Making the decision to go traveling.....
Leaving the comfortable lifestyle behind, work, family, friends and going off traveling is never an easy decision to make. Particularly at our age. But make that decision we did. And so it began …..
The Initial Decision
Moving out of your home and place of work focuses the mind on what is important. Take a year out and get our heads back in the game. That was the plan. The pub had been our lives for so long it was weird not being there.
Our brilliant friends, helping us out – love them all – thank you from the bottom of our hearts for standing by us. David, a long-time customer and friend came up trumps. He had a house to rent and allowed us to move in with the 3 dogs in tow – don’t know what we would have done otherwise. Thank you.
12 months later and what are we going to do next? Somehow we have got to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and start over.
We had always planned on traveling when the mortgage was paid off. Well, we have no mortgage now. No savings either. So what do you do? You stick two fingers up to the world and say up yours – I’m going traveling! That’s the (crazy?) decision we made!
Having decided that’s what we were going to do surely it’s just a case of pack up everything and going? Oh, if only it were so simple!
Making the dream a reality
So we start thinking about what needs to be done before we leave. The house, belongings, cars, pets. Then what do we need for traveling? Passports, insurance, bank accounts, phones, internet. Throw in Zeus, our dog, and what that means – pet passport, vaccinations, local restrictions.
Before you know it there seems to be a huge list of things that need to be sorted before you can set foot outside the door!
With anything that appears to be so large you can’t wrap your mind around it, break it down into smaller, more manageable, pieces. So we write it all down and make a checklist. Break it down into things we can achieve – because the whole was too overwhelming! That was back in February.
A slightly modified, more generic, version of our checklist can be seen on Google Docs here.
Before we can go traveling we need to get some money together. Start selling things, that’s the answer – oh so much stuff we don’t need. Downsizing makes you realise just how little you actually need. We all accumulate far too much junk!
It’s going to take forever to try and sell it all. Facebook. ebay. preloved. gumtree. local advertising – we try them all, but there are literally thousands of things to sell and we are hamstrung by the COVID restrictions so things are taking a long time.
Brother
My brother and his (now) wife have been in the motorhoming business since 2003. They have written many guides and travelled many miles, specialising in Europe. Their business, vicarious books, has been a success for many years. They are very experienced, seasoned travellers so it would have been foolish in the extreme not to speak to them.
Back to Kent we go for a couple of days and we meet up to pick their brains for some advice. We talk about many things, but two things stuck with us:
Break up the travel – work 6 months and travel 6 months
Buy a caravan and save hard
So we buy a caravan and plan our move to the beach. We have negotiated a free pitch on the beach at Blackpool Sands in exchange for night-watchman duties. Perfect. No utilities, no rent, no big bills. Our plan was to work until September then aidos amigo and off we go. Then ……
COVID-19
COVID19 rose its’ head. The first lockdown in March, followed by being on furlough for 4 months. There was no chance of traveling during this crisis. Also, because Carol wasn’t able to work we were down £1000 a month – saving had become extremely hard as we weren’t able to get out of our rented house. We finally manage to get the caravan to the beach in May. That was another learning curve. With it now in place Carol gave it a good clean– the flies….so, so many.
It took forever to level the caravan. When the built in leveller said it was level the van was actually pointing ready to launch (Thunderbird 2 came to mind!!) – Lesson 1 – don’t trust the caravans’ built in spirit level.
Then came the awning – no instructions and two people with no idea – or internet to check. We laid it out on the floor and thought what the heck! Five hours later it was up and we were only 60 pegs short. About 12 poles left over but we found homes for them. Ground was so hard we had to drill pilot holes for the tent pegs with a hammer drill first!
Moving In
At last it was moving in day and fitting a quart into a pint pot sprang to mind. Then it was a day of finding out how everything worked. The electric hook up took all day as the lock to the hook up box had rusted solid. Thank you Robert for freeing it up…..although it was another few hours before a key appeared to open said lock. The key to disabled toilet and water store were also entrusted to us.
So many new things to take on board. Toilet, heating, water, gas – all things we take for granted in our homes, but all different in a caravan! And the aquaroll – amazing. Big thumbs up to whoever invented that. Didn’t have any water coming through the taps but the aquaroll made getting from tap to caravan very easy. Eventually managed to get the water working after a call to the gentleman we bought the caravan from and a bit of jiggery pokery.
We still had so much stuff. It was never fitting in a caravan. So we put it into storage with the intention of selling it from there.
Summer Working
I spent the summer working at Venus – and what a summer. Because of the COVID situation, the usual influx of seasonal staff never happened. Coupled with the extra restrictions imposed on hospitality businesses everything was much harder work than normal. Crazy times. The World had gone mad.
It was super busy. The weather was lovely and everyone was enjoying a staycation – the company had a bumper year but with a fraction of the staff – it broke everyone. Our experiences over the summer were many, too many to include here, so I have written about them separately – look out for the post.
Moving On
We did manage to save some money, but we were down on what we hoped because of COVID so we decided to stay till the end of October. I hand my notice in and almost immediately France locks down, then the UK. I have the worst timing.
Still stuck here mid-December waiting for France to open up again with no income and it’s getting colder. The beach has been frozen solid the last two mornings and the windows on the caravan layered with ice!
Looking on the bright side the vaccine program has been announced. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
France is opening up soon. Here we go? I certainly hope so.
Hope You Enjoy!
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