The question gets asked regularly. “how/when/why did you decide on this trip” “Why 18 months?” “Are you retiring?” “Will you go back to work?” “How do you pay for this?”

etc, etc.

Good questions, no real rational answers, except that we could, we wanted to, and covid gave the excuse to extend the trip from 12 to 18 months.

Planning this trip has been a long-time fermenting, countless French lessons, and a large white board with things to add & subtract.

Insurances to cover and cancel, visa’s to be organised, subscriptions to be halted/cancelled, and ridiculously too many streaming services to be terminated…since when did these take over our lives?

Camera gear to be upgraded, both bought and sold, plus a shiny new MacBook Air2.

Money to be saved, then spent on flights, accommodation, car hires, etc.

A house to pack up and store for 18 months, excess thrown out, donated or gifted.

Farewells to be made, God so many people to be missed!

Saying goodbye to family and friends, dear friends, that we won’t see till late NEXT year.

It’s hard to describe the mixed emotions, tingled with the excitement, of leaving.

A few weeks ago, we hear someone saying that the Paris Olympics was 580 days away… we’ll still be away then. Sounds a lot longer than 18 months.

When we were flying over, I watched a movie, Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, a standard British feel-good comedy movie, set in 1957 about a woman who goes to Paris to buy a Dior dress, because she was following a dream.

The movie was predictable, in a nice way, sort of Mary Poppins(ish)…but answered the questions as to why we are doing this outrageous trip.

We’re following our dream, living for the now, determining our future path instead of waiting for it to decide for us.

Doing what we can, when we can, instead of waiting for obstacles to find a way to interfere.

So folks, we’re here, the journey commences! I’m attempting to run a separate blog for this journey, but at the moment having all sorts of issues getting it up and running, so until then we’ll stick to the old old.