Skip to main content

Why take a gap year at this stage of life?

Gap years are for those under 25 right? Traditionally yes, but gap years were not really a thing when I was that age and trying really hard not to sound like my grandparents, we did not have the money and things were different back then. After months of planning and careful consideration we took a deep breath and jumped into our gap year. 



Who are we?  We are an Australian couple who call Melbourne home. We were working in corporate jobs, and like most others our age, we have a mortgage. We have a network of great friends and a comfortable life-style. Tanya worked for the state government as a communications advisor and Craig as a retail specialist in the fuel industry. Our interests are in food, wine and the great outdoors.



Four years ago our plan of working hard towards retirement was shaken when Tanya was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. This shocked us both and made us reconsider what is important to us; and what we wanted to do while both still healthy and active. We decided we wanted to travel, have more cultural experiences, and not leave it until we were unable to make the absolute best of our experience.



So here we are at the start of our adventure in a campervan in Europe. Over the coming posts in our blog we hope to share how we made this happen, the challenges and steps to overcome them before you leave plus our highlight and learning whilst travelling.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Traveller11 August 2020 at 06:31

    Our most popular car rental for young drivers
    We have a versatile selection of rental cars are available to those under 25, each one is of the highest quality and generally replaced every six months. As a young driver, you can choose from compact sedans or convertibles and SUVs to minivans. Find out more about the available categories in our fleet.. More information read here: rental cars 18 and up . car rentals under 25

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to take a Van-life gap year

How to take a Van-life gap year You don’t just wake up one day, book tickets, fly to Europe and pick up the first campervan you see.  There is a lot of planning and organizing to make it happen. For us, it was a concept that we worked towards over two years and got serious about in the last 6-8 months.  Van purchase In researching vans, we learned that we could buy one, but couldn't insure or register it without being either European residents (read: address, bank account and utility bills in the country we wished to buy the van in) or set up a company to own, insure and register the van. Now this is not straight-forward as one needs to be able to navigate the system from the other side of the world and in another language (as vans in the UK / Ireland were considerably more expensive than on the continent). There are a number of companies who provide services in this space.  We chose EuroCampingCars, because they are based in France and deal in la...
2 comments
Read more

Highland Games

Arriving in Scotland we saw Highland Games advertised in almost every town that we visited. The problem for us was the events were either the week before or in 4 days time; never at a time convenient for us. Our luck changed on the Scottish Borders town of Peebles; all the stars aligned.  Highland Games are when local communities get together and celebrate Scottish culture. All Highland games include: a pipe band competition, highland dancing, and traditional heavy events including caber tossing, hammer throwing, and the crowd favourite of haggis hurling.  Pipe bands and dancing are open to all ages and cover a range of abilities Shot putt is the same as the Olympic event but competitors are free to use whatever technique works for them. Some use a standing throw, others use a run up or spinning preparation.   Hammer throwing, unlike its Olympic equivalent the hammer has a wooden handle and the athlete does not spin in a circle before throwing it. ...
2 comments
Read more

Ben Nevis – Bagging our first Munro

To a Scottish person, a Munro is a mountain over 1000m in height. To hike up one is to "bag" it. Every Scot can tell you how many Munros they've bagged.  Now a 1000m doesn't sound that high but the base of almost all Scottish mountains is close to sea level.   Yesterday we bagged our first Munro, Ben Nevis the UKs highest peak. Ben Nevis is walked by 12,000 people a year. In rough figures that is 400 a day. It is not walkable all year. Even without the winter snow, the almost constant cloud cover and accompanying rain mean that there are few great days to climb it.   We had checked the forecast and saw a window in the morning and knowing that thousands would attempt the climb we resolved to start early. The alarm went off at 5am. We started at about 5m above sea level and hiked the 1345m to the summit. The hike has three distinct sections: 1. The base to the saddle: the path winds its way through silver birch forest and sheep paddocks w...
2 comments
Read more