Welcome to The LetterBus!

08-05-2026

Date: 30-04-2026 – Now
Travel Time: 22 hours

This will become a long blogsegment. I have been so busy last week with work and adventures that i’ve had little time left to actually write anything down. So much so that I have been writing this piece for over a week and a half! At the moment I find myself in the deep south of France. West of Toulouse, on a peonyfarm owned by my family!
Let’s start the story at how I got here in the first place.

Like you can see at the top I have traveled a total of an entire day to get here. I had to break it up into two days. First a drive of 9 hours, and then one of 13 hours. Naturally I had to do this with breaks inbewteen for dinner, coffee and pee breaks. My cousin, one of the main chefs here, would make the drive from home ton here in just 13 hours. So relatively I drove for quite a long time. That’s what you get for skipping Toll and never really going the max of the speed limit.

I found the drive to be pretty hard. I still feel like my butt hurts. It also didn’t help that I gave myself only half a day of rest between this adventure and the Luxemburg one. Im actually not that used to drive for longer than 3 hours on a day. Luckely the scenery was absolutely wonderful so that made it a lot easier. From the moment I passed the Dutch-Belgium border I already noticed that the Trees, the geology and the birds were of another level. I strained my eyes looking at the beauty of the nature since the start of my travels and I have again started a bird spotting list! Examples of interesting species I have spotted so far are the Black Kite, Hen Harrier, Hooded Crow en de Eurasian Golden Oriole.. For the english readers, this will be in Dutch, with latin names and pictures. For the night during travel I found myself in the nature reserve just passed Reims Parc naturel régional de la Montagne de Reims, in the Champagne region. Sadly I did not have any time to make an attempt on the trails, but I would love to go back and try for a second time.

On the moment of writing I barely have another week and a half left of work here in France. I am making myself usefull on the Peony fields, but what does that entail? At the moment we are in the harvest season. The almost flowering bugs need to be cut and transported into cooling. After that they will be transported to The Netherlands, were the home of this company finds itself. My cousin still needed tractor drivers. I told him I never drove one before, but that I could do anything with a little explination. The first days could be really scary. The fields are not as flat as I am used to back home, nope, they are hilly and can have very steep paths. I have never had to prove that I am a master of the “hill exercise” as I had to here. After a couple of days of fucking around I was able to properly chauffeur the different tractors. I still make quite some mistakes. But my much more experienced colleagues do the same, so I am not worried about it as much anymore. To drive a tractor means to gather the cut flowers, put them into sealed carts, transport them into cold storage and repeat. I probably drive the same little trip about 80 times on a day so I have been able to practise just enough on these tractors!

The first days started peacefully with some half days of work where we were done around 14.30 with cutting flowers. On those days ive been on exiting adventures with my cousin to the villages in the surrounding area, where there are castles and nice cafe’s to drink coffee at or have a nice snack after work. During work we often had the luck that it stayed dry up untill the last flowers had been transported. But often enough we drove towards the dark clouds on our various adventures. Luckely most cafe spots were provided with roofing!

The first day, before I even touched any flowers , we visited CarcassonneThere we found a giant castle; Chateau Comtal. This castle is extra special because a little village resides inside the castle walls, where people live to this day! It’s a real tourist attraction, but luckely it wasn’t super busy. It’s free to enter the castle walls and once inside you can enjoy the beautiful scener, the little stores and the various informative demonstrations. You can also visit the castle itself, and get onto the castle walls. To do so you will have ton pay for entry. Luckely im below the age of 25, so I could get in without paying anything! The castle itself was relatively empty inside, if I had to compare it to the castle of Vianden, in Luxembourg, all be it just as pretty! We could have gone for an audio tour so we could avoid missing a lot of information, but we didn’t have that much time, so we mostly enjoyed the view and architechtual wonders! I shall provide you with some pictures, but if you are curious, the gallery will have more!

Another fun adventure was when we visited my cousins Belgian friend. He has his own brocante store, or antique store. Most of the week this man closes the store and removes anything and all from people’s houses, in case they passed away for example. He will pay the current owners a sum of money for all the stuff in the house and then he removes them and transports it to his store. There he sells the items he comes across. Often he will restore the items or places them lovingly somewhere in the garden, house or greenhouse. Other times he is able to resell it directly to his many connections. Like my cousin for example. He collects old interesting iron plates that have to ndo with the car industry. Think ads, and art. When this friend comes across any he can contact my cousin and sell directly to him! It was a wonderful experience, to walk through the store of his and his wife, and to accompamny him for a coffee. I will also share pictures of their wonderful store!

