NIX WEEKLY #05 — High Roads, Full Batteries & a New Face
The week at NIX • 18–25 October 2026
This was the week NIX went uphill, looked under the passenger seat and discovered that even an autumn escape can become an engineering report if I leave enough sensors switched on. Vanilla climbed into the Peak District, the Fogstar filled while the scenery grew taller, a famous reservoir revealed more stonework than usual and I took the long way home because the sensible road was never going to win.
Back at base, the new NIX DRONES logo became a minor obsession, Zoom finally got the full love letter it deserved, old technology refused to retire and the kitchen produced enough bread, soup and slow-cooked beef to make leaving the house seem optional. This edition covers everything published from 18 to 25 October — including the rough little tests as well as the glossy long reads — because a real week has fingerprints on it.
ROAD / TRAVEL — THE PEAKS TOOK THE LONG WAY ROUND
The published plan was gloriously ambitious: three days, nineteen stops, wet limestone, pub nights and Torque waiting in reserve. Then the actual journey found its own shape. Two October days carried Vanilla from Staffordshire into Hartington and Miller’s Dale, on to Ladybower, across Snake Pass, up through Winnats Pass and over the Cat & Fiddle before The Roaches supplied the final dramatic backdrop.
That difference between plan and journey matters. The pre-trip story gave me a route; the road gave me low reservoir water, exposed spillway engineering, autumn light and the freedom to stop when a place deserved it. Day One records the gentler opening through the villages and limestone country. The two complete retellings then show how the passes turned the drive itself into the destination.
READ THE FULL STORY → the original Stone, Sky & Fire plan
READ THE FULL STORY → Peak District Road Trip, Day One
READ THE FULL STORY → Two Days, Three Passes, One Van
READ THE FULL STORY → The Long Way Round through the Peaks
The electrical story was running underneath all of that. Vanilla left with the 105Ah Fogstar at 58.9 per cent; the road, roof panel and Victron system took it to full charge. Across the strongest two-hour charging window, the SmartShunt saw 43.42Ah of net charge while the solar log accounted for 138Wh, making the Orion DC–DC charger the convincing source of most of the difference. That is the sort of result I wanted from last week’s power questions: a real journey, real loads and numbers that explain what the van actually did.
READ THE FULL STORY → High Roads, Low Volts & a Full Battery
READ THE FULL STORY → the fuller High Roads, Quiet Nights power diary
By the end of the week, the trip had already started turning into a wider thought about why the detour keeps winning. The European Drift photographs and the Peak District frames tell the same truth at different scales: the destination gets the headline, but the unscheduled pause often becomes the memory.
VANILLA / CAMPERVAN — THE NUMBERS UNDER THE COSINESS
Climate Lab #01 is what happens when “the heater seems good” is no longer a satisfactory answer. Across roughly 10–18 October, inside and outside sensors supplied 11,492 paired readings. During the main heated nights, Vanilla averaged about 21.5°C while autumn outside averaged roughly 10°C. The largest measured gap reached 15.7°C, and when the outside fell to 6.9°C the van did not drop below 20.4°C. Even better, the two selected overnight runs took an almost identical 26.23Ah and 26.45Ah from the Fogstar. Warmth had a measurable price, and it was reassuringly repeatable.
The important lesson was not simply that the Webasto works. Heater, battery, solar and monitoring are beginning to behave like one system. Morning light starts replacing some of the night’s energy, humidity stays civilised and I can stop staring at the percentage display as though it owes me money.
READ THE FULL STORY → Vanilla Climate Lab #01
The bigger Vanilla story zoomed out to two years, twelve countries and a campervan that has become a proper travelling companion. It gathers the registration, the modifications, the power setup and the European miles into one owner’s account. Four Jackerys then get their own honest job descriptions: the 240 for convenience, the 300D for compact DC duties, the 1000 for broader AC use and the 2000 as the heavyweight reserve. The useful conclusion is allocation, not battery collecting — keep essential van loads on the fixed Fogstar system and give each portable unit work that suits it.
READ THE FULL STORY → two years with V111 AJN
READ THE FULL STORY → Four Jackerys, One Vanilla
Then came the luxuries that make all those watt-hours worthwhile. Vanilla’s Cinema explains how a Nebula Capsule 3 Laser, a 50-inch pop-top screen and a Fire TV Stick turn a short-wheelbase van into a tiny picture house. The possible Tefal YumMeal is still research rather than an owner review: a promising 1,000W, 1.2-litre one-bowl cooker that must earn its place through a storage check, measured power draw and an actual meal.
DRONES / PHOTOGRAPHY — ZOOM GETS THE BIG STORY
Zoom, my DJI Mini 4 Pro, finally received the complete account: why the aircraft has a name, why being small is a genuine advantage and why its 48MP option, RAW files, panoramas, 10-bit video, three-axis gimbal, vertical shooting and obstacle sensing have made it the everyday flagship of NIX DRONES. Specifications only matter because they widen the range of photographs and films I can bring home. The real change is spontaneity. A drone that fits with Vanilla and the rest of the travelling kit is a drone that is there when the light suddenly behaves.
READ THE FULL STORY → why Zoom changed everything
The week’s photography also moved closer to eye level. The Ray-Ban Meta Blayzer glasses offer a first-person record of the small moments that disappear while I reach for another camera. They do not replace the drone, Canon, Action 4 or iPhone; they add the view from inside the moment. That could be particularly useful around Vanilla, on a walk or when a road story begins before I have unpacked a bag.
READ THE FULL STORY → the world through my Ray-Ban Meta Blayzer glasses
And because collecting material is only half the job, the blogging masterclass asks the harder question: where is the story inside the subject? Its best advice is practical — start where the interesting bit starts, photograph what advances the story, edit without sanding away the human voice and leave the reader with something worth taking away.
