)
We did an experiment and we actually don’t fill our 20L waste water tank when we both shower, which, is about every third day, unless we go for a run or something, which we line up with shower day!
Laundry
Being mindful of where our next laundrette or dry cleaner might be means we wear our clothes a little longer, we do a LOT less laundry than we used to in our house, which was every day.
Cooking
We reuse our water when we cook, we might boil some broccoli then scoop out the good green stuff and do our pasta in the same water, as an example, or when we make rice we double the quantity and have leftovers in some soup the next day. No waste!
Mileage / diesel
We’re aware that we drive what a lot of people consider a big old ‘gas guzzler’ however, if you ever got stuck behind us in traffic you’ll know just how slowly we go, and not just up hill!!
We’re currently getting 19 MPG (yes, that’s correct, we have a spreadsheet!) which many modern cars don’t get!
We don’t commute to and from work any more and we park for a couple or a few days at a time, we live more slowly in every way.
We don’t fly anywhere on holiday.
We also adopt the usual fuel saving ‘hacks’ such as keeping our truck maintained and healthy, appropriate tyre pressure and planning our routes ahead of time etc etc.
Minimalism & zero waste
It is well documented that rising levels of consumption, alongside population growth have also been linked to deforestation, biodiversity loss, soil erosion, and pollution etc etc.
By living as we do, we don’t have any space for stuff! We don’t have a storage unit back in the UK or anything like that, we literally sold what we could and gave away the rest.
If we need something, we discuss it and we have a ‘one in one out’ rule, we need a new coat it’s because we need to throw another one out. We don’t want to part with a pair of trainers? We don’t need a new pair.
Plant based
We have a plant based diet, which for us means absolutely no meat and very rarely any dairy either.
‘Every step of the production process for animal products like beef and dairy generates greenhouse gases: from the clearing of forests to make way for animal pasture, to the production of millions of tons of animal feed, to the immense waste generated by cows, pigs, chickens, and other farm animals and then there’s getting it from wherever it was ‘processed’ to your plate.’ – the human league
Leave only footprints
Wherever we go we have a policy of leaving a place better than you found it and if there is litter, we pick some up! As much of it as we can carry in fact. See our buymeacoffee page for all of our beach cleans.
In summary:
As we said at the start, the carbon emissions of living on the road should be assessed case by case. Also it should be stated that we aren’t throwing shade in anyone’s direction – you do you!
We just want to have our defense ready before we start shouting about the environment…
106 Adventure and Travel Captions & Quotes for a healthy dose of Wanderlust Inspiration!
We love a good quote (who doesn’t), they can be powerful, transformational tools.
Whether you’re going away for a day or two or leaving for a long term adventure, an adventure quote always goes well with the journey and so we’ve rounded up some of our favourites (106 of them!) into this list.
They also make great captions for your instagram posts! Do tag us if you post with them we’d love to see your content @penelopethetruck 🙂
You may notice, we have no ads on this site. This is because they’re annoying and we don’t want you having to close windows obscuring the content, we want you to get the most out of what we share. Instead we ask that you consider supporting us directly; find out how here.
Our favourite quote, first heard at a talk with the late Doug Scott he said ‘“If you lose your dreams, you lose your mind” and this really struck true with us.
Second favourite, and our tag line for our channel is “Follow your dreams, they know the way” by Kobi Yamada.
What are your favourites?
