Today, is a happy day.

For a month now, we’ve been pootling around in Yoko, our [somewhat] trusty VW camper van. It’s got a solid roof and, throughout the rain, we’ve remained dry. It’s got a gas cooker and so we’ve not gone hungry. It’s not got much insulation and no heater too and so we have gotten cold–sometimes so cold that we can see our breath–but we have fleeces. Woolly hats too. Missing however, is the ability to harness the campsite energy source that our motorhome peers have all enjoyed: hook-up Electricity.

In the month, we’ve nervously conserved our vehicle battery power by only allowing the internal 12V strip-light to be on whilst cooking. All other activities have been carried-out under torch-light. I dare you to go a week at home in the evening under only torch-light — it’ll drive you nuts. Our day basically comes to and end when the sun goes down.

No more! For today is the day we installed the gift of electricity, and I feel like Thomas Edison.

Using some bits and bobs that we’ve picked up along the way in France, Switzerland and Italy–with copious amounts of British duct tape–we now have a 10 metre campsite electricity hookup cable, complete with 8 watt mechanic’s strip-light and a spare socket for our euro adapters to fill. No more do we have to fumble around in darkness! No more do we have to worry about how long we’ve got left to craft a blog entry before the laptop battery dies! No more do we have to leech electricity from restaurants and coffee-houses to recharge our cameras and mobiles!

We are celebrating by playing some MP3’s though the laptop. Sweet music! (Again this is a first, as the car stereo has never worked.)

Now if we could only get satellite internet installed…