1 month in to full-time, travelling trucklife… how are we getting on, and just what is Bebe’s MPG?

1 month in to full-time, travelling trucklife… how are we getting on, and just what is Bebe’s MPG?

Welcome to our first monthly Round Up video that’s right we have been on the road for one month in BB that is this big blue truck behind me our adventure truck our home on Wheels and we are going to tell you all about what this first month has held for us we’re going

To tell you where we’ve been how many countries we’ve visited how many kilometers we’ve driven what our absolute highlights have been we’re going to tell you about BB’s MP PG because everybody seems to want to know how many miles to the gallon we get from that ex military vehicle the man

Hx60 so we’ll tell you all about that what fuel we’ve used how many fill-ups we’ve done how many liters of fuel we’ve put in what we’ve still got left and therefore what the mpg calculation is so stay tuned hit the uh like button give us a thumbs up down below here somewhere

There will be a subscribe button it really helps us if you hit that subscribe button too and it means that you don’t miss any of our updates as we travel so let’s get to it okay so where have we been this month this first month of traveling well

Obviously we started in the UK we visited three countries if we can count the UK it’s a sort of a cheat I know so we’ve done the UK we crossed into France with the channel tunnel and that was fun getting BB on the channel tunn she does

Fit and then we cross the French Spanish border up north into Spain right now we’re all the way down south of Spain not right down at the very bottom but we’re working our way along that southern coast so so here we are with the highlights from the first month of our

Adventure the biggest achievement I think that we had this month was getting Otis’s EU pet passport sorted we did that relatively early in the trip which was a huge relief um as we were quite concerned about how stressful it was going to be and how complicated it might

Be to get it done um and it actually wasn’t it it wasn’t so bad as we’d anticipated as you know many things can be in life I’d say the best park up that we’ve had this month was hands down the off-road park up in uh s Blas Reservoir

Or not in it but next to it uh we had a lovely little evening and a day exploring there beautiful um Gorge that you can walk down through all really easy with kids um and was just a lovely way to kind of kick off our adventures

Around that area uh whilst we were there we did a little bit of research um about potential um spots that we could uh we could go to explore in the following days and we found one uh it was an off-road spot and it was one that had uh

Been previously explored by another HX so we we knew BB could do it so yeah we headed off there the following morning and it was a great opportunity to get BB’s wheels off tarmac for the first time and she didn’t disappoint handled it like an absolute Pro um I might close

My eyes a few times when we were going down I wasn’t driving at that point um but yeah no we were absolutely uh rewarded with a stunning little spot overlooking the reservoir um and then as we’ve said before we want to give you not only the highs but also some of the

Lows or some of the challenges that we face um because they happen right that’s life uh one of the most frustrating things for me this month and probably the most expensive for us uh was that I managed to break the DJI osmo camera yeah uh had a lovely lunch in Denia

Picked up the camera and somehow managed to drop it on its head and completely crush the gimbal um so yeah not great um possibly one of the most expensive lunches we’ve had in a long time um and while we’re talking about some of the you know rubbish stuff uh or

Scariest definitely for me um it was a moment when we were driving along uh the French Highway and as I said in video number one I think it was BB decides to throw an absolute con you know Corker of a tantrum and spit an Eric code out at

Me uh it’s a little bit scary um as I never had it happened to me when I was actually driving and I wasn’t sure what was wrong but we you know slowed down managed to pull her off the motorway into a safe spot stop and uh as you’ll

See in video uh number one we just let us sort our out uh so the best place places that we visited this month that’s a tough one because there’s actually two then and we just can’t decide between them either of them so we’re going to do

Both first one was Denia castle and the tunnels great little um place to explore I think it is about 12 per adult or maybe actually it was for both of us I can’t remember um to get into and it’s free for children sorry free for under

Fours so Isa stuck in which is always good and the second one was the Roman Amphitheater in Kena we spent a about a day in the end exploring around there and also some of the museums that uh that go with it uh yeah thoroughly recommend having a

Little mooch around there as well so I think the most fun thing that we did this month was uh bming around the bikes uh on the bikes sorry with Otis in a place called CET agas uh parked up there for a couple of days and just yeah took the opportunity

Just to relax and just really explore um headed off on a bike ride around probably about 100 K’s worth of tracks more than that actually um up around the surrounding areas so yeah that was a huge amount of fun for all of us and just a really nice chance toet our legs

