Last summer the plan was to live on the road (the #vanlife trendy hashtag) 3 months, in France first and assess how feasible it was to work remotely for Clément in our Whale for a long period of time. Unfortunately, similar to the previous year our plans did not really unfold as planned. But fortunately we were in France to be close from Family who needed us.
In total we were on the road for 5 weeks (instead of the 11 initially planned). We started in June with 3 brilliant weeks in south of France, back in my Favourite place on earth “Cabasson”, and hiked during the week ends in Provence, Porquerolles, Verdon during the heat wave (yes we are slightly insane).
In July we spent a week in Dordogne and after weeks with family members and an unfortunate decision to buy Beluga, we went for well deserve week holiday end of August in Brittany for 2 days and then the Cevennes (yes we drove across France to chase the sun, as said previously we are a tiny bit insane). We highly recommend this region for everyone who love nature and crystal waters.
It was our last week in our beloved Whale that we sold few days after being back. We couldn’t find better family for her, they are passionate and are taking care of it like she is a princess.
Why did we sell it ? Because during our weeks one the road we realised that if we wanted to continue to be able to work remotely, we needed a van where we could cook and work even when it is pouring rain, and which doesn’t cost an arm in petrol (V8 ??♀️). We knew all of that before, but needed this experience to confirm our intuition.
We were right to check because sometimes intuitions happen do be wrong: we thought that we wanted to push the experience to the extreme and go to Asia with a car, that is why we bought Beluga, to make our dream come true. The problem ? as soon as we bought it we realised that we were not ready to jump. We had the perfect car for this huge adventure and couldn’t feel any joy, just the sensation that we did a big mistake. After few days wondering why we had this feeling we come to the conclusion that driving in a house on wheels through developing countries was not something we could assume – it is already difficult with a backpack so we should have been thinking about it earlier, but well, little stars were blinding us. We had to give ourselves all the means to do it to realise that #vanlife yes, but not without a home to come back to, and only in Europe or America (and we will continue to visit incredible Asia – if we can – by Bike or Backpack 🙂 ).
It was the right move to leave this dream on the side because we would have been on the road far away otherwise and it would have been a tricky situation. We are glad and very grateful to be safe in our little flat on the quiet Grassmarket during this pandemic (more to come on that later this week).
South of France, 2019
Gorges du Verdon, Dordogne, Provence, Cévennes, Var
Pictures by Clément Mouchet & Me
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