Richard Perkins drives 4,000 km from Sweden to the UK to buy a livestock trailer for £4,000 less than buying locally. The trip covers logistics, long driving shifts, and stops at Stonehenge and Silbury Hill before bringing the 1,400 kg trailer home.
Questions this video answers
Approximately 4,000 kilometres.
About £4,000 (four thousand British pounds).
About 40 hours of driving back.
About 1,400 kilos (empty).
Chapters
So Matt and I are leaving.
We've got 40 hours of driving back.
To back to back to back, ready to go. So on the road we're heading to.
Denmark to see Mikael. Why are we doing this? You? Well, we're doing this to save ourselves.
About 4,000 British pounds. And livestock trailers are really expensive here.
And they're much cheaper. In England you get much more choice. So we decided with taking pigs, sheep.
To the slaughtery, etc.
We need a way to efficiently move animals. A lot of small scale producers just.
Use horse boxes or the like.
But we want a trailer that can hold 40 ewes and make that efficient to minimize stress for the animals. And so, you know, it's 20 hours driving each over three days. We're basically going there, picking up trailer, coming back. But Matt's a professional truck driver and I'm a professional trooper, so add them together and we should make it. But yeah, it's a nice way of us to save money, you know, getting paid €2,000 to drive for 20 hours. It's all right. Sounds alright to me. And we've been doing that all over the farm. When you save a bit of money.
Here and there, it adds up to a lot.
I think if we've invested €100,000, we've saved €400,000. So we're just about to come to Denmark. We're seven minutes behind, behind schedule and off to meet Miguel. Here we are.
Nice to see you. Good to see you too, man.
How are you? Not very well.
Both me and Anders are, you know, cold though.
It's.
He's in, he's in the washing station. I bought you a tiller. Wow, that's super cool. So cool. But we decided we st into our no tillage, so you don't need it, which makes sense. All right.
Flying visit.
We got to go. Be at the ferry at 4 in the morning. Lovely to see you, Mika. You too. See you in the winter. Take care. Okay, who's driving, you or me? I'll go first.
Do you reckon we can try out autonomous here? So we're in Denmark and Matt, you know a bit of Danish, don't you? We don't know much Danish, but something you see immediately in Denmark is a lot more tree species. I've seen wild cherry, loads more oaks and there's a lot of ash as well. And we're very limited up in Sweden we have about 30 tree species we can work with, so. And that's, you know, that's not even extending to our region fully. It's very limited in terms of tree species. What I love about England is we suddenly get up to like 100 and something and I'm really looking forward to going home. And I haven't been to England for a few years and driving through the hedgerow country. That's what I miss about England is these small enclosed fields with hedgerows full of diversity and great for windbreaking. And it's something I want to do at Ridgedale is really block the land up into really intensive field shelter. Bel there's an image I'm overlaying here so you can get a sense of what I mean. Like really intensive microclimate manipulation. That's my long term vision for the farm.
So turns out we're getting a ferry. We normally drive up slightly northwest to.
Get around by the road, but Google Maps took us here.
Yeah.
So we're getting on the ferry.
Saves us loads of time, means we.
Get some sleep somewhere probably when we get to England, maybe get an early ferry. Now, being a clever little weasel, I booked variable ferry tickets for the Dover Calais Cross. You sat there telling us that you shouldn't drive into the front of a ship. That's all right. But normally we drive around but knowing that it may, you know, with a trip this long, just stopping for pee.
Breaks or stopping to get for food or whatever can throw off the schedule quite a lot with unexpected traffic or whatever.
So I booked flexible tickets which are.
Quite a bit more expensive. And now we've got another ticket and it's going to save us several hours.
Which for 19 kilometers continue straight on.
19 kilometers, 19 meters.
We should stop.
Alright.
So the Prince Richard's a fancy fairy and it scrubs about 90% of all sulphur and particulates out of the exhaust. Very nice hybrid ferry. So we made it to Tiskland, Germany and we're heading in through past Lubeck.
So we're heading into Lubeck. And Lubeck's interesting because that's where natural, well, nature based forestry has a home. And Lubeck forestry is something we're really inspired by too. It's basically in a very simple way leaving the forest in its natural structure. So a mixed age class of plants and harvesting very selected elder species to make way for succession of younger plants. It's got a lot of reports, especially from German reports. It's a very economic form of forestry which seems counterintuitive based on modern monocultural productions. But the input costs are nil. There's zero seeding, very little disturbance and only clearing of elder mature Trees and so there's a lot of data online about it. You can find out if you want to, but that's basically what we're doing in our forest patches, using pigs as.
