Home Sweet Van

"No way." Foam blocks, 39x22x3” are right there on the bottom shelf of the home goods store. This is a huge score.

It was Eileen's idea to rent a van and sleep in it. We had already committed to the premise of not bringing sleeping bags, so instead we confirmed the existence of home goods stores in the vicinity bag in February, when we booked.

It was always a bit of a gamble. I assumed we'd have to sleep on cheap duvets folded over, hip bones pressing into the floor of the commercial van's closed-in back. But here, though they're only about two by three feet, are much better mattresses.

We grab two foam pads and add them to our haul: a duvet apiece, a bundle deal of two pillows, a couple of £99p face cloths we'll use for towels if any of our campgrounds have showers.

For £85, we're now prepared to sleep comfortably (well, we'll see) in a van for the next week.

Transit has served us well in Wales so far. Google has some but not all of the details right on bus schedules, but the app Traveline Cymru (Cymru = Wales, in Welsh) is pretty reliable.

Bus and train service was sparse (usually temporally, sometimes spatially) but reasonably convenient with a bit of planning all over Anglesey and Snowdonia. Out walking, we'd sometimes get enough phone service to refigure our pickup points on the fly, shortening or lengthening a hike by identifying a different bus stop in Google, checking the times in Traveline, and confirming trails on Gaia — a three-app system, but…