I have a question for you.
I’m not going to get into the personal evolution of my travels other than to say I did the m416 trailer/rtt a couple decades ago and it worked when decoupling for challenging fun wheeling but otherwise was a comparative source for anxiety on long double track. (Turning around for some reason, a dead end, or oncoming traffic) For the type of traveling you’re doing, and for the duration of travel, do you need the extra off-road ability of the Gren (or any other suv) and would you choose this setup again, or would a 4x4 van have appeal for its near capability but ease of foul weather use?
Good question. The trailer has its pros and cons that’s for sure. If we were two people, I don’t think we’d have the trailer again for what we’re doing, but with a family, it’s a tight squeeze in one vehicle and so this works for us. It’s also nice to live under canvas with lots of windows rather than in a box - you’re more connected to the surrounding environment.
With the trailer, you just have to do your research and think ahead a lot more. Even doing all that, we still get ourselves in some tricky situations… I don’t think we’d want to do what we’ve just done with a trailer which was any bigger in dimensions or heavier. Certain places like Northern America, Australia, Mongolia would be fine but not where we’ve just been… (we’re still quite far behind online)
The beauty of the trailer for us is how long you can be offgrid for and how easy it all is despite the limitations mentioned above. It’s very easy to set up and put away and the Patriot is seriously capable off road and just goes where the Grenadier takes it. This is a big one, if you don’t have a top notch trailer, it will fall apart over time if you’re doing the amount of off-roading that we are. The main limitation then becomes how much food and fuel you can carry, as long as you have a water source. To have that amount of water, a good loving space
Inside and out (when deployed we have an outside play area for kids undercover), good sized kitchen (important for the Mrs when cooking for a family all the time), storage etc without having to touch the original vehicle is a massive pro for us. Going in a single vehicle, heavily modified and untested in that exact configuration, potentially top heavy, when we’re mainly off-road, and therefore all the added stress on all the components would potentially lead to more overall problems. If it was proven and tested properly, in an exact configuration, that’s a different story, and I know there’s options out there, but they’re pricey. We considered building the first
Maltec Grenadier but it was way out of our budget… and we would have had to delay our departure. If budget wasn’t an option and we had the time, I think we would have possibly gone down this route.
A 4x4 van is a great option to consider, especially for foul weather. Some of those Sprinters are beasts. Foul weather at night for us isn’t an issue as we have great sleeping bags but cooking outside when it’s raining / snowing / freezing / windy etc gets a little old after a while. When we bought our setup during Covid, the 4x4 vans were crazy money, the good ones especially and so it made sense to do what we did. Even now, I think I’d still rather have what we have. Leah may have a different opinion
Like most people doing this sort of thing, we’re always talking about other setups, especially when you bump into people and talk to them about their decisions. A lot is down to budget, personal preference, priorities and the type of travel you’re actually going to do. (And being honest with yourself about that) I’m not convinced a van would go where we’ve been on this trip unless it had quite the lift (which makes things top heavy and has its own issues), lockers and very good tyres and even then, there’s places we’ve been that the van definitely wouldn’t be able to go, just down to it’s overall size and wheel base. Some of these occasions, we had to leave the trailer but we could still go, which is another pro with this setup.
We haven’t done a great job showing it, but we’ve done some pretty serious trails. I would want the capability the Grenadier provides for what we’re doing. You also never quite know what situation you’re going to find yourself in. We’re very remote in some cases and the weather around the world is getting more extreme and unpredictable… I’d rather have a Grenadier than something average, especially with my family. If it was a boys trip, I’d be game for a bit more hardship and things going wrong..
Hope this helps
Happy Christmas! 
![[ Adam ]](https://ineosforum-data.community.forum/avatars/s/9046/9046040.jpg?1705937698){kind=avatar}