6 months later!

Its just over 6 months since we set off on our big adventure around Europe in our motorhome Eugene.  Sometimes I think back and it feels like we left yesterday and other times it feels like we’ve been away for years.

Missing physical contact with our kids, our beautiful grandchildren and our parents is the hardest thing about being away but, we’re always in touch.  A little message or chat on Skype, Facebook or Whatsapp and the feelings disappear for short while.

Before this trip we’d been on the usual 1/2/3 week holidays a couple of times a year and the longest we’d been away was just before this trip when we went to Australia for the whole of November for our beautiful daughters wedding.

Life can be scary, but what’s scarier is living your whole life going through the motions and not pursuing your goals or ambitions.  We both felt we would rather try and fail than not try at all and that’s why we knew we had to do this trip.  If the worse comes to the worse we can always come back home.

Our idea of taking time out of the rat race happened very quickly when all the ducks unexpectedly fell into line.  We knew we didn’t want to wait until we were retired too many things can happen by that time and we’ve both seen friends passing away far too young.  Now is absolutely the right time for us, there’s places we want to go, experiences we want to have, food we want to try (well me, not Keith lol) and only so much time to accomplish it all.  Time isn’t going to standstill and wait for us.

Prior to leaving I can’t tell you how many people said ‘wow I wish I could do that’, ‘wish I’d done that when I was younger’.  Well you still can there’s no age restriction on travel, it may get harder, but its certainly possible, you just have to dig for the courage and go for it.

We didn’t really do a lot of planning for this trip, we wanted to go with the flow and that’s exactly what we’ve done. If the sun isn’t shining we turn around and go the other way, or better still we have a duvet day.  If we don’t like our stop, we don’t and just carry on until we see something we like.  Having this beautiful world as our garden is amazing and everyday we wake up to see something different or new.

We knew we wanted to visit Morocco and Greece and did our research for these countries, those countries in between and those that followed we did no research at all.  We knew practically nothing about the countries that we were going to be driving through over the coming months, but this isn’t stopping us from stepping into the unknown.

We have an overall budget of £50 a day which is to last us between 12-15 months, so far we’ve been able to keep well within that figure.  Some places have been more expensive but the overall budget is on track, phew!   We’re not exactly penny pinchers either.  We shop and eat well, we eat out and we don’t miss out on any of the ‘must sees’, we use local transport the buses and have even ventured on the train.  We’ve been to some amazing places where we’ve had to pay an entry fee, but we’ve found loads of places where entry is free mainly churches, and some are pretty spectacular.

This trip hasn’t just been about sightseeing as much as just being somewhere.  The simple challenges of a daily routine can be a little difficult at times, trying to eat, drink, sleep in a place where sometimes nothing makes sense, we don’t speak the language, and where none of the basic comforts of home are available.  Each country has different food in the supermarket and even working out whats written on the menu is a challenge.

Washing clothes can be a challenge.  Laundromats are different in each country, Spain & Italy we had no problem, but in Morocco you give it to a lady to take home and wash lol.  We hand wash a lot of our clothes but if we’re wild camping we can’t always hang it out to dry.  Greece was the best country for washing, we hardly had any, we had bathers on for the whole time we were there, no underwear and sometimes absolutely no clothes for Keith.

In 6 months I’ve cut Keith’s hair 5 times and each time it gets better, but we still both end up in fits of laughter when I’m doing it.  I’ve learnt to leave my hair dry naturally, I’ve got a hairdryer and straighteners but not felt the need to use them yet.

For the very few bad days we’ve had there have been countless great days.  My lowest point has been when I was struck down with Bells Palsy in Morocco a week after leaving home.  At the time we thought our whole trip was ruined, we were going home.  But after a few days of research on the internet I felt happy enough to continue on our trip.  There’s nothing that can be done to improve the situation so what was the point of going home, there’s worse things that could have happened, and we are thankful its not anything worse.

Keith and I very rarely argue and things haven’t changed but living in such a small space the tiniest of things can appear to be a huge issue within minutes.  Keith’s constant battle with the satnav’s are usually his reactor lol.

Our favorite country so far has been Greece, mainly because we found the sunshine at last and the most beautiful beaches.  Wild camping was so easy and mostly tolerated and we found some fantastic places.

For Keith Athens and Rome have been his favorite cities because of the history, for me it was Meknes in Morocco, it was so different to any other city we’d ever experienced and I loved it.

Romania has surprised us with its beauty.  Wild camping here has been easy and other than in a campsite we’ve not seen any other motorhomes on the road or at any of the wild spots we’ve slept at.

We’ve already realised that we’ve packed more stuff than we need and, the stuff we have bought we don’t need and stuff we really really needed we left at home.

Our pushbikes have hardly been used and we should have bought the Vespa.  We should have bought the gas BBQ instead of the Cobb, and Keith says we should have a Mercedes Sprinter instead of Eugene lol.

We want to stay away as long as possible so have manged to get ourselves 5 house sits in France totaling 16 weeks. We’ve got 2 sits in the Dordogne an area which we absolutely love and 1 sit in Brittany.  The longest sit being in the south of France from 20th December until about 10th February in a huge house so we are looking forward to Christmas and New Year with a difference.   House sitting will allow us some time to unwind, relax and be in one place so we can give Eugene a good clean and fix all those things that can’t be done on the road and hopefully it will help reduce our budget significantly so we can continue after the house sits end.

We’ve loved every minute of this trip and don’t want it to end.

We’re really glad of all the comments and messages that we receive from you and so glad that you chose to come along with us.

Here’s to the next 6 months.

a la perchoine

Shirena & Keith

xxxxx