Wednesday 3 August 2016

Grounded

Although this is a travelogue, or supposed to be, which we started so our family and friends could follow our antics wandering around Europe, sometimes we get grounded so if you were wondering where we are, here's a bit of a discourse on being grounded. Obviously our family know we are home but the folk from Russia who have previously been entertained might be wondering why our wheels have stopped turning. Shout out too for the folk in Serbia & Macedonia (FYROM). (See stats below.)
 
Anyway, we've been home a few weeks now and after deciding to let our house out we've been busy "de-cluttering". So far this has involved giving various items of furniture/pots/pans/books/tools/percussion instruments/various bric-a-brac to friends and family. Selling some stuff no one wanted on Gumtree, where everyone who bought anything knocked me down on my price apart from a massive rugby player from New Zealand built like a small tank who bought the massage table for full asking price after we assured him it would not collapse under his weight. Loads of stuff went to those charity shops who weren't freaked out by the volume of stuff we would arrive with. Several trips to the waste dump and a skip  took care of the rest.
 
Apart from the stuff we wanted to keep. Ah, the stuff we want to keep. That's a whole other story. We have a cellar room in our house where we can store stuff safely so for the last fortnight we've been packing things away and loading up the cellar in between trips to buy more plastic boxes, bubble wrap,shrink wrap etc.. Gradually the things we've lived with for years have gone somewhere or another and the rooms have emptied, the furniture, the pictures, photos, ornaments, books and all the other objects we've lived with for years have gone. Empty cupboards, empty shelves, walls bare. 
 
It's all a bit sad but we console ourselves with the fact that in another month or so we'll be on the road again and whilst it's been a bit depressing getting rid of stuff it's also been a cathartic exercise. When we do get too old or infirm for this travelling lark we can go for the minimalist look when we settle down again! All the things we are missing now we never really think about when we are travelling and there are plenty of books to read on kindle devices and plenty of music to listen to on Apple Music, Soma FM and I've loaded up the MP3 player with old favourites. 
 
The house is being redecorated and goes on the market to rent today and will be available to tenants from 1st September. Phil's sister has kindly "allocated" a room for us when we come back to the UK so we won't have to live in a supermarket car park so now I'm slowly working my way through the list of people and organisations I need to advise of a change of address. 
 
 
We're taking a break in a week or so and visiting family in the north east of England and friends in Scotland and when we get back we can plan our journey down through France, Spain and Portugal before meeting up with old friends near Albufeira. Medium term we're looking to spend the winter in Spain again, come back to the UK in springtime and then back to France to try and follow the 2017 Tour de France, plenty of adventures to come, hopefully.
 

Pageviews by Countries 

EntryPageviews

Russia

 

336

United Kingdom

 

305

United States

 

184

France

 

57

Germany

 

26

Serbia

 

19

Macedonia (FYROM)

 

18

Greece

 

8

Romania

 

8

Australia

 

7
 
 
Pat

3 comments:

  1. Sounds like you have a great plan! We'll follow your winter tour to Spain as we plan to do the same in 2018 once retired. Good luck with finding a great tenant for your house and enjoy the planning - no doubt, like us, the reality of the journey will be much different to the plan!

    Paul

    ReplyDelete
  2. We went through the same process guys, not easy working out what to keep but, as usual, we miss nothing of what's gone.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for that Jason. Tonight is the last night in our home for the last thirty plus years and whilst we don't miss "stuff" when we're on the road it has been hard to sell and give away things that had memories for us and our children. Tomorrow my son is coming down from Newcastle to take all my vinyl ( and my turntable!) back to his home and I hope his family have as much pleasure from it as I have. But it's still hard. Folk say it's cathartic when you de-clutter but I'm not so sure, personally. But on a brighter note we'll be back on the road soon and living in the moment and not in the past. Thanks for following the blog,
    Pat

    ReplyDelete