The One Where We Explain How We Road School

We have begun our 11th week of  Road Schooling.

When we started out in early January just after New Year, it never occurred to me that this many weeks later, not only would we still be living life on the road, but that, for the most part, we’re enjoying it.

Don’t get me wrong - there are some aspects that are difficult.  More on that in a minute.

By and large, however, we have been warm and comfortable this winter, have seen some amazing things and met some incredible people.

A lot of folks ask me how we’ve been able to manage.  They want to know details, logistics, that kind of thing.

It’s a lot easier, and more complicated than you might think:

Meet Zaffie

It all begins with the car.

Our trusty steed is our 11 year old Vauxhall Zafira, known as Zaffie.  Zaffie has 7 seats and we manage to cram 2 adults, 4 kids (including 2 car seats) and 2 dogs into her innards every time we go out.  Most days this is fine.  The adults ride up front, then there are 3 kids in the middle row, and a 4th child plus the 2 dogs occupy the rear.

It really only gets cramped on “Transition Day” when we have to gather up our gear and get it all in the car.  Those are the days I feel it in my knees - literally, because I have to carry our bag of nonperishable food on my lap, along with a laptop, my handbag, and the car snacks.

It can be a tight squeeze.

As long as the journey isn’t too far, I can manage just fine.  After the epic leap from Argyll to Northumberland I almost required knee surgery (not really, but it felt like it, and I used a lot of Reiki to self-heal, let me tell you).

Pack It In

Each of us has 1 suitcase, except Jonah and Jago, who at 3 and 2 years old respectively, have clothes  small enough that they can both share one suitcase between them - and a lot of their clothes.  Because we were chasing winter early on, we each also have some snow pants, a fleece, waterproofs, sneakers, hiking boots, and 4 of us have Wellies (rubber boots) because they are kind of a necessity for certain people.

I should confess here that I didn’t actually pack enough clothes for myself.  That’s because I chose to fill my suitcase with my doula course textbooks and a behemoth midwifery textbook.  Maybe not the wisest plan, but when it comes to clothes versus books, books win every time.

We are heading to my in-laws at the end of the week and will be visiting our storage locker where we will trade the snow pants for more suitable clothing.  Then we’ll head south to Cornwall and Devon, and hopefully the weather won’t be too rubbish.  I’m crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.

I do that a lot, and actually have a lot of success with it.  

Burning Down the House

We didn’t actually burn down our house - I just like that song.

This is one of the main things folks want to know about. What have we done with our house?

It’s still there, it’s just waiting for a new family.

Unloading the house wasn’t as big a deal as I thought it would be.  I mean, it was on the day we had to leave our lizard in the care of our highly competent neighbour and my dear friend.  That hurt - a lot.  I won’t lie.

And the physical toll of packing up is never easy.  If you have ever moved house, you understand what I’m saying.

But since my parent’s health went into decline and my mother suffered a stroke last autumn, I have known this was going to happen sooner rather than later.  I was no longer attached to the house. It was easy to let it go.

Clearly this is easier if you rent rather than have a mortgage.  But even with a mortgage you can either sell up or give it back to the bank.  It is just a matter of looking at what works best in your individual circumstances.

But what if you want to keep your house and just travel for a few months?

I’ve given this some thought.  Depending on the state of your house and your location, you could offer it as a holiday or short-term let.  Don’t worry that it will stand empty.  If the price it right, it will get rented.  There are websites and companies that will both market your property and help you manage it, so if my house had been in a decent state (which it was not), this is an option I would have considered.

If a holiday or short term let isn’t viable, you can always save up and budget for a few months of rent/mortgage.  Not ideal, I know, but it will be worth it.

Home Sweet Home...for now

We are now in our 7th holiday cottage (we stayed 2 weeks in 3 of them, rather than 1 week).  Man, these things are brilliant!

We are travelling in winter so the rates are really good and 6 times out of 7, all of our heat and electric was included in the rent. So a month in cottages is actually is similar in costs to a month in your own house.

