Our trip in numbers...

Playing chess in Salzburg, Austria; Antique doorbells in Salzburg, Austria; Zytglogge Clock Tower in Bern, Switzerland

• -2 degrees coldest daytime temperature endured
• 1 road kill (sorry bird!)
• 1 parking fine
• 2 cross country train trips
• 3 cross country bus trips
• 3 ferry trips
• 5 tooth brushes lost on caravan park bathroom floors
• 5 flights flown (trying saying that 5 times fast!)
• 6 cold showers
• 8 pairs of holey socks
• 8 patisseries frequented in France
• 9 hotels/motels/B&Bs visited
• 15 countries toured
• 20 hostels visited
• 20 weeks without Mondays
• 24 movies watched on the laptop
• 28 degrees hottest daytime temperature enjoyed
• 29 caravan parks stayed in
• 36 UNESCO World Heritage sights marveled at
• 110 Blog posts written
• 135 days traveled
• 4,959 blog hits to date
• 873.66 liters of diesel consumed (excluding Ireland and Scotland)
• 11,565 photos taken
• 15,592.2 kilometers driven
• 18,676 words of blog posting (excluding this post!)

A long ride back to London

Because we’re unemployed cheapskates with plenty of time to kill we broke our own promise never to catch a long distance bus ever again. While Sam and Shaun were happily flying across the channel, we got up early and embarked upon an epic 11 hour Amsterdam to Brussels to Calais to London bus ride.

We couldn’t have planned it any better. We got to the bus early to secure good seats, had plenty of snacks, and planned two movies to fit perfectly within the laptop’s battery life.

Having started the journey at 10:30am, the first seven hours flew by. It was at this point that we started to think that perhaps long distance bus rides weren’t so bad.

Perhaps that was our mistake. 

It was at this point that the bus stopped.

We approached Calais to go through customs and cross the channel and that was where we sat, motionless in the most extreme traffic jam you can possibly imagine. It turns out that every Englishman and his dog who had been holidaying in Europe over New Years simultaneously decided to head back home through the Calais tunnel, creating the most horrendous bottle neck.

Without a word of exaggeration we drove 3kms in 3.5 hours.

That was where everything went down hill. We’d eaten all our snacks, the laptop battery ran out, and worst of all, the toilet on the bus was completely blocked.

By the time we arrived back in London, caught the last Tube home and got into bed it was 2am.

Never again will we catch a long distance bus ride. 

New Years in Amsterdam

The relaxation of our week with Oma paid off as we hit Amsterdam with renewed energy for New Years. We joined Sam and Shaun and stayed in a classic four storey canal house right in the heart of the city (pictured). We’re not 100% sure how old our house was, but the one next door was dated as 1648.

It was great to spend some more time in Amsterdam. We only popped in for a few hours back in September and so didn’t really get a chance to soak it all in. While we weren’t totally sold last time, it was great to have three days to explore the good parts of the city - in particular, it was wonderful to be able to visit the Corrie Ten Boom Museum and the Anne Frank House.   We were still fairly overwhelmed and challenged by the seedy underside of Amsterdam, but at least that wasn’t our only impression.

New Years Eve itself was fairly crazy. There was only a small official firework display, because every Tom, Dick and irresponsible Harry was able to buy infinite amounts of fireworks and firecrackers and let them off to their hearts content. Walking through the streets of Amsterdam on New Years Eve was something like walking through a war zone during an air raid. There was a constant stream of deafening firecrackers being thrown across the streets, often into crowds of people. The masses were left extremely jittery and shell shocked.

All in all, it was a great New Years. As an aside, Amsterdam 'the day after' is quite a sight with rubbish and soggy firecracker debris lining the streets.  

Relaxing in Holland

We know that we have already given you an insight into our Christmas Day, but we thought we would share a little bit more of our trip to Holland.

We spent a wonderful six days of quality time with Monique’s Oma who lives in Leiden, an old university town near The Hague. Oma had borrowed bicycles from a grandpa in her apartment block so we were able get around and explore the area. The three of us set off that afternoon to the supermarket to get supplies for Christmas day, with Oma on her new pimped up scooter. We did our best to keep up!

Aside from that, we...