A driver to kick start a little.
Succession in the forest floor, which has been monocultural for decades and then giving that forest rest. So if we cut the older forest that we have left on the property, it will be a few years before that's sprouting up with oaks and ash, lime and all the other beautiful species. We have Rowan, etc. But driving through one of the heartlands of nature based forestry, something I noticed coming into Germany immediately is even more species of trees, a lot of beech and I really miss beech. One of my favourite trees. Same sort of open fields, you know, monocultural agriculture that we see through the south of Sweden and Denmark. A bit more biodiversity here. These are hunting plots with sunflower to attract game. But pretty drab roads. This is what most of Europe looks like as you're driving along. So we're going to put some tunes on and get into driving mode. Gotta say, I love German roads. We're tunneling along at typically 150, 160 kilometers an hour and it feels so much safer than driving in Scandinavia. People drive fast but they tend to use their indicators and they tend to have a higher awareness of, you know, spatial awareness of what's going on around them. So not pulling out randomly and certainly not pulling out in front of a faster car approaching behind. And we like this. This is how you mana drive. I don't know what it is, but since I've been in Scandinavia I just find it very frustrating. To be honest, driving in Sweden, people really don't have the same panache for driving. Very general statement, but that's my feeling and really enjoying German wor. It's now night time and we're in Holland and we've got about three hours to go to the ferry that's passed out and I've got a second wind. It's 11 o' clock at night and this is Belgium. Looks pretty much the same as everything else we've been coming through.
So I've just woken up and I'm super sleepy. But it's 1:30, we're in Calais. Matt's done an awesome job getting us to the last leg which means we get a short time to rest. But we're going to see if we can get an earlier ferry now which will give us a block of time we can sleep in the uk somewhere nice in Wiltshire. Perhaps some magical Places there where I grew up and Wiltshire is one of the most beautiful country counties in England. I would say some people might disagree but like in Lord of the Rings where they call it the Shire, it.
Is the shire, the UK border force.
Matt, are you traveling on British passport?
Correct, I am traveling with a British passport.
Matt's got dual citizenship, which is quite nice.
Yeah, I grew up speaking French in school. Everyone learns French in Canada as a second lang.
Not Danish?
Not Danish, no, But it came in handy. I don't hardly ever speak it but here we weren't sure which entrance to go in.
So which where did you pick up your Danish?
Off the back of like bacon packets I think.
So we just drove straight in and they're letting us on the 2:30 ferry.
So we got an extra two hours.
We're going in the wrong side.
No, I think this is it, 157. That's our ferry there. So look, the beauty, the beauty of this is it takes three and a half hours to get to where I.
Was raised, which is where the trailer is a little farm that exports old Massey Ferguson tractors all over the world. And it's a farm in the town.
I grew up in or near where I grew up.
And that means.
In theorem we should get there in an hour and a half from now, shouldn't we? So it'll be 3, 3:30 in the morning, 7.
Oh we'll have three hours sleep when we get there.
It's not so good after all. But I thought we'd get a bit more rest now.
Goodbye France. See you this afternoon. Okay, quarter past five English time and we're just pulling into White Cliffs in Berber first thing I noticed. The air is better here, flinty soil.
They're a good to get disturbed by the machinery driving over them. This was recognised as a problem and certainly sort of in the early 80s, you know, numbers within the brecks were about 50, 60 pairs. And through a lot of effort, through a lot of organisations including the rspb, they've been helping to establish the stone curling within the brecks.
This is more what we refer to as not necessarily Neptune.
This is the Marlborough Private School and.
Up at the back is a cinder racetrack and it's where I ran a five minute mile when I was 14.
Years old and Roger Bannister was in attendance and he was like a little childhood hero of mine.
He ran the world's first four minute mile. So in his honour I ran it barefoot on a cinder track which hurt my feet. That was one of my top Achievements as a young athlete. I was a youth team long distance.
Runner and cross country runner.
And we're now entering like my stomping.
Ground when I was a kid. Like this is all area for the.
Next hundred miles is areas I've lived and know very well.
It's a very beautiful part of our country.
And a lot of old sacred sites here.
We might stop at a couple on the way. Now.
Here we are at av.
