Travel the world with a couple of middle aged frugal farts.

Why do we travel?  We have always loved holidays abroad and usually rented a car and just roamed around.  After selling our business we decided we had enough money to travel for 2 years before returning to buy another business.  I was 40 and Steve 42 so we were too young to retire properly – but it seems not ……

In January 1997 we set out on what was to be up to 2 years travelling in a motorhome.  We’d sold our Post Office and General Store and bought a house to return to later and this we rented out.  Within weeks we were addicted and realised we were living off little more than our rental income so decided to continue as long as we could.

The next 15 years took us all around the world including Australia and Antarctica (not in a motorhome).  We exchanged motorhomes,  bought and sold motorhomes in many continents, did some back packing, crewed on a yacht and also dipped into savings to do numerous cruises.

After the first few years of living within our income we became less money conscious and just set out to do things as cheaply as possible but if there was a price to pay for an attraction or we wanted to cruise we dipped into our savings even though they would never be replaced.   Our travelling became less of seeing the tourist things and more of absorbing and learning about the culture and lifestyles in each country.

So glad we did it that way as in December 2011 Steve was diagnosed with T-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia bringing our travels to an abrupt halt in Spain.  He was admitted to Alicante hospital and we sold the motorhome enabling us to fly back to England in March when he was well enough.  Since then we have rented a bungalow in Keighley whilst Steve has more treatment.   There were problems with chemo so he is now waiting for his bone marrow transplant (5th October) and once we have got through that it will be 1 year in England and then we should be able to get back to proper travelling.

This all backs up what we have constantly told others, if you have a dream to travel do it as soon as you can however you can, no one knows exactly what the future holds and we would not swap our last 15 years for anything and know we have done more than most people do in a lifetime.