It's hard to believe a year has passed since we moved out of our house and moved into Bokkie full time. We had so many questions (and fears) but have come a long way, literally & figuratively, since making the move. If anyone had told us we'd be spending the next winter in a lovely house in Brittany we wouldn't have thought it possible, yet here we are.
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| What a lovely view to wake to each morning! |
The weather has been quite changeable so we split our time between inside jobs and the garden, and have also managed to attend the local Limerzel chestnut festival and a nearby crepe school which serves the public whenever they have training courses on - delicious!
We have now spent 365 nights since we sold and moved out of our house; 153 in France, 97 in the UK, 60 in Portugal, 48 in Spain 4 in Belgium and 3 in Germany and fleetingly passed through Luxembourg. Along the way we discovered the concept of house-sitting and ended up using this to break up our travel when needed as well as provide accommodation when we headed back to the UK for a while. All in all we spent 162 nights looking after houses and pets, 101 nights on free aires, 78 nights on campsites and 24 nights wild camping.
We have driven 10,294 miles (16,470 km) and Bokkie has guzzled her way through 1,583 litres of diesel at a respectable average of 29.19 mpg or 9.79 l/100km. She also burned through 319 litres of LPG which fed our fridge, cooker, hot water heater and external Cadac braai. Apart from a few times when we hooked up to mains power on campsites, Bokkie generated all her own electricity from the solar panels and her engine when driving.
To make things simpler for us I have converted all our costs into pounds and the biggest single expense was groceries at an average of £289 per month, followed by diesel at £168 per month and campsites at £116 per month. Our total direct costs worked out to around £29 per day with house-sitting helping to keep costs down, as well as allowing us to experience living in some of the most amazing locations, meet some lovely people and look after the most adorable pets.
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| Jess and Jasper chillin' with Flaffie |
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| Jasper in a |
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| Inspecting the walnut harvest |
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| Gorgeous Admiral butterfly |
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| Sharing mowing duties - a lovely way to be out in the sunshine |
What does the future hold? We're lucky enough to be spending the rest of the winter in Brittany and then are off to South Africa for an important birthday and a trip into the Okavango. After that, we're not 100% percent sure and have some more thinking to do. We love the freedom to be able to be so flexible, and have enough time here to decide what our next step will be. We love Bokkie to bits and can't wait to see where she'll take us next. For the moment she works as our car and gets to rest up in the hangar when not needed - a well deserved resting place over winter.