Not only that, there is usually a good selection of properties to choose from.  I say usually because with 2 dogs in tow, it complicates things. A single dog would be far simpler, but when it comes to our canines, we never take the easy road.

We have a list of priority characteristics when looking for a suitable cottage and it looks like this:

1. Pet friendly for 2 dogs
2. Internet access - we’ve learned that many people say the offer it, but on closer inspection it is broken or slow or has some other issue, so we always double check.
3. Sleeps 5.  I know, we are six, but Jago still co-sleeps, so we only need enough beds for 5 and then we wedge Jago in.

We’ve been pretty lucky so far both in terms of location and the overall niceness of our cottages.  The most challenging was in Argyll because it was sooo bloody cold and hard to heat and despite being listed as pet friendly, it did not have a working hoover (vacuum cleaner) and with a German shepherd dog, life with dog hair became almost unbearable. Some of the other cottages have also  had an “issue” or two, and we’ve learned a lot of lessons:

• always confirm if heat and electric are included in the rent price or are metered.  In winter this can have a huge impact on the overall costs of that cottage.
• Ditto with simple things like towels.  Most listings say that towels and bedding are included, but some just say bedding, or extra bedding provided at additional cost, and if it only says bedding is provided you’ll be in a bit of a pickle.  We’ve conserved packing space by not bringing towels and a week without a shower makes for a smelly Transition Day car ride.
• A remote cottage - say, high on a moor - will never have good internet access.
• Bring your own plastic cups and utensils if you have little ones - most places do not provide them and watching a 2 year old wield an adult sized fork, while hilarious, is also rife with impending disaster.
• Wood burning stoves, while lovely to look at, are very high maintenance and not very warm unless you constantly feed them.  We had one coal burner and it was a revelation.

Self-catering cottages have been an affordable option during the off-peak season, but with Easter looming on the horizon, we are beginning our transition to Plan B: static caravans and tents.  

Many camping and caravan sites have internet access and are pet friendly which are always our two biggest challenges. Caravans are not always more affordable than cottages, so some research is required.  

We are in our last cottage (in Wales) before moving into caravaning/camping, and I’m really excited about that because one of the advantages of caravan sites are the playgrounds and other facilities - like swimming pools - that are on site.

Our kids will be over the moon.

Our Daily Bread

With all this swanning around, how do we keep food on the table?

Quite easily, as it turns out.

Lee and I have slowly been shifting our mindset from employment to entrepreneurship. This trip has actually enabled me to fully embrace our new way of working. It’s been a leap of faith that has paid off in spades.

In essence, we work from our laptops and mobile phones.  We freelance and we are internet marketers and affiliates with a couple of very easy to work with companies. We also maintain blogs which are an additional revenue stream.

It takes a bit of getting used to, a lot of discipline (self-employment always does), and some juggling, but this way of putting food on the table is far superior to anything else either of us have ever done - and in a combined 50 odd years of working we’ve done it all, from paper routes and pie factories to management positions and international law firms.

Working for yourself is way cooler.  Doing it from the internet is sublime.

Final Thoughts

A few paragraphs ago I used the words “leap of faith”.  This whole trip has been like that.  

Our car is 11 years old on Monday (I only know this because she shares a birthday with our daughter, so it’s easy to remember) and it took a huge leap of faith (and a bit of trust in our mechanic) that she would be able to handle a few thousand miles.  

We lept from semi-structured home education to unschooling.  That was really scary, but we just have to believe that what we are doing has more benefits for our kids than any time with a textbook or curriculum.

And we’ve had to believe that none of us would get too sick and that if we did, we’d be able to find a doctor on the road.  So far (knock on wood), it hasn’t been a problem.

The other day Lee and I were talking about our marriage, reflecting on the fact that we’ve been married for 15 years. There have been a lot of challenges in those 15 years, but things were always easier when we were defying convention and living life on our own terms.  Life got more challenging the more sensible we tried to be.

Being audacious - defying convention - works for us.  And I think it can work for a lot of people.  

Trust me, the water is just fine.

Any thoughts or ideas you’d like to share?  Do you know of some great holiday parks - we’d love to hear about them. Leave a comment!!