partly off road tour of the UK coastline / national parks?

[deadtom]

Dear PH,

I am soon to be medically discharged from the army and my partner hates her job in London so we have been thinking of ways to leave the real world behind for bit. We both find ourselves somewhat enamoured by the idea of going for a long drive around the hills and coasts of the UK, but I realised that I actually know very little about organising this sort of expedition.

the broad strokes of the plan is that we buy an old-ish mid size 4x4 ( turn of the century vintage land cruiser colorado, discovery, shogun etc), a decent sized awning / lean-to type tent and take to the highways and byways to slowly make our way around the coasts and hills of the UK including ireland and the scottish islands. we have visions of going by road between nice little towns and trundling our way off road along byways to set up camp for the night somewhere on a remote moorland, and other such cliches.

but this raises a lot of questions, some of which I was hoping you fine folks could help with:
is it possible to really get anywhere off road, or are the national parks far too restrictive when it comes to vehicle use?
how easy is it to actually live out of a vehicle + awning setup?
what vehicle would you use? I've always been a landrover man but being that reliability would be desirable i must concede that something japanese could be better

thanks all

[deadtom]

Hmm, that's is pretty much what I expected. I think if it was doable then I imagine a lot more people would do it.

Anyone got direct experience of doing it or know someone who has?

[deadtom]

Further reading suggests it's easy enough to go wild camping but only by hiking in. It's hard to finding any evidence that it can be done while Being vehicle based

[deadtom]

thanks chaps, I am indeed getting the impression that wild camping as pretty much exclusively an on foot activity here in the UK.
perhaps an alternative then is just to go by road and hike up into the hills instead

[deadtom]

would love to go by boat, but that's a whole heap of expensive

[deadtom]

Duhh said:

Decent 15-20 year old 4x4 will be £2000 to £5000. Plenty of live/camp aboard boats in that range. And you'll get to places you couldn't dream about by land.

indeed, we had budgeted 3 - 5k for a vehicle. can you really get a good boat for that? I assume you mean a motor boat, as sailing requires a whole lot of learning

[deadtom]

Thanks for that, sounds very similar to what we are planning. Going to try and acquire a suitable vehicle a few weeks before we set off so I can figure out a system for sleeping And living out of it.

Any absolute must see destinations from your trip?

[deadtom]

excellent, thank you.

I'll send you a PM with a few questions if that's ok?

[deadtom]

yes I plan to go with the 'leave no trace' approach as I cannot abide people who leave rubbish.

vehicle has been purchased (jeep WK) so now I should really get on with planning routes etc.