Goodbye to the teens, hello the twenties.

Whoosh! Suddenly a new decade looms; where did the last one go? For us it brought more changes than the previous two added together. All three of our kids finished university and moved into full-time work, not so easy in a period of recession, economic stagnation and growing precarity. The same circumstances had the opposite effect on Gill and me, catapulting us from well paid work into early onset retirement. At the same time with the passing of our parents' generation we became the older ones, though neither of us feel or act, like 'old people'. 

We bought our first Motorhome in 2013 but did not really get to use it fully until after Gill retired and I finished my MA in the autumn of 2014.  What had been purchased as a retirement 'past-time' became a way of life. Similarly, I had modest ambitions for the blog when I started it, but it too  burgeoned into something more extensive and time consuming than I ever intended.

If you tot up the days, then over the past five years we have spent two of them living in the van. We don't really regard travelling as being on holiday anymore; we have one house made of bricks and mortar and another with wheels and a motor. It is impossible to say what the next ten years will bring, but we have no intention of staying still so long as we remain fit and healthy.

So, another year added to the running total:

The highlight of 2019's travels has to be our trip to Scandinavia in early summer. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of it was how much we loved Denmark and also the morsel of Finland we sampled on our quick visit to the Arland Is.

So, thinking of summer days on this bright winter's morning - a favourite moment's from last year:

https://gillandpete.blogspot.com/2019/06/towards-field-in-finland.html

As for the coming year, our wandering life begins almost straightaway, in three days time we catch the ferry to Santander - my first wish for the new year is for gentle breezes and a calm sea in the Bay of Biscay.

Happy Travels!