“It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I take to the open road. Healthy, free, the world before me.” – Walt Whitman
“Discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust
“The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.” – Tony Robbins
“People don’t take trips, trips take people.” – John Steinbeck
“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.”― Amelia Earhart
“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.” – John Muir
“The journey matters more than the destination.” – Tony Fahkry
“All good things are wild and free.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure.” – Bob Bitchin
“There is something about the momentum of travel that makes you want to just keep moving, to never stop.” – Bill Bryson
“The freedom of the open road is seductive, serendipitous, and absolutely liberating.” – Aaron Lauritsen
“When you go on a road trip, the trip itself becomes part of the story.” – Steve Rushin
“The life you have led doesn’t need to be the only life you have.” – Anna Quindlen
“The greatest part of a road trip isn’t arriving at your destination. It’s all the wild stuff that happens along the way.” – Emma Chase
“Design a life that you are inspired to live.” – Annette White
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” ― Andre Gide
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” ― Mark Twain
“If we were meant to stay in one place, we’d have roots instead of feet.” – Rachel Wolchin
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” ― Terry Pratchet
“Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.” ― J.K. Rowling
“I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travels’ sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
“Sometimes the most scenic roads in life are the detours you didn’t mean to take.” – Angela N. Blount
“Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.” – Robin Sharma
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St Augustine
“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” – Wayne Dyer
“Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.” – Margaret Lee Runbeck
“To move, to breathe, to fly, to float, to roam the roads of lands remote, to travel is to live.” – Hans Christian Anderson
“One’s destination is a never a place, but rather a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Mao Tzu
“You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.” – Stephen King
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” – Anais Nin
“Look at life through the windshield, not the rear view mirror.” – Byrd Baggett
“When all’s said and done, all roads lead to the same end. So it’s not so much as which road you take, but how you take it.” – Charles De Lint
“The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he came to see.” – G.K.Chesterton
“If happiness is the goal – and it should be, then adventures should be a top priority.” ― Richard Branson
“Travel is like an endless university, you never stop learning.” – Harvey Lloyd
“As soon as I saw you, I knew adventure was going to happen.” – A. A. Milne
“Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know I shall be happily infected until the end of my life.” – Michael Palin
“Travel is the best way to be lost and found at the same time.” – Brenna Smith
“One travels to run away from routine, that dreadful routine that kills all imagination and all our capacity for enthusiasm.” ― Ella Maillart
“Travel is like knowledge. The more you see the more you know you haven’t seen.” – Mark Hertsgaard
“Travel is still the most intense mode of learning.” – Kevin Kelly
“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.” — David Mitchell
“Traveling, it leaves you speechless then turns you into a story teller.” – Ibn Battuta
“Never get so busy making a living, you forget to make a life.” – Dolly Parton
“Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.” ― David McCullough Jr.
“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”― Lao Tzu
“The world is big, and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.” — John Muir
“I don’t know where I’m going from here but I promise it won’t be boring.” – David Bowie
“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure.” — Freya Stark
“It feels good to be lost in the right direction.” – Unknown
“One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure.” – William Feather
“If happiness is the goal, and it should be, then adventures should be a priority.” – Richard Branson
“Jobs fill your pockets, but adventures fill your soul.” – Jaime Lyn
“I’m really in the mood for a long drive with no real destination.” – unknown
“To Travel is to Live” – Hans Christian Andersen
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.” – Douglas Adams
“Road trips aren’t measured by mile markers, but by moments.” – unknown
“The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams.” – Oprah Winfrey
“Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes in the middle of nowhere you find yourself.” – unknown
“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.” – W.M. Lewis
“Of all the books in the world, the best stories are found between the pages of a passport.” – unknown
“If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet.” – Patrick Rothfuss
“Traveling is about finding those things you never knew you were looking for.” – unknown
“It is never too late to be who you might have been.” — George Eliot
– George Eliot was the pen name of the author Mary Anne Evans who started her writing career at 37 (which is late for the Victorian era) under a man’s name, so her books could be taken seriously! These words give us the motivation to ignore the age-excuse… so now why not?
“A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are built for.” – John G. Shed
“Don’t be that person who is too busy when you’re young and then too tired when you’re old.” – unknown
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!” ― Hunter S. Thompson
“Forget all the reasons it won’t work and believe the one reason that it will” – unknown
“Making memories one road trip at a time.” – unknown
“Goodbyes are sad, and I’d much rather say hello. Hello to a new adventure.”― Ernie Harwell
“The world is not in your books and maps; it’s out there.” — Gandalf
“Follow your own path.” – unknown
“Life movies pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around every once in a while, you could miss it.” — Ferris Bueller
That’s all from me, I hope you enjoyed our collection of adventure & travel quotes – if you have any to add, pop them in the comments!
We were talking last night about how much easier it is to stay where we are.
We are working so much to earn the money to pay back what we borrowed to build the truck before we leave (it’s no small sum), as well as selling the house, saving up, trying to establish income streams for while we are on the road, work the day jobs, second and third jobs and keep some level of sanity (feels like we’re losing on that count some days).
