Introduction

I'm Steve, I'm 29 years old, I live in North Oxfordshire in the UK.

I spend a lot of my life commuting to and from work, I am driving an average of 35,000 miles per year and have done so for the last four years, I'm very tired.

I work in Procurement and Logistics on a very large civil engineering project in the UK, the project covers a large area (400 miles long) and this is the reason that I can't always be working in an office close to home.

I tend to work in certain "sub projects" for around 12 months at a time, then move to another location (often further from home). Right now my main office is 80 miles from home and it can take two hours to do the journey in rush hour traffic.

Early in 2006 I decided that too much of my income and (possibly more importantly, my time) was being spent on commuting. All the traveling has made me tired, broke, unfit and miserable... I could change my job, or I could change my approach to commuting.

My solution is to stay a couple of nights per week near the office, the cheap way of doing this is to camp there in a tent. I can reduce my weekly mileage from 720 miles to 288 miles and regain some of my life at the same time.

This is my story.