Getting Away When You Live on a Feed

Getting away, even for a night or two, is one of those things people take completely for granted until they cannot do it easily. You decide on a Friday that you fancy a change of scene, you throw a bag in the car, and off you go. That was me once as well. When your feed, your pump and your supplies all have to come with you, that simple trip turns into a proper operation.

I will not pretend it is easy, because it is not, and I have no patience for anybody who suggests otherwise. It takes planning. It takes lists, and then it takes checking the lists. It takes working out what happens if something goes wrong when you are three hours from home and your own fridge. The spontaneity is genuinely gone, and it is fair to be annoyed about that, because it was a good thing to have.

But here is what I have learned, and I would say it to anybody. The planning is worth it every single time. Not most times. Every time. The moment you are somewhere new, breathing different air, looking at something that is not your own ceiling, the effort melts clean away. You never once get there and think that was not worth the bother.

My advice is to start smaller than you think you need to. A single night, not too far from home, close enough that you could come back if it all went sideways. You build your confidence and, more usefully, you learn what you actually need to take rather than what you feared you might need. Almost everybody overpacks the first time, myself very much included. Then next time you go a little further, and a little further again, and before long you have a system and it is barely a thought.

Do not let the feed decide where your life can and cannot go. It gets a say in the logistics. It does not get a say in the destination. With a bit of organising, the world is still very much open to us.