About us

Intro

We are Andrea and Mark, a couple of fifty-somethings from the UK who love to travel.

We both appreciate how short life is and we try to enjoy every day.  Our bucket list of places to go gets longer all the time.  At our age, we know we won’t get to see them all, but we’ll give it our best shot and we’ll have great fun along the way!

This website is mine.  All of the content is written by me.  Without Mark, though, as my husband and travel partner, I would have much less to write about.  That’s why this is an ‘About Us’ page and why you’ll be reading about us both – regardless of whether Mark realises it!  (He never reads my posts – he says he doesn’t need to because he was there :-).)

Then

Mark and I met in Crete in the 1990s.  In the early days of our relationship, we followed the conventional path.  We both had good jobs and nice cars.  We bought a house together in a beautiful Kent village, drawn there by its lovely pub which served fabulous home-cooked food!  We enjoyed West End theatre trips, visits to National Trust properties, short breaks in the UK and Europe, and our annual long holiday to south-east Asia or Africa.

Life was pretty good!

However, our daily commute (each of us spending hours sitting in traffic jams going in the opposite direction around the M25!), and family illnesses, made us question what we were actually doing.

We had no ties.  We both had a yearning to do something different.

So, almost twenty years ago, we sold our house and belongings, gave up our jobs, bought a caravan and a 4 x 4, and travelled to France in search of a new adventure.  After a fun-filled few months house hunting (lots of weird and wonderful stories for another time!), we bought a run-down 17th-century water mill in the Auvergne and set about restoring it.

For the next two years, we worked on our house and land 24/7; fashioning gardens out of the wild landscape, clearing streams, replacing roofs, installing fosse septiques, and re-building and renovating the tumbledown buildings.  The result was a chambres d’hôtes with three letting ensuite rooms and a working water wheel, one of only three examples of its type in the whole of France.

We were set fair.

Then, disaster struck in the guise of our neighbours suing us for a right of way through our newly-restored kitchen and dining room!  They assured us that their argument wasn’t with us, but with our only other neighbours in the hamlet, the people who had sold us the property.  The two families had been feuding for over 200 years!

Perhaps I’ll put some more flesh on the bones of this story at a later date, but, for now, that’s all you need to know! 🙂

Realising that we could be trapped in the French legal system for years (indeed, the case is still ongoing today!) and having no means to make a living where we were, we left.

I had been a teacher in the UK, so I took my CELTA to enable me to apply for jobs teaching English as a foreign language.  Within a couple of months, we had moved to Istanbul.

We have never looked back.

Had things not gone pear-shaped in France, we might still be there.  As it is, we have lived in several countries since and have travelled to many more.  We wouldn’t change a thing!!

 

 

 

 

 

Now

A few years ago, I gave up the classroom.  We now fund our travels through seasonal work in the south of France as couriers for a British holiday company (blog post about this to follow!).  We spend our winters travelling in all those countries that are on our bucket list.

We don’t intend to stop anytime soon.  As long as our health allows us to, we will carry on.

With no savings behind us (it’s all tied up in our property in France) and little in the way of pension provision in front of us, we are always looking for new ways to fund, and/or extend, our travels.

One such way is through this website.

I have blogged on and off for a number of years.  My posts have mainly been records of the places we’ve been.  I’ve been writing for us (as a reminder of our adventures when we’re in our dotage!) and I used to write for my Auntie Janet.  She read every word I ever wrote.  Since she died, I’ve floundered a little with my writing.  Who is my audience?  Why am I doing this?

Well, number one reason – I enjoy it!  I would write even if nobody read it!

But, if I can find ways to help with the funding of our travels through this website, then why not?

I have recently taken a blogging course.  This has opened my eyes to the possibilities of affiliate marketing, selling my own products, and reaching out to fellow travellers through my work.

My aim now is to continue to write about our travels, but also to write posts about how we travel and, more importantly, how we fund it.  I’d like to inspire people, both armchair travellers and crazy people like us who actually go out there and do it.

Our message must be that long-term travel is not only possible, but that it’s a great lifestyle choice, no matter what your age or how much money you don’t have!

We look forward to having you along for the ride.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you have comments to make, questions to ask, or stories to share, please contact us.