It's been a whole month since I started to tell people about this blog and our plans to travel. I've been overwhelmed by the support and positive comments I've had from people since we went public but I think it will take me a little longer to get used to all the questions that come with pondering such a different path. I should be used to it of course, we home educate and in the UK that is also very much a minority path and we are often quizzed and questioned about why the kids aren't in school today. No, I'm not very good at answering those questions either! Talking about what we do and justifying our reasons makes me want to cower in a corner!
Online is another matter though and I am quite happy to talk away like that. I've been getting to grips (slowly!) with Twitter and making a facebook page so we can connect with other travellers especially families who have done or are planning to do similar trips to us. It's such a minefield and I keep doing things wrong, but I guess I'll get there! There is a worry that I will end up spending ages just reading and browsing and reading and browsing. You do end up finidng out cool facts though, like that Istanbul is just over 2000 miles away using google maps directions and would take us 1 day and 11 hours to get there. Um, yes, I dunno why or how I found that one out ;o)
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
Sunday, 13 May 2012
What could have been
Today we should have been getting ready for a trip of a lifetime. We were supposed to be flying to Chicago to start a road trip along Route 66.
Unfortunately life happened and we had to cancel the trip, but my father in law and James' cousin are still flying out tomorrow. I wasn't too bothered about it, knowing we have this fab adventure to look forward to, but James had started mentioning it wistfully the other day and today I do feel a litte sad for what could have been.
We did have our reasons, of course, the main one being that we were worried about J's job and we felt we couldn't commit to the expense with that hanging over our heads. I am glad that his job seems ok now, but ugh, we could have done it!
We do have a 'mini adventure' coming up soon that we decided we'd do when we were in that bleak period of not knowing what was going on. We'll be spending our days walking on the beach, hopefully we'll go on a boat trip to see puffins and sea birds and generally chill out and escape the decluttering going on round here ;o) Oh, and forgetting about what could have been.
Unfortunately life happened and we had to cancel the trip, but my father in law and James' cousin are still flying out tomorrow. I wasn't too bothered about it, knowing we have this fab adventure to look forward to, but James had started mentioning it wistfully the other day and today I do feel a litte sad for what could have been.
We did have our reasons, of course, the main one being that we were worried about J's job and we felt we couldn't commit to the expense with that hanging over our heads. I am glad that his job seems ok now, but ugh, we could have done it!
We do have a 'mini adventure' coming up soon that we decided we'd do when we were in that bleak period of not knowing what was going on. We'll be spending our days walking on the beach, hopefully we'll go on a boat trip to see puffins and sea birds and generally chill out and escape the decluttering going on round here ;o) Oh, and forgetting about what could have been.
Friday, 23 March 2012
The plan - for now!
I have made a page that can be accessed at the top of the blog with details of our plan, but I guess I might change this page quite a lot, so I think it would be nice to post it here and I can look back on it. So...
The plan is very loose at the moment as we need to save up for the whole 6 months beforehand. Everything will depend on the final amount we can raise. As we rent our house at the moment it means we have no capital to fall back on, no house to rent out or sell, but it does mean we're free to up and leave whenever we like and aren't relying on outside influences to get going. Silver lining and all that! We need to buy a campervan and we're also hoping to raise about £6000 to travel with. This equates to about £30 a day on the road. This may or may not be completely adequate for our plans (I am really not good at estimating costs!) but time will tell.
Ideally we'd like to spend 6 months in a campervan travelling around 3 distinct areas of the British Isles. We'd like to explore Cornwall and the south west, travel over to Ireland and N. Ireland and then end up in Scotland. Ireland might be dependent on if we can raise enough money as it will most likely be the most expensive area.
We'll spend our days on the beaches (I wonder if we'll ever get sick of beaches??) and we'll have RSPB, English Heritage and National Trust memberships so we can have free days out and be able to learn about the country.
I think we'd spend most of the time trying to wild camp or using camp sites but we'd also like to try WWOOF'ing a little bit which some friends of ours did very successfully last year. Funnily enough it was always on my plan when I was wanting to work my way round the world when I first left home! This would hopefully enable us to slow down and see some areas from a different perspective, help us stretch our budget and also give us skills we might need for the future (I'd love to one day have a house in the country with land we could use to grow food). We're thinking to try and have one wwoof host for each area at least - again this will depend on our finances and how much we need our budget to stretch!