TECHNOLOGY — KEEPING THE GOOD KIT
This was a week of technology earning its space rather than demanding an upgrade. The fourth-generation iPad Air is six years on from its debut and still sits neatly between phone and Mac: a calm screen for reviewing photographs, planning journeys, watching something in Vanilla and doing the jobs that feel cramped on a phone but excessive on a laptop. It shows its age, but usefulness has outlasted novelty.
READ THE FULL STORY → the iPad Air 4 that refuses to retire
The Cosmic Orange iPhone 17 Pro Max reached the same verdict from the other direction. A newer model can be objectively better without making the current phone inadequate. The display, performance and camera system already cover the work; the orange still makes it feel personal. That is a healthier upgrade test than allowing a keynote to empty the wallet by remote control.
FOOD / PN100 / RECIPES — FIVE LOAVES AND ONE VERY SLOW BEEF
The little Panasonic PN100 had a productive week: farmhouse white, wholemeal, fruit loaf, French bread and brioche, each treated as a distinct loaf rather than five photographs of flour wearing different hats. The collection also captures the habits that improve every bake — accurate weighing, strong flour, the right yeast and enough patience to let the programme do its work.
READ THE FULL STORY → five loaves from one little Panasonic
The Ninja soup maker answered with five colder-weather bowls: lentil, tomato and smoked bacon; spicy parsnip and apple; broccoli and Stilton; French onion and Gruyère; and oxtail with red wine. The point was not gadget worship. It was taking familiar tins as a starting idea and building richer, freezer-friendly versions with proper ingredients.
READ THE FULL STORY → five luxury soups from the Ninja
Then Sunday dinner took the sensible route. Beef, peppers, cider and gravy went into the little Crockpot in the morning so the machine could do the patient work while I did something else. It is exactly the sort of recipe I like: generous at the table, low on ceremony and improved by leaving it alone.
GENERAL NIX — A NEW FACE, OLD FRIENDS AND A CUP DREAM
The visual change of the week began with three words: “very simple logo”. It ended with a four-part rotor mark, the familiar orange, silver and white, and far too many ideas about how it might look on Vanilla, clothing, camera kit and everything else within reach. What makes the mark work is that it feels like movement without needing to draw a literal drone. The wider site identity now has a centre of gravity.
READ THE FULL STORY → the logo that became my new baby
Some identities arrive through design; others accumulate over sixty-five years. Stafford 41 Club’s story moves from its 1961 charter through old events, charity giving and remembered characters to my year as Chairman. The best line is still the simplest: the hinges of friendship never rust. The real job now is to keep recording the faces and stories while they can still be told by the people who were there.
READ THE FULL STORY → sixty-five years of Stafford 41 Club
And Stafford has another date circled. Stafford Rangers’ five-goal win over Gateshead earned a televised FA Cup First Round tie at home to Grimsby Town on Remembrance Sunday, 8 November. The pre-match piece gets the order right: remembrance first, then the beautiful uncertainty of a non-league ground believing in a cup shock.
READ THE FULL STORY → Stafford Rangers’ Remembrance Sunday cup tie
NIX HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK
High Roads, Low Volts & a Full Battery takes the highlight because it closes a loop. Last week contained power theories and winter questions; this week Vanilla went out and produced evidence. The route trace, solar history and SmartShunt figures turn a lovely Peak District drive into a useful account of how the van behaves in the real world — without letting the numbers flatten the pleasure of Hartington, Miller’s Dale or a quiet night at Calver.
It is NIX at its best: road, machinery, curiosity and a cup of tea somewhere off camera.
READ THE FULL STORY → this week’s highlight: High Roads, Low Volts & a Full Battery
ELSEWHERE IN NIX...
The A5 got its own affectionate file: Roman Watling Street under modern Midlands traffic, a working road I know from lorries and enjoy differently in Vanilla. READ THE FULL STORY → two thousand years on the A5
The Plough Inn at Everdon received an Egon NIX reconnaissance rather than a pretend meal review. The restoration, producers, wine list, Sunday roast and welcome all look promising; the verdict correctly remains pending until an actual visit. READ THE FULL STORY → The Plough Inn pub file
Depeche Mode supplied the week’s soundtrack with a long journey from Basildon and Speak & Spell through Black Celebration, Music for the Masses, Violator and Memento Mori. It is a fan’s account of machines becoming intensely human. READ THE FULL STORY → the beautiful darkness of Depeche Mode
Two tiny public posts also show the machinery being tested. Flickr Test is exactly as minimal as its title suggests, while A Fresh Test carries the cheerful promise of “more adventures, less admin”. They are small experiments, recorded here without dressing them up as major stories.
NEXT WEEK ON NIX
Climate Lab has explicitly only just started. The published questions are wonderfully specific: how cold the floor gets, whether the bed stays warmer than the cab, what a thermal curtain changes, what happens with the pop-top raised and how quickly the van recovers after the sliding door opens. The logical next chapter is more measurement towards Vanilla’s thermal fingerprint and a tougher NIX Cosiness Index when winter gets a proper vote.
The Jackery story has set another honest follow-up: measure actual watt-hours used during real evenings and meals, then compare them with the energy put back in by driving, solar and mains charging. The YumMeal remains only a candidate until there is a fit check and a Jackery-powered cooking test. Those are continuing experiments, not promises of a launch date.
The NIX logo will keep finding its place across the site and the kit, while Stafford Rangers’ confirmed 8 November cup tie and Stafford 41 Club’s living archive remain genuine stories ahead. I’ll report what actually happens, keep the sensors awake and meet you back here next Sunday.