The days here are quite different, but still tend to bleed into eachother. Every day I wake up between 6 and 6.30, cook a couple eggs, brush my teeth, drink coffee and head to work. Then we have a break for lunch and after cut the remaining flowers of the day. At the end of the day I shower, cook dinner, maybe go on a walk if the weather provides or read a book before it’s already bedtime. I got the question often enough if my bus sleeps well. Even in the colder nights that we have been having. The mornings are a little annoying since I will have to leave my warm bed, but my nights are very restful! I am very happy with my little bus and I feel very at home!

The days I work for atleast 6 hours, even if we are done early. I have had days there I reach 10 hours of work, but those were few. In the time I have been here, I have worked with 4 different flowers. Odile, Madame Claude Tain, Mary E. Nickolls en Sarah Bernhardt. n that order. Specifically that order because one flowers earlier than another. They are planned like this so there is atleast 2 months of work, without an impossible amound of work in one small period. I did hear storied where during peaks they would have to work from sunrise to sunset to get all the flowers off the fields in time. Luckely for me I have arrived here after the peak. It does mean I make less hours, but that’s alright with me. My cousins did have a busy peak this year before I got here tho. As of when I am writing this, 13th of may, we finished Mary and only have Sarah left. And as of the editibng on the 17th of may, I am relaxing on a day off. Tomorrow we will be finishing the very last of Sarah and then the work here (as far as I know) will be done!

Speaking of plants and therefore nature, enthough this is an farming area, the nature all around us is insanely biologically diverse! I have had to save a Stripeless Mediterranian Treefrog from cold storage, had to test out my phone camera’s capabilities on European Glowworms and at night I am sung asleep by the different cicadas, Nightingales and Tawny Owls. Many of you know how much I love what nature has to offer. Every new flower I see needs to be captured in a picutre, and run through an identifier app I use. If I ever end up having the time for it I will also make a flora list to match my bird fauna list. This one will then also be linked on my website. I already spotted 2 rare orchids ine the little forested areas here. Hopefully I can also make a l+ittle space for the different cloud formations I take pictures of. The weather in France is insanely changable at the moment. For instance, it can suddensly rain (like on the moment of writing) when the sun can shine bright a couple minutes later.

As soon as I will be officially done with work here, I wont be done with my french adventure. I am not planning to stuff the entire way back into another 2 little days and end up seing nothing else of the surrounding area. No matter how much I miss my homebase. At the moment I am looking for interesting places to visit in the area, things I do want to have seen before I move up north. Something the Belgian friend mentioned seemed like a really cool option. It’s called Le Mas-d’Azil Appearantly you drive over beautiful roads towards the location and eventually you drive through a cave. It seemed like there will also be a nice trail, so I definitely want to have been there.

My cousin and I planned to go there together, but exactly the day we planned to do so ended up being a long day, and they havent stopped coming since. Sadly work will be over for him by Thursday and he will be traveling back to the Netherlands on Friday. Back to the other companmy location where the early flowers are ready to be harvested.
The plan for now is that I will be home at the end of this month. So hopefully I will have enough time to go on plenty of adventures before I eventually get back in The Netherlands!

Hopefully you found this to be a nice, long awaited update! If you are still interested in even more gorgeous pictures of the surrounding area here, I suggest to take a look in the Gallery! See you soon in the next update, where I tell you all about the things I experience on my way back to The Netherlands!

22-04-2026

Date: 17-04-2026 - 19-04-2026
Travel Time: 2 hours

My very first camping trip with the bus happened last weekend, and I want to tell you all about it!
This trip had been planned for a while. Together with my friends we try to plan a weekend together annually, and this was the first time we planned for a camping experience! When I found out I was able to take my bus there, I just knew I had to. And I am glad I did! We were located on a beautiful nature campsite named De Ruigenhoek in Noordwijk. The amenities were great, the staff even greater and the surrounding area was the greatest of all! You are able to enter the Amsterdamse Waterleidingduinen right from the campsite so of course we spend our activity time doing a nice walk! If you are interested in what I found, I will have a link available to my herbarium! It’s a little experimental site I have on the side where I want to try to log my findings.

One of my friends had gifted me a gorgeous gorgeous quartet-game with names of some beautiful native and non native flowers. When we weren’t walking or preparing meals, we would sit, laugh and enjoy this beautiful game of cards.; I also learned another card game, it’s called Trashcan! I’m glad to have another game in my repertoire hehe.
As the days proved to be full of singing birds, so were the nights! A couple of my friends were complaining about a specific bird keeping them up all night. I’m not sure why they complain though, the Nightingale has one of the most beautiful singing voices after all! I was glad to hear this bird at night, rather than mosquito’s. Maybe the season hadn’t started yet, but I was very glad to be able to open up my doors in the middle of the night to enjoy a look at the stars.

My nights were delightful. The temperature was nice and stable in the bus and my mattress was just soft enough for my aching muscles to have a good rest.
It’s safe to say this first camping weekend was a great success! And to my friends who might be reading this: Thank you guys a lot for the great memories!

If you'd like to read more about my bus take a look in My car