Another option we'd like to explore is house sitting, but not sure if this would work due to us being a family. Certainly worth thinking about though.
One thing I always fancied doing, which I am not sure will still work out, is to spend a week volunteering for the RSPB somewhere. This would mean that James would need to find a campsite nearby and be with the kids while I did it, but it would be a great opportunity for me since I am thinking I might like to work in the sector. I had thought to try and go to Scotland for the ospreys as they do week long placements, but the timings might not work out for this. We'll see.
All in all, it will be 6 months of budget travel, we'll explore the history and nature of our country and the country of J's ancestors (Ireland).
The plan is very loose at the moment as we need to save up for the whole 6 months beforehand. Everything will depend on the final amount we can raise. As we rent our house at the moment it means we have no capital to fall back on, no house to rent out or sell, but it does mean we're free to up and leave whenever we like and aren't relying on outside influences to get going. Silver lining and all that! We need to buy a campervan and we're also hoping to raise about £6000 to travel with. This equates to about £30 a day on the road. This may or may not be completely adequate for our plans (I am really not good at estimating costs!) but time will tell.
Ideally we'd like to spend 6 months in a campervan travelling around 3 distinct areas of the British Isles. We'd like to explore Cornwall and the south west, travel over to Ireland and N. Ireland and then end up in Scotland. Ireland might be dependent on if we can raise enough money as it will most likely be the most expensive area.
We'll spend our days on the beaches (I wonder if we'll ever get sick of beaches??) and we'll have RSPB, English Heritage and National Trust memberships so we can have free days out and be able to learn about the country.
I think we'd spend most of the time trying to wild camp or using camp sites but we'd also like to try WWOOF'ing a little bit which some friends of ours did very successfully last year. Funnily enough it was always on my plan when I was wanting to work my way round the world when I first left home! This would hopefully enable us to slow down and see some areas from a different perspective, help us stretch our budget and also give us skills we might need for the future (I'd love to one day have a house in the country with land we could use to grow food). We're thinking to try and have one wwoof host for each area at least - again this will depend on our finances and how much we need our budget to stretch!
Another option we'd like to explore is house sitting, but not sure if this would work due to us being a family. Certainly worth thinking about though.
One thing I always fancied doing, which I am not sure will still work out, is to spend a week volunteering for the RSPB somewhere. This would mean that James would need to find a campsite nearby and be with the kids while I did it, but it would be a great opportunity for me since I am thinking I might like to work in the sector. I had thought to try and go to Scotland for the ospreys as they do week long placements, but the timings might not work out for this. We'll see.
All in all, it will be 6 months of budget travel, we'll explore the history and nature of our country and the country of J's ancestors (Ireland).
Saturday, 11 February 2012
First post
I have blogged in varous places before, so blogging is not new to me, although blogging as a whole has changed loads since I started. I'm slightly nervous about starting this blog though as it is to be about a huge goal of mine, which is to travel with my family. I have wanted to do this since I first had my children, oh 11 years ago now, and I have planned loads of times to do it only for it to not happen. I'm nervous then, because actually time is running out to do it! My kids won't be kids for much longer, they're 11 and 10 at the moment and if we want to do this, we need to do it NOW.
I'm going to have some progress bars at the side which I'm going to update when we get to our goals. These amounts are also very much 'reaching for the sky' amounts and I'm not sure we'll get there, but maybe by writing it down the universe might help us. The first one is for our campervan fund and what we need to save for first. Then we need some actual money to do some travelling. The third one is for saving Tesco points as we can use them for ferries and as we'd very much like to go to Northern Ireland this would help make that happen.
Ideally all this will be saved for and we'll reach our goals by April 2013. That may be over ambitious, I'm not sure. All I know is we have to start somewhere and start now.
I'm going to have some progress bars at the side which I'm going to update when we get to our goals. These amounts are also very much 'reaching for the sky' amounts and I'm not sure we'll get there, but maybe by writing it down the universe might help us. The first one is for our campervan fund and what we need to save for first. Then we need some actual money to do some travelling. The third one is for saving Tesco points as we can use them for ferries and as we'd very much like to go to Northern Ireland this would help make that happen.
Ideally all this will be saved for and we'll reach our goals by April 2013. That may be over ambitious, I'm not sure. All I know is we have to start somewhere and start now.
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