Rolling around in a box for a year.

This is the very first post of a trip that started 12 days ago and is proposed to last 350 days more! However, the concept of this trip started years ago with old-itchy-feet-Elina realising that the day-to-day of “normal” life was going to be unendurable for the projected school years of our two kids, which would end when I am 61 years old. A terrifying thought. So here we are in our vintage caravan, it’s fibre-glass casing as fragile as an eggshell, in the south of Italy, with ferry tickets to Croatia tomorrow.

We are often asked, “why?” and the answers vary from day to day, and some days we ask the same question. Like yesterday, when we rolled into a rubbish-strewn city and then followed Google down progressively narrow tracks until we found ourselves on a track that was narrower than our caravan. Seconds later, a train of angry Italian beach-goers in cars arrived on our heels. Needless to say, a solution was found, a new friendship was forged with a helpful fellow on a bike and my caravan driving skills were honed a notch further….

A brief summary of the trip so far:

After a few months of preparation, the first scary manoeuvre was performed successfully: getting the caravan out of our driveway and out of our town of Güéjar Sierra. The plan was to get the ferry from Barcelona 3 days later. 5 days later we arrived in Barcelona after staying a couple of days in a campsite/mountainbike park which the kids loved. We took the ferry to Rome and have spent the last few days chomping pizzas all the way to Bari where we are today. We have enjoyed the lovely blue of the Adriatic, some amazing old forests and today we will stuff ourselves with the last opportunity to gorge on Italian gelato and pizza. And tomorrow the boat to Croatia!!!

We make sure to eat nothing but pizza while in Italy

taking a trip on the new kayak my guejar friends gave me for my 50th birthday

We make sure to only eat pizza while in Italy!

Zev absorbing some old forest rays!