We're heading up. This is the ancient ritual pathway up to the stone circle where the Druids have met and people, the tribes in England have met here for, you know, over 10,000 years. This is still where the Druids come to celebrate the winter and summer solstices. And still this is like some of the ancient spiritual heartland in the south of the uk. Stonehenge is near here as well as some other sites of keen interest. Out of the mist comes Silbury Hill. This is the largest, this human made hill in Europe and dates back past the Iron age. Would have been a very significant meeting point in the landscape here. This, the landscape around here is just full of all these Neolithic and well, different ages of sacred sites. We're going to walk up to the long barrow. Beautiful misty morning and here you see a signboard of similar things. But we're going up to this longbow. It's a burial place of about 36 people from 3650 BC and you can get inside one end of it. And then we have Stonehenge nearby and this is aviary where you just saw the big stones. And then you have Woodhenge which a practice for Stonehenge made of wood. And then Silby Hill, Neolithic man made mound. Pretty special place. Amazing to think that is a hand built hill. Probably quite a bit taller. You can see there's a slight step on the top. It's got a construction of a lot of rock underneath the top layer of soil, almost like some of the ancient pyramid structures. And here at the top of the hill is the long barrow. You can go in here. This is one of hundreds of ancient burial mounds in these rolling hills. These are the hills that got me really excited about keyline design. This is like the chalk downlands. You see the ground here is full of flint and chalk and this rolling landscape is what inspired me to study Pierre Yeoman's work. So this is one of the best preserved chambered tombs in southern England. About five and a half thousand years old. And 46 people were buried here over a thousand year period. It's about a Thousand years earlier than Avebury was built. Sorry, Silbury, the human made hill was built. These big sarsen stones are the same that we use for Stonehenge. And it says here, analysis of the bones. John Thurman started excavating the initial chambers in 1859 and later there were more found by a couple of other people in the 50s. An analysis of the bones found here showed that arthritis and toothache were common complaints in the Neolithic times. Wiltshire's really magical place for me, still really close to my heart. It's where a lot of the white horses are found. And my village where I grew up is actually right below one of the most famous white horses. And we also have a long standing figure, a man carved in the hillside in the hills over here somewhere. We're not passing that right now, but, ah, these are the landscapes I grew up with and magic to be back. This is what our ancestors were building as burial chambers. This is Neolithic. Little chambers off to the left and right. Not sure if I can make a light turn on here. You see the different chambers. And so this is the place where.
We'Re coming to pick up the trailer.
It's a small town where I've lived.
And the fair is in town. I rescued a swan here once that swallowed a fishing hook and I learned how strong swans are.
In the meantime, These little market towns. Beautiful. And for many people watching this, you probably haven't seen such old buildings. But just around this corner are 15th century dwellings. This is how the streets of England used to look. All old oak frames and then wattle and daubed in between with lime plants. Beautiful buildings. And they would have thrown their sewage out to a central aisle. This was, you know, modernized now, but the sewer would have been open sewer. But you can see the curves in the wood. This building stood here for over 500 years. Really beautiful. Find a chainsaw. Cheaper in England. Sweden is too expensive. So we're shopping in England. So we're here. We made it to this old yard and this is our trainer that we came all this way from. Nice Land Rover wheels. We like that. Very nice double decking. We like it. So these guys are buying up old machines on ebay and doing them up from scratch, shipping them over to about 30 countries. So this, the young guy who's been working here, he does all kinds of welding and fixing. He was saying that this came in as a kind of car, not will float, but it's in really good nick. And they've cleaned it up and repainted the wheels. Seems like in really good nick. Chassis is in good nick. So our second floor is on the gas strut. We were just working out how that actually works. It's got gas struts under there, so it just hooks up and sheep have to make it up. This includes line, but it's got little ribs, so they have no problem getting up there.
All right, we got a trailer. This is what England's made of. Tight hedgerows, little roads. Hope we don't meet any cars. We're traveling along the road that I used to travel along every single morning to school. I love my high school a lot. And yeah, I really enjoyed this route as well. So it's really nice for me to come back to these familiar areas. I know this place like the back of my hand. And as I was a long distance runner, I used to run all around the hills up here in the forests, dragging car tyres to make me stronger. Wasn't my idea. So we're entering the village where I grew up. And up here is Ethan.
And in the valley up in the.
Middle of the picture there, there's a bloodstone where so called Ragnar Lothbrok's son came along with his army and got.
Beaten up by the English.
And it's why we called our son Ragnar. Johanna's from Sweden, I'm from here. And that's one place where our countries intersect. I used to love coming with my longboard, like a long skateboard down here.
And I could get fast enough probably.
About 50 kilometers an hour. You could all the way back up.
The other side, like so.
Very nice. We have a beautiful white horse up above the other side of the village, which is the big hill coming into view now. And it's an Iron Age fort at.
