we get this question a few times a month. it's almost always polite. a couple are looking at debbie for an autumn week and they want to make sure they can do an hour of remote work in the morning. or a parent is travelling with a teenager and wants to know if they can stream a film.
the answer's the same: we don't fit wifi. you'll get 4g across most of where we send you. the kettle works. the heater works. the espresso pot works. the wifi router does not, because we never installed one.
why we made that call.
the average uk adult spends roughly four hours a day on a smartphone. for under-25s it's closer to five. that's not a moral judgement — it's just where the time goes. about 89% of people in one university study said they'd experienced 'phantom phone vibration' — feeling a buzz in your pocket when nothing's there.
gloria mark at uc irvine has spent twenty years measuring how long we can hold attention on a single screen task. in 2004 it was around two and a half minutes. by the early 2020s it was 47 seconds. her book attention span (2023) is the citable source if you want one.
47 seconds. that's the average time we now spend on one task before switching.
we built the vans for the other thing. for the bit where the kettle's on at 6.40am and you can hear the rain on the roof. for the walk you do without checking the weather first. for the conversation that lasts longer than a tiktok.
the honest catch.
we're not pretending you're in the wilderness. ee and o2 cover most of the brecons, almost all of the gower, and a surprising amount of eryri. you can pull a signal and tether your phone if you really need to send an email. we just don't put a router in the van that makes it the default behaviour.
and if you're working a four-day week or you genuinely need to take a call on tuesday morning — fine. tether, send the email, close the laptop. nobody's auditing you. we'd just rather not be the company that builds the workspace into the holiday.
if you're after a proper digital detox, leave the laptop at home and let the phone run flat in the glovebox. we'll have the kettle on when you get back.