And so our adventure begins!

Friday 19th July- Farewell home and farewell family and friends! This is the day we left our home in Manchester and the last day of nursery for our little girl before we set off to begin our exciting adventure, saying our goodbyes on route down south towards the white cliffs of Dover.

We had a lot to learn as we had no experience of travelling in a motorhome prior to our journey- some may say that this was unwise of us but we believed we would be able to cope well and decided to throw ourselves in the deep end and learn the ropes as we went along. My husbands parents passed on their own experience when we stopped over anyway so we sort of knew the basics and just had to put them into practice.

That practice came at our first campsite in Derby where my husband nearly threw up emptying our toilet cassette into what was literally a toilet in the ground! A job that perhaps I should have done seeing as my sense of smell is usually lacking. On the flip side it was heartwarming to watch our little girl run around on the field kicking her ball with delight and skipping merrily along the path to find puddles to splash in. This was what we wanted- for our children to feel free and happy to explore and we were witnessing it on our first stop! This in itself made our life richer and there was more to come.

There were a few things we needed to sort on the van as well; the reversing cameras appeared to have fogged, the fridge didn’t seem to be working on gas and a few other little bits we wanted to have checked over but all was well once we had taken it back in to get looked at. Thank goodness. And so our journey continues on…

We stopped in a lovely campsite in Newbury with a pleasant owner and immaculate facilities where the children roamed free on the freshly cut field. It was a shame though as we only stopped for the night having got there late anyway and was off again in the morning as we had a schedule to keep to so onwards we went.

Our next campsite looked like we had just rolled onto some sort of gypsy site- there were empty, rusty looking caravans all over the overgrown fields with hardly anyone in site. It looked abandoned, until someone came out and asked us if we were on holiday and directed us onto the correct field. There was one toilet for every camper to share and a long line for it too and no showers. The owner was a bit weird and hard to read; the “I’m jokey but I’m being serious” type who made conversations feel awkward because no one knew how to take him. Well what a difference a campsite makes! However, we weren’t making too much use of the site anyway due to our farewells but when we were there we did make the most of the overgrown fields by trying to find grasshoppers that were singing their songs all around us, much to our daughters delight, what with all the butterflies too! We were glad to see the back of it though.

Our last and final stop before the crossover was between Folkestone and Dover where we met a lovely German family. Our little girl and their 3 year old daughter happily played together despite their language differences which again was heartwarming to see as it just goes to show that it doesn’t matter where you come from- we are all the same despite our differences and kids just want the same thing; to play. It also sparks conversation as you end up chatting away to the parents too and you never know that conversation could spark something new; a friendship, an invite to dinner/their home or swapping of contact details as it did in our case seeing as our little ones were playing so nicely together.

That night we were tired from trying to get our little boy to sleep who seemed to be having a restless night and then I was all in a panic when our combi fire alarm and carbon monoxide detector decided to go off luckily just waking myself and my husband, who switched it to silent whilst we tried to figure out what was wrong. It appeared to be the fire alarm half which was sounding but there was no smoke to be seen and it was chucking it down with rain outside with the wind howling but again the alarm sounded and I couldn’t settle. I had the instructions out, my husband was researching on his phone but still we came up clueless so we decided to go back to bed and hope that it was just a one off. However, it didn’t bode well with me, who is terrible for believing in life giving you signs and this sign didn’t bode well but we weren’t about to let it stop us in our tracks.