After doing uh quite a considerable amount of uh driving over the last week or two uh yeah so that was uh month number one and we are super excited to see what month number two is going to bring uh hopefully no more breakages that would be fantastic and uh no more

Scary moments please and yeah just lots more sunshine and and yummy ice creams would be great we have driven 3,382 km this month since we left home base back in the UK we’ve had eight fuel stops now we have not filled up with fuel at every one of those fuel stops sometimes we’ve

Just done a little bit just to get us on a little bit because maybe it was a bit more expensive total fuel we’ve put in is 1,311 L which sounds like a huge amount however we still have 386 l in the tank right now as she sits here which which means we’ve used

925 L to cover those 3,382 km anyone wants to do the maths on that it’s going to give them about 27 and a bit liters per 100 km which works out to just a little over 10.3 almost 10.4 miles to the gallon so there’s your answer for the first month

Of traveling 10.4 m per gallon now what I’ve got to say is that doesn’t include or at least it does include using diesel for our diesel heater so for the first couple of weeks we were running the diesel heater because where we were was pretty chilly and we were pulling Diesel

From the main tank so using some of our diesel just to keep BB warm inside so we could probably say actually it’s more like 10.5 to the gallon would be a fair assumption now we’ve only done a little bit of off-road a lot of it has been

Smooth on road nice easy smooth Journeys obviously there’s been ups and downs in terms of of Hills uh but we’ll see how this Compares next month when we get into some more off-road stuff we spend a bit more time on rough roads off-roads four-wheel drive engaged etc etc uh and

We’ll see what happens to fuel consumption next month it’s time for some tips obviously we’ve been in and out of BB for the last two years uh we traveled in a van before that but we’ve done now a month on the road um through uh well through France and

Spain and in all of that time in all of that experience we have come up with some tips some tips for Van life or truck life and there are three top tips uh three I’m not going to say golden rules but three really strong bits of advice that we’d suggest you follow

Number one whenever you see cheap diesel fill her up because you never know when you’re going to find the next fuel station it doesn’t matter if you’re still at 80% if you get a cheap diesel just top her up now the reasoning for this is pretty simple if you’re filling

Up a car that has a 50 L tank and you pay 10 10 p a liter more on your 50 l so 50 L 10p your difference is what five five quid 5 PS which is you know it’s a bit of a bit of an all in the pocket but

It’s not the end of the world our fuel split that we’ve seen just in this month is 50p the difference at 50p a liter in filling up BB’s 450 L tank is 220 £220 extra just cuz you’re at a more expensive fuel station that’s why we say

If you see cheap fuel get a full our second top tip for Van life or truck life is if there is somewhere with free water fill it up particularly in southern Spain they’re having a bit of a drought right now there is and we’re only early in the year but there seems

To be a distinct lack of water a lot of places are turned off or they’ve been shut down or water’s not available so if you see water anywhere fill up uh and number three our number three tip for Van life or truck life is if there is free uh Electric hookup available use

That too why not why would you not use it we have a washing machine tumble dryer on board um obviously we’ve got the oven microwave Grill we’ve got induction hob so anytime we are paying to park somewhere if there is hookup included we’re going to use it do we need it probably not

Definitely not cuz we got backup generator but you may as well use it if you’re paying for it so tip number one if you see cheap diesel top up your tank tip number two if you see cheap water or free water top up your tank tip number three if there is Electric hookup

Available get yourself plugged in charge up your batteries um use more power than you need to just get yourself going the other good thing about charging up whenever you’ve got hookup available is that particularly if You’ got lithium ion batteries if you don’t get them full then gradually they’ll start reporting

Lower so you won’t be able to see them they’ll go effectively what they call out of balance you need to then give them a really good long charge up to 100% they need to sit at 100% for quite a while to get themselves rebalanced uh and make sure all the cells are in

Alignment so it’s another good reason for getting yourself plugged in at ehu whenever you see the opportunity hit that subscribe button give us a like stay tuned uh look out for our future video updates as we post them we’re posting every Sunday and if you’re really lucky some shorts during the week

As well also if you have any questions feel free to fire up in the comments let us know one what you want to know two what you want to see because the more we know what you’re looking for the more we can try and fulfill that so fire up in

The comments and we look forward to speaking to you again in a week’s time bye for now

Catch up on our first month on the road travelling through France and Spain at the start of our world tour. And, we answer the most common question of all… “So, how many miles to the gallon do you get from that?!”