I finally quit my job after months of tooing and throwing! A few months of work, then freedom! - Needless to say, those few months' notice were spent neck deep in planning to go spreadsheets!
We'd had a dream of taking Larry the campervan across Europe, and over the year, I had been getting him ready to go by investing in a Solar panel setup and getting his rust sorted before it became too much of a problem. This involved a partial respray as well to make him look the part.
Before welding and painting - He wasn't in a terrible state, just some surface rust and some on his sills. Transit's are notoriously rusty! I wanted to sort out before putting the Solar on, in case I needed a new van and Larry wasn't worth the investment. Almost doesn't bare thinking about!
After I know he still has some marks here and there, but I didn't want him perfect. Plus, I can learn how to fix some of the smaller rust patches myself at home. He could do with a buff to clean up his original paint, which is weathered now.
The idea is to bimble our way around, figuring it out on the way, so when it came to picking a route, we decided to loosely go with the UK to Macedonia. This is because Lino my Dog is originally from, it covered a large part of Europe, and it meant even if we didn't make it, we still covered nearly all the places we wanted to.
With Larry fully cleaned and loaded in prep, there was only one thing left to do...
We set off from North Wales and made our way down to Folkestone for the Le Shuttle Crossing, which was an experience in itself. Fascinating how it works and how quiet it was! Much quieter than the London Underground took me by surprise.
It was lovely being able to ride with Lino in the back for the journey and help keep him company with all the strange new things going on.
Our first stop after arriving in France was Belgium, where we hope to spend some time exploring Brugges and the countryside before heading further West.
I will say I did spend an extraordinary amount of time worrying about driving on the opposite side, and honestly, it has been fine so far.
We arrived in the evening, so the first proper day in Belgium will be tomorrow.