Europe in a motorhome, oh! What have I done? I've bought a beat up van!
It's a Mercedes, it's literally two tons of wishes made into metal. I've been wishing and planning and researching Europe by motorhome for months, but now I've spent £2300 of my husband's hard earned money (while he stayed home with the kids) I'm thinking I've had some sort of mid life crisis and run mad!
The engine has purred all the way from the north of back-of-beyond to Sussex so at least it runs, the millage is only 38,000, it's not damp and it's, got only superficial rust on the van it's self, but the good news ends there. Inside it looks like a refugee camp on laundry day. I'm pretty sure there is a stove back there but it's too rusted to be sure, the water tank is empty and the battery for internal stuff is flat, so I had to buy it without testing anything (that it's worth the money even if nothing works is not in doubt, there was a cat fight for this 29 year old treasure-horror!
Perhaps I should explain, my husband and I plan to take our two year old son and our nine year old daughter and drive down through France and Spain to southern Portugal this winter. We currently rent a big house (shared) in Sussex we can't afford, we owe taxes, credit cards and family, because of not keeping up, and bad judgment, we want out of debt, we also want to see life. We could move into a smaller place, it would have to be a room to be cheaper than our house, we could move out of, richer-than-you-are-or-more-in-debt, middle class Sussex, or I could put my daughter in school (we homeschool) my son in a full time nursery and work full time too.
Non of that sounds fun, so we are getting rid of everything and heading for blue ocean, with a plan to work on the way, but right now we are still paying rent, I have a car (for sale as of now) and now a truck load of 1980’s interior decorating, oh, I mean a motorhome!
I'm not even driving it! My mum is! It's HUGE, it's got to be a full time home to a family of four, so it's huge, and my husband can't drive so it's all me!!! I've never driven a big vehicle (a few days in a big long car in Australia) that they call a Ute (Utility vehicle, six meters). I have also never driven on the other side of the road, I'm having kittens! Not actually in the van, I'm not having pets to deal with as well, nor do I want to mess up the couch, oh wait, that's been done.
We got flashed! I'm in some sort of vintage, Mercedes, van-home club! A matching one flashed us coming the other way, clearly more than one has lasted 29 years!
So why have I done this, bought a van I'm too chicken to drive? Well wishes and dreams have to be made to come true, there is never going to be a day when we have digitised the last CD from our collection, paid the last debt and sorted every toy, and now we are ready, we would be older than the cast iron heater or possibly black box, or alien DNA canister in the back there! You have to go out and get your wishes, you have to bring them down the motorway and go, here, it's done! It's real! Two tons of metal says that what was conceived as a light and joyful thought, is now really here, and really happening, line up world, I mean this, or failing that get your mum to do it for you!
There is more to this plan than escaping the high cost of living an hour from London, this is a van to take our children to meet the world in. Start them on a path through other places, cultures and lifestyles, if they grow up and do what we everyone else does, then that will be because it's an informed choice, not something they slid into without noticing. In the meantime they will learn, languages, art, navigation, finance, science and much more by, doing and seeing, not listening and writing down to forget later (when the teacher shuts up and they have time for forgetting)!
So we have to, sell the car, clear out and give back our house, build the Skype tutoring business, and continue to build my textile design business, and get the van traveling fit simultaneously, wish us luck, or come sand some rust for me!
I'm going to keep blogging about this adventure, assume that it’s an adventure for now.
Love, Kirsteen
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