Turns out the resolve to move wasn’t strong enough to get through the post-Brexit nightmare and into France as residents in any shape or form. In short, it IS possible to spend 6 months a year there, without owning property, and not getting hit with tax problems, but otherwise it’s a huge hassle from the point of view of not having most of your stuff with you when in either country.
Spain also has a new 12 month ‘digital nomad visa’ but a lot of paperwork is needed before leaving your country of origin. France is very far behind getting one sorted. France has some way to go to catch up with Spain and Portugal on the ‘everyone’s cool’ agenda. France has some way to go in other areas too, but some of the wonderful people we know there, belie this view.
So a few things had to be left behind, sold or given away (gazebo, family tent, gas bottle etc.) to make capacity for a ton of books, furniture, bicycles and of course, the bike. It felt odd coming north for winter but this month, after 85 days in Bretagne then Dordogne (leaving a few out of the permitted 90 remaining for that emergency winter bike tour!) I found myself hauling an overweight Sprinter for 800 miles up the road. Thank god we didn’t get stop-checked for weight or suffer a break down the whole way back! It was certainly a hair-raising experience flying down big French motorway hills in the wind and then round the twisty lanes of East Sussex and the Peaks with it on my back.
I’m now in an 18th century cottage in an even older village near Bakewell in the Peak District. It took over a week to recover from the travelling. Here we’ll stay for 6 months or so. There’s a very amiable community, it’s well serviced and the views are stunningly lush, green and wavy, with copious megalithic sites dotted round. I’m about over the culture shock - with France being so flat I caught myself staring nervously at the huge grassy round hill over the way and wondering what’s inside. And on Friday someone left £20 on the windscreen for no discernible reason.
Looking back, the last 2.5 years of travelling has been amazing. It was June ‘21 when we got our marching orders from the Sheffield house rental so decided to go for broke, right round Spain in the van I’d just converted to be fully off-grid.
I’m not missing Europe yet, if I don’t think about it too much. It’s just been a very satisfyingly good and hot summer, and it feels like the last two years of travelling has been largely about getting travelling out of the system. It’s been an inner journey too, as intense as the outer one, and I’m glad to have sent a few old goblins packing.
So if that’s that then and here this is now, what next for the Unravelogue?
ps. I’ve a lot of work ahead including publishing two books and launching a new training course with Kate Salinsky, and if I stay still for long enough, I might produce something coherent along the thoughts that came up just before leaving the south-west of France:
Independent autism training courses are here and here.
NHS Staff National Autism Trainer Project here.
I ❤️ listening to you too Jonny. Really loved the video of you talking about your thoughts out loud... such important thoughts.