The top of this hill. This is the pastured pig model here in the uk. It's been here since I was a little boy, but it's just missing the pasture. It. We're in very slow traffic on the 303.
It's a road that bisects the west country. And over to the left there you see Stonehenge.
Lots of people there.
It's Saturday afternoon, so people are checking the stones out, cows are checking the people out. The birdie's checking the cows out, checking the people out, checking the stones out. So we're 40 minutes out from the ferry and it looks like we might just miss it. How's it going with the trailer?
It's going pretty good. It feels. Feels all right. A little bit shifty, but getting used.
To it same trailer so looks like.
We just peeped it.
Yeah we're looking for lane 117. Ferry is set to sail in four.
Minutes so somehow don't understand why all these vehicles are here but it looks like we're on following behind this little peeper and on to the right. 117 it is. Very nice move the day. Yeah trailer's good.
It's very heavy.
About 1,400 kilos empty but it's very.
Stable having double wheels and big wheels seems to you know it tows quite nicely.
So happy with it so far we're.
Just taking it easy but we like it now. It's very nice. Goodbye England. I'll see you in the winter time sometime I'll be going back to see my daughter and to pick up some bits. Very nice to come back to England. I like England. So we're back in France heading to Dunkirk and we were here what 12 hours ago and we got about 1700 kilometers left on this 4000 kilometer trip and all. Well so far trailer rides nice on these smooth roads but we've got quite a lot of bumpy highways to go across through Belgium and parts of Holland then the nice German roads. Hopefully we'll be back for dinner. Ben's suggested making a nice British classic Toad in the hole we like it and sauna on and stiff whiskey go to bed. That's the way I'm playing it.
Well I just woke up in a handy van somewhere in Germany I'm guessing so Matt must have just done a good old stint and seems like it's my turn. I think he's probably eating there. We're going to look at the sat nav. We've still got 10 hours driving to do and quite a way to go but now it's getting to the ferry so it'll be getting light by then and that'll take us to Denmark and give us a breath of fresh wind and get us home. So we're back to the ferry for Denmark. It's half past seven in the morning and we're quite to tired aren't we? Matt's just woken up.
I have a broken neck.
Matt's been sleeping with his head a bit large so he's feeling a bit wonky but we still got a good 67 hour drive. My father gave me some work I did when I was in primary school about 10. I was well into mapping see and design work already at that age and this is some old school projects. They're hilarious looking at weather this is from when I was much younger actually. Super cool. And little projects that used to do bridges. How are bridges built? Different types of bridges. Clapper bridge. But what's cute is there's little photos of when I was 10 making bridges in here. I've even got a little fold out model testing the air. That's me when I was 10, testing the airflow across the cross section of a bridge with a hairdryer. Brilliant. And that's quite into MacArthur.
That's brilliant.
Little designer.
So we're coming up 100km from Calstar. It's been relentless, but we're alive and driving good if a little slow. We can go back 100km an hour with this trailer and it rides real good. Really happy with it now and yeah, it's been very nice. So we actually perfected our arriving home to the dinner bell for Ben's toad in the hole. So if you don't know what toad in the hole is, it's a big Yorkshire pudding. If you don't know what that is, you'd better look it up. But inside the Yorkshire pudding, some of our homemade lamb and pork sausages, which are awesome. And the sauna should be hot. So by the time we're done with that, we're gonna go to bed. It's gonna be awesome. We'll be up for chicken processing tomorrow morning.
Woo. So we're back. Dinner time. Slaughter's ready.
And we're getting up at six to slaughter, so not much time to rest.
Looks like they've been building the polytunnel too. Very nice. Hi, little Miso. Oh, Miso. Hi, lovey. Oh, it's good to be back. Very happy with the trailer. Very happy with the new saw. Dinner bell just literally went as I walked around the corner. Look, they've been busy. We like this very much. Wow, busy times. Whoops. Slippy here. And they brought the hens into fun field again. Very nice. Look at that, Matt. Very nice. What a productive weekend. So crazy mission. But was it worth it? Yes, really worth it. We saved ourselves thousands of pounds and.
I feel quite good.
How are you feeling, Matt? I feel pretty good actually. Yeah? Yeah, Amazing. The thing we just drove.
Let's go do it again.
Let's go do it again.
But it all helps, you know, the.
Amount of money we've saved by picking up trailers and making our own infrastructure. It's really important element of what we're doing here. We've been able to build up everything so cheaply. So thanks for watching the videos as always. I'm gonna have sauna and dinner and go to bed. But see you in the next video, Sam.
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