We understand why people do the ‘career, house, new car, expand, upgrade, work more, promotion, move, bigger car’ etc and use their annual leave to travel, the routine, the simplicity, we’d be very ‘well off’ by conventional standards and we do not knock this as life goals, or even consider it ‘easy’. But to us, that’s considerably harder than this. Conventional standards of a successful life in the UK are not what we want.
We’re both exhausted, but breaking generations of conditioned behavior and habitual life patterns was never going to be easy. The ‘on the road bit’ will come together, the house will sell, we will clear the debt.
It’s no secret, we borrowed a lot of money to purchase our big beautiful orange queen and we want to leave for our first 12 month stint of travelling by the end of this year, and so we had approximately 500 days at the time of originally writing this post (early July 2021) to make as much money as we can to make a couple of lump sum payments from the loans and clear the credit cards. The house sale will be the ultimate repayment but we’d like to see some change from that to fund the travels themselves.
Before we go…
We’re selling everything we don’t currently use. Facebook marketplace currently and looking into other platforms than eBay because their fees are just not worth the effort!!
As mentioned before, we’re spending this next 12 months before we travel earning as much as possible before we leave, hammering down those debts and saving up where we can but another key part of this is trialing lots of remote income avenues and so I thought I would start keeping a record of this all here.
Click on the links below for the full posts on what we’ve been up to…
1. Matched Betting
This is not gambling, it has no risk and you use free money to make money!! Sound too good to be true? We know, but we didn’t realise it’s not a scam until we tried it…
This one can be time consuming, but with the app on your phone, you can spend 10/20 minutes answering some questions and earning some cash instead of scrolling through nonsense on your socials!
Yes this is a thing, it takes some time and effort but it can be done, think more surveys as above, but also logging your receipts and secret shopping!
I know, a lot of hard work, but our income from our second (and third) jobs goes straight into the savings accounts meaning we don’t sacrifice any more of our income than we need to. You can either look in jobs postings for evening/weekend work or set if you have a service you can offer, you can up as a Virtual Assistant? If you’re not sure where to start check out Kerry’s one to one private coaching course;
A new year and finally the year that we will be leaving. There is SO much to do, and it involves digging up the foundations of our life as it is now, but before I start on planning ahead I’d like to look back at how far we’ve come since we purchased our truck back in December 2019.
2020 saw the base go from army green to orange with a new sub frame and box build and a roof rack, then we refurbished the cab before sending her back off to JHEngineering for some upgrades. Thanks to the old ‘Rona we couldn’t pick her up until March 2021 but boy did she look gooooood. New underrun boxes, some modifications to the roll cage, an awning, new ladders and that tyre rack!
Once we got her back to the farm we set to work on kitting out the box and in just 9 months Craig (with a little support from me from time to time) had built out the whole furniture framework; a king size bed, shower and toilet, seating area, table, upper cabinets and with a full electrical, heating and water system without ever having done anything remotely like it before. Oh and the exhaust break! Impressive or what?
So 2022! This year we will be selling the house to consolidate the outstanding borrowing to build the truck. We did think about renting, but we want a clean cut when we leave and not to have something to worry about back here.
We will be finishing the build and then moving into the truck in the UK for a little while to save some travel funds before hitting the road towards the end of the year.
This means selling all of our belongings, preparing the house for sale, finding somewhere near to work to park the truck for a few months, then selling the cars. We also have a couple of modifications to make to the truck to ensure that she is road worthy and prepared for as much as possible which involves a trip down to Jonathan’s again with a stop at Crouch Military Sales for a couple parts no doubt!
We will also be building up some remote income streams, trialling some things and scrapping some no doubt. We’ll be blogging the journey to leaving, as it’s no small task to wind down your life and up sticks, as well as vlogging from time to time in the run up to leaving.
We’re spending the 12 months before we travel earning as much as possible before we leave, hammering down those debts and saving up where we can but another key part of this is trialing lots of remote income avenues before we leave, and so we thought we would start keeping a record of this all here.
July earnings have come in way better than we thought at a whopping £467.32 in free cash, plus the income some other avenues over £1,000! Keep reading for a breakdown…
We could have earned more, this was about 50% input on our part, if we’d have put more time and focus in, we’re sure we could have doubled that.
