Back to Life; Back to Reality!

Yes, we are home!

And yes, this post is long overdue!


We’ve been back in the UK for nearly 8 weeks now, so what have we been up to?

Well, we’ve moved into a flat in Leeds, bought a little car/rust bucket for £500, caught up with most of our family and friends, David is teaching again, Alex is looking for work, and the 3 of us are generally settling back into life in the UK.

As we write this however, we’re actually looking out to sea from the restaurant on the ferry Mont St Michel! We’re half way home having visited Alex’s family in Normandy for a couple of days.

It’s amazing how quickly 20 months on the road can feel like you’ve only been away for 2 weeks!!


We’ve had the time of our lives over the last two years. We’ve seen some amazing places and have no regrets whatsoever about selling up and hitting the road for a couple of years. We’d highly recommend it to anyone.

And to think it all started about 3 years ago when Alex read a book called ‘How to Live Off-Grid and Unplug from the Ratrace’. Alex never reads books!!!

A huge thank you to everyone who helped us with our adventures over the past couple of years, particularly our parents who couldn’t have been more supportive, looked after the cat, and dealt with all our post for us!

The map below shows exactly where our travels have taken us over the past couple of years. The yellow lines show 2009, red shows 2010, and pink shows 2011.


Quite a bit has happened since we left Sweden to visit Copenhagen. We had a couple of weeks exploring Denmark, a few days in Berlin, and a week in Prague and the Czech Republic – all amazing experiences that will stay with us for life.

We will fill in the gaps in the blog over the coming months and we’ll add new posts from time to time when we do something worth writing about.

We hope you’ve enjoyed following our travels.

Give us a couple of years and perhaps we’ll do it all again!!

Belgian Beaches and Dutch Dykes!

So we’re on the move again!


We had three weeks in Blighty catching up with friends and family, and an excellent weekend in London on the way out which included a fascinating tour of the Palace of Westminster (seriously - everyone should go on this tour!!)


We’ve been slowly making our way north for a couple of days, through Belgium and the Netherlands, and are now approaching Amsterdam.


Highlights so far have been cycling around Zeeland, the Thursday market at the lovely town of Middelburg where David tried a pickled fish and raw onion sandwich - nice!...




...and the Delta Project - a series of impressive sea defences on the Dutch coast.



This map shows our intended route for this trip, which will hopefully be around 5 months long.


We’ll be going at quite a pace over the next 6 weeks as we want to reach the Arctic Circle by the summer solstice on 21st June. On this date we’ll not only experience the midnight sun, but the sun won’t actually dip below the horizon. Should be fun and just a bit confusing!

First things first - we’ve a long weekend in Amsterdam and a lot of washing to do!




View Summer 2011 in a larger map

What a week

View February 16th - 21st in a larger map

We stopped on the waterfront at Portishead on Tuesday night. From there it was on to Taunton to see Alex’s great Aunt, and then on to Glastonbury for the night. On Thursday we walked up Glastonbury Tor in the pouring rain and then had a great afternoon with members of the Wilsthire Whites in Trowbridge. We spent that night in a pub near Wooten Bassett with cousin Susannah, and then slept in the car park! It’s all glamour and sophistication on this trip you know!

On Friday we moved from South West to South East and our great capital. Lee Valley was our base on Friday and after a fabulous Greek breakfast with Anastasia, we moved on to Crystal Palace in South London. We were camped right under the TV mast at Crystal Palace so no need for a TV aerial – you just have to shut your eyes and TV appears on the backs of your eyelids! We had a great night out in Crystal Palace on Saturday night with some of the London crowd, and then enjoyed Sunday dinner with more of our London friends before moving on to Ashford in Kent, ready to cross the channel later this morning.

Thanks to everyone we’ve seen this week for feeding us and giving us a great send off; Phil and Kingsley, Babs, Roger and Mary, Richard, Rebecca, Emily and bump, Susannah and all at the Peterborough Arms, Juliet, Anastasia – the provider of the fabulous Greek breakfast, Lucy, Dave and Poppy, Helen, Lou, Becks, Jackie, Sharon and Ranj.

Special thanks to Sharon and Ranj for finding a venue for Sunday lunch which resulted in two celebrity spots in 20 minutes; Tim Lovejoy from Something for the Weekend, and Sam or Mark from kids tv (a poor man’s Ant and Dec!) I’m sure we made their day, pointing and staring as we did!

We’ve sorted out the comments on the blog now, so you should be able to leave comments and questions with a little less hassle!
Crossing the channel today then heading for Normandy via Amiens and Rouen...

And they’re off...

View February 14th - 16th in a larger map

So Sunday was an emotional day as we firstly said our goodbyes to the Whites and then headed to Huddersfield to have Sunday lunch with the Ellis gang.


After leaving them we travelled about 10 miles up the road to the rather windswept car park at Holme Moss, high in the hills, for our first night. After a rather windy night, we awoke to frozen bikes and snow!


We travelled to Coventry and booked onto a site on Monday. Strangely, the campsite is also home to The Midlands International Toilet Company! Should you need to hire a toilet - wherever you are in the world - be sure to give them a call!


Unfortunately we awoke to a flat tyre on Tuesday. Try as I might, I just couldn’t fix it with my Beckfoot Leatherman! But the AA were quickly on the case!


Next stop Portishead.