14 month 10 days – The End of Eugene

Well, where has the time gone, we’re now at the end of our European Tour and have hung up the keys to Eugene and hopefully passing him on to someone else to follow their own dreams, but this is not the end of our travels.  We leave for Australia, yippee.

We’ve taken in 17 countries travelling through 2 continents and spent 590 hours driving.  We’ve driven 19,000 land miles, 6 boat crossings.  We’ve had 1 wing mirror clash, 1 flat tyre and no breakdowns (thank god!).   We survived each other, we weren’t robbed or gassed in our sleep.  The only things we left behind were the odd bottle of shampoo and an outdoor mat which is all Keith’s fault,.  Sometimes we drank and ate a little too much, and put on far too much weight.  We’ve laughed a lot, cried a little, and had a few sulky moments   After 32 years of marriage and being together 24/7 for the past 14 months we got through it all and we’re not getting divorced!!.

We really want to thank all of you that have stuck with us over the past 14 months and 10 days, we really appreciate that you took the time to read our blogs and make contact with us someway or another to let us know we weren’t travelling on our own, you were there with us, hopefully enjoying some of the adventure and maybe giving you a taste to take the jump and do it yourselves.

We’ve had an incredible time and feel incredibly lucky that we have been able to do this.  Having the courage to leave everything behind and head off isn’t for everyone, but it is most definitely the best thing we’ve ever done.  We had the amazing support of our kids, family and friends which help us to enjoy our time away without any worries.  We were thankful that family life at home ticked along happily without us, no family disasters that couldn’t be sorted without us being there meaning we could fully relax and for this we are really thankful.  We obviously missed the physical contact with the kids and our grandchildren, but with the wonders of technology we were always in contact and to be honest we didn’t get homes sick and we didn’t miss anyone!

It can be tempting to try and see it all and travelling through 17 countries in 14 months we felt we were always trying to do just that, see it all and squeeze everything in and this is our only regret.   We wished we’d traveled slower and taken more time in some places and maybe not visited others, we had nothing to rush for, so not sure why we did it, but there are many places we didn’t visit and we wished we had, but we couldn’t do it all, this is for next time.

Most of the time we’ve been off the beaten track, been to towns and villages in the middle of nowhere and definitely places you wouldn’t normally go on your average ‘package’ holiday.  Some places have been vibrant, relaxing and some have been so quiet we didn’t see another soul for days and we thought the whole world had come to an end and we were the only ones alive.

Believe it or not travelling around in a motorhome can be exhausting, always moving, looking for somewhere safe to spend the night or looking for interesting places to visit.  We’ve spent a lot of time walking, cycling, swimming, reading and sitting inside Eugene watching the rain lashing down for days on end.

 

We’ve done our bit for the environment with ‘no plastic’, we haven’t bought a bottle of water since leaving Morocco.  Europe is full of free water springs and fountains so getting fresh water is quite easy most of the time. We have a 10 litre container in the garage which we fill up with fresh drinking water whenever we get the chance.  The best water we’ve collected has been straight from the running mountain springs that we came across in Romania, Bulgaria and Poland. There is absolutely no need to buy plastic bottled water when travelling in a motorhome.

If we wild camped next to a beach we would spend an hour or so collecting rubbish which had been washed up on the beach.  One of the worse places was in fact one of our favourite wild camping spots, Epidavros Beach in Greece.  The plastic rubbish being washed up was relentless, it was just like the rubbish truck had just tipped everything in to the sea, it was really sad to see this amount of rubbish in such a beautiful place.

The only toll roads we’ve paid for have been the ones we’ve accidentally found ourselves on, which isn’t that funny when it’s cost us 20 euros to drive 40 miles, turn around pay another 20 euros and drive back 40 miles to get back on track lol. We’ve taken the longer and more scenic routes, but sometimes these haven’t been the best roads and we almost shook poor Eugene to death. We’ve stayed out of the city centers and therefore haven’t needed to purchase any air pollution certificates.

We haven’t eaten out as much as we would have liked and there’s a few reasons for that. If we stayed on an Aire most are situated outside of the town or village and usually we’ve arrived late afternoon, so too late for lunch or the town or village doesn’t have a restaurant or cafe.  We very rarely ventured out after dark the main reason is security for Eugene, we didn’t want to leave him exposed in a carpark or Aire if we were the only ones there.

We have never felt threatened or scared to be anywhere and never felt the need to leave in the middle of the night.  We used campsites in some countries but 80% of our stops were wild camping (carparks, national parks, etc) or aires.  We’ve absolutely loved waking up right next to the sea, at the top of a mountain, or at a lake and listening to the different sounds, except the sound of the rain of course.

We’ve managed our budget well.  We had a daily budget of £50, this was to cover everything from the time we left home.  Some countries have been more expensive than others, but in the end it all evens out.  Our daily spend has been just under £40 per day, with a total spend of £17,100.  Our biggest costs has been diesel and food shopping.

So a quick rundown of the countries we’ve visited.

France, Spain, Morocco, Gibraltar, Italy, Vatican City, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungry, Slovakia, Luxembourg, Holland, Czech Republic, Germany, Belgium and Poland.

We signed up to Trusted Housesitters and had a total of 16 weeks housesitting in 5 different areas of France.  This helped to reduce our daily spending by half, enabling us to treat ourselves to a few meals out and the purchase of new clothes, yippee.  Despite having issues with Bertie on our last house sit we have really enjoyed everything about housesitting, the animals, the areas we stayed, the amazing houses and of course the hosts who were all so friendly and we will continue to stay in touch with them all.

Contracting Bells Palsy very early on in our trip was something that we hadn’t planned, but it happened, we dealt with it and didn’t let it spoil our time.  I’m still recovering and not sure if I’ll ever get back to looking how I was before, but if this is it so be it.

Ironically our last night in Eugene was 14th February 2019 which we all know is Valentines Day, Keith’s birthday and our 32nd Wedding Anniversary.  We spent the day in Dinan and the night parked under the beautiful bridge.

Our feet are not touching the ground for long and its not the end of our tour.  We’re only home for 6 days before heading off to Australia for 3 months to meet the newest member of the Toms/Sawbridge family, Baden Xavier Sawbridge.

Whilst in Australia we have a few things planned, we have 2 week housesit, and we’re doing a road trip down south and we would love you to follow us to the other side of the world.

Thanks again to you all, continue to follow us and we’ll see you in June 2019.

a la perchoine

Shirena & Keith

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