So, how did we do it?
Number one was Matched Betting! Now bear with us, we thought it was a con too. Too good to be true etc, but we have that profit sat in our bank accounts right now. It does require a little cash up front but we made that back within 24 hours so it wasn’t ‘gone’ for long.
We used Profit Accumulator, which has some great tutorials, with your first two free account bets making £40 clear profit, no membership required.
Use the button below to go over to the website and if you do fancy signing up at some point, both of us will get a little reward…
Number 2 was surveys, Kerry did this one and made £15, again she could have made more if she had the time but free £15 is not to be sniffed at! That’s been withdrawn via PayPal vouchers and is in the savings account – there are plenty of survey sites out there but the one we use is Swagbucks, you’ll earn rewards in points, called SB, and you can redeem your points for gift cards or cash. 100 SB points is £1 in rewards.
Kerry is also teaching a lot of yoga classes and has been able to earn an extra £550 from that, some meditation revenue from Insight Timer plus one digital illustration and Craig had a couple of overtime shifts, which are few and far between, but that’ll cover the cost of the new kitchen worktop!
There are lots of ways you can utilise a skill, or take some training to establish a skill (such as teaching yoga, meditation and drawing in Kerry’s case and Craig is still learning the matched betting ropes), then turn that into a service or offering for sale or trade – we will post a blog on this soon.
Savings wise, we’ve been doing the MoneySavvyMum save £1k in a year and SkintDad’s 1p a day, where you put a little away each week/day from our day jobs and it adds up over the year, so far (since June 1st) we’ve put aside £172.30 – the idea is, it’s small amounts enough to not really notice.
To summarise; £467.32 Matched Betting profit £15 from Surveys £25 from illustrations £4 from t-shirt sales £8.73 from Insight Timer (recorded meditation) £550 from teaching yoga
= £1,070.05 additional income in July
What’s next?
There’s no doubt, this involves an investment of time and energy, especially since we both have ‘day jobs’ too, but we’re committed to the debt free dream!
In August we will focus down on the matched betting, we’ve paid for an annual subscription to Profit Accumulator because we really do think that this is a lucrative income stream for us both now and when we do leave, while we are on the road.
Kerry will try a couple of the free apps for secret shopping and keep on the surveys too and some more yoga of course including plans to start a yoga YouTube channel soon.
Of course there’s also an audit to be done on what we spend currently and where, there’s no point putting all this effort into earning extra money when we could be finding more in our pockets as it is!
Here you will find a selection of handy little tools on saving money, what we’ve done, tried and failed at – we’ll be super honest and share with you any tips and tricks in savings – especially when we’re in build phase!
Saving just 1p a Day Skint Dad
This is an awesome tool for saving up – same principal as the £1 a day (then £2, then £3 etc) but with just a penny! Much more manageable than trying to find a couple hundred quids at the end of the year we think you will agree, we started 1st June 2021 and will go to 31st May 2022!
Simply pick one box each week, save that amount and cross it off and in 52 weeks you will have saved £1,000!
Using a visual chart when saving is known to increase motivation and will help you stick to your money goal – ours is stuck on the fridge and we started 1st June 2021 as we did the 1p a day above.
We will be trying out a few apps in the coming months to make some money, we will share the details with you. These are on an iPhone currently but I do believe android versions are available.
Swagbucks
This is cashback/surveys/games site that we’ve mentioned before, the app makes completing surveys so much more straightforward and portable so when you have 10 minutes here and there you could be earning some Swag Bucks!
Secret shopping quests! Not actually tried this one prperly yet but this has little quests for you to complete and uses your location to let you know nearby opportunities. For each one you’ll earn a few pounds – will let you know how we get on!
*New sign ups are currently closed but you can join the waitlist! *
Get rewarded for uploading receipts! You’re can only upload 1 receipt per store per day but if you remember to do it every time you shop it soon adds up! You’ll get £5 per 106 receipts. Additionally, you can earn points in prize draws and by completing quick surveys too). Bonus Tip: If you add at least 1 receipt a week you will also be added into a weekly prize draw.
Kerry & Craig | Penelope the Truck 