• Enjoyed a magnificent boxing day meal with Oma’s sister Truus and her partner Bernard
• Explored Leiden and cycled around Monique’s old stomping ground, Voorschoten.
• Took the opportunity to put our newfound Tuscan cooking skills to the test, as a Christmas present to Oma.

It was a very quiet and relaxing few days which was just what we needed.

A tough twelve days in London

We caught the bus from Lille back to London. Due to our aforementioned visa issues, we would now be spending 12 days in London before flying to Holland on Christmas Eve.

It was an interesting couple of weeks.

Firstly, it was a pretty tough come down for us. Normally when finishing up with a holiday there is an element of excitement as you get to go home, catch up with friends and family, relive all your favourite stories and begin settling back into normal life. Not so for us on this occasion. It was a very hollow feeling arriving at our hostel with no jobs, nowhere to call home, no family and very few friends. The weather in London was particularly cold and miserable and Monique rapidly developed a nasty cold with a particularly nasty cough – not great when sleeping in a fifteen-bed dorm room.

Secondly, we spent our days sitting in the hostel’s pub looking for jobs (who wants to do that after travelling for four months?!?) and somewhere to live. We got a fascinating insight into the dirty and corrupt state of London’s rental property market. We inspected two properties that were bordering on being uninhabitable before heading to a third place. It was a three bedroom and one bathroom flat with no common area, that was reasonably clean and freshly painted. Perhaps blinded by the relative cleanliness we promptly signed a three-month lease, handed over a wad of cash, and arranged to move in four days later. We didn’t really give too much thought to the fact that it was in a ghetto and we didn’t have the faintest idea who we were moving in with. When the time came to move in we arrived at the front door with great trepidation. Our worst fears of moving in with drug-dealing, gothic Satan-worshipers were allayed when a delightful Swedish girl opened the door. Our new housemates were Tanya and Sofia – two Swedish girls in London for work and study and had moved in the day before. We were very relieved.

Thirdly, the time finally arrived when Daniel had to make himself look vaguely employable again. This meant a haircut and a shave. It was a big moment  - the first time his hair had ever been cut by anyone other than his Dad – a barber by trade for over 50 years. It was a fairly traumatic experience. The guy we went to was not a pinch on Arthur Misson. Aside from making Daniel’s head bleed from brutally hacking at his scalp with a comb, the straw that broke the camel’s back was the manky, bloodied band-aid that slipped off the barber’s finger and landed on top of Daniel’s head. It sat perched on Daniel’s head for a solid five minutes before the barber noticed and discreetly tried to remove it.

After twelve days in London, we were well in need of a holiday.  

There and back again

After driving 1300kms in 3 days we finally arrived back in Lille. Because there were no campsites open we spent our last night at a Formula 1 hotel. It was a bizarre feeling being back in Lille after doing a three month loop around Europe. 

We headed into Lille and strolled through their Christmas market enjoying some Glühwein and crepes. It was a nice, relaxed and festive way to finish up our holiday.

We got up the next morning and spent a couple of hours cleaning the van and getting it ready to hand back. We surprised ourselves at the amount of packing up and cleaning was required!

It was a very sad moment when it finally came to handing the keys back. The van had become our home. While it was never too much fun going outside to cook or walking to the toilets each morning, we had grown to love it and the freedom that it gave us. We will take those memories with us for the rest of our lives.

The long drive back to Lille

*Sorry it's been a while since we've posted...we've been a bit out of routine :)
These posts date back to mid December...but we'll quickly be back up to date.


As all good things must come to an end we started the long drive from Venice back to Lille to hand the van back. Due to not doing enough research about Schengen visas we had to cut the campervanning part of our adventure a few days short to avoid issues heading to Holland for Christmas and New Years (it’s a long story…we won’t bore you with it here!).

From Venice, we had the choice of driving to the east of Switzerland and up through Germany, or west of Switzerland and through France. The Germany option had the upside of no tolls on the autobahn, but the risk of snow and getting caught without winter tires (a requirement by law). We decided to take the safer, but more expensive option of going through France.

Our last night in the van was spent in a French town called Samoëns on the edge of the Alps...in the snow. We woke up in the morning and made the most of being back in France by heading straight to a patisserie. It was a nice way to finish up – although cold!