Tag Archives: sailing

A-Wandering We Go!

We’ve lived in France for over five years — and that has given us so many benefits and blessings — things that we are quite appreciative of. I did the hard slog of paperwork required to get our plastic ID cards that prove we are EU residents in good standing — and I even obtained an EU driving license. Since we’ve been ‘in the system’ and eligible for health care and energy rebates and so forth — why change things now?

We’ve been living in a pretty part of Brittany and we’ve made some wonderful friends over the last few years. But picturesque settings and pleasant folks aside, we feel like our time in France may be coming to an end. To determine if our feelings are accurate, we’re currently on a long driving holiday in northern Europe.

Our mindset about life shifted rather dramatically this year when Mark’s father died a few months ago. Having such an anchor presence, one that you thought would always be there, disappear within weeks of your last visit to England impacted us both rather sharply. We grieved deeply — and then we realised that we needed to decide how we felt about France as our long-term home.

We first went to England for two weeks and spent some time with my mother-in-law whilst getting ourselves prepared to travel again. It’s been a year since we took our last long trip to Italy for two months.

Mark bought a new off-road bike and he did test runs around Canvey Island and other nearby spots before we set off.

Mark’s Boardman orange bike in front of a ruin on Canvey Island, Essex, England.

A variety of boats along a narrow waterway in Canvey Island, Essex, England.

Then Mark fine-tuned some things on the van, decided how many bikes he was taking along for the trip, and exactly one week ago, we arrived in Harwich just before sunset where we stopped for some photos before enjoying a lovely dinner.

A few hours later, we sailed away on a beautiful Stena Lines ship to the Hook of Holland. We had a wonderfully comfortable overnight trip and a good breakfast the next morning before we disembarked.

Cabin on the Stena Line sailing from Harwich to Hook of Holland.

Breakfast on our Stena Lines trip from Harwich to Hook of Holland.

After arrival, we went through the long lines at passport control (proudly showing our EU cards as proof that we live in Europe and are not overseas tourists with a limited-time status!) and away we drove towards Germany.

Our first stop for the night was in a tiny spot near Bremen called Ganderkesee. The country house hotel was gloriously old-world and the food at the evening meal and huge breakfast the next morning was excellent.

Exterior of the Hotel Backenkohler in Ganderkesee, Germany.

Most of our destinations will be all-new territory for us. We’ve been to the Netherlands and Germany several times, but we’ve never ventured further north into the Scandinavian countries. We have so many places to see, photos to take, and new experiences to have.

Next up — our two days in Kolding, Denmark!

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Ending 2016 with Holiday Good Wishes

We’re feeling quite grateful this holiday season — grateful on several levels.

We are finally back in Europe and living in a country that we love — France. Mark’s health has returned, we are enjoying life again, and we are happily filling our days.

The past week was a bit chaotic, to be truthful — but we managed because we are both feeling more resilient once again — and now we’re having a quiet Christmas. Our household goods somehow managed to leave Australia at the same time that we did at the beginning of November and they arrived in the UK a mere 6 weeks from pick up at our house. That sort of time frame is a rarely-or-never kind of thing.

As a result, we’ve felt a bit roller-coaster-ish for the last 8 days. Last weekend we had the happy highs of the weekend wedding of dear friends — Polly and Vincent. Mark and I both took cameras with us to document the day (as requested by the bride!) — but gads — rather a lot of the photos ended up being either out of focus due to shifting light conditions or being constantly jostled by the phone-camera-clutching throngs who were packed into the Mairie (the mayor’s office) for the wedding. Those group shots where someone always managed to have their eyes shut were a bit of a challenge, too. (smirk!)

Polly Watt and Vincent Morel exchanging rings on their wedding day.

Mark with his camera inside the Mairie after the wedding as the crowd began to disperse.

Deborah, camera in hand, leaving the Mairie after the wedding ceremony.

Two days later it was a leaving-long-before-dawn race back to the UK on Monday, meeting the movers in England on Tuesday, doing catch-up errands on Wednesday, then heading back to France on Thursday. Whew!!! Are we tired? YES! But Mark went straight back to work the next day and part of Saturday and I sat like a little pudding doing editing. Yes — we ARE taking all day Sunday and Monday off though and we’re hoping it won’t be too soggy for some gentle rambles through the lovely Calvados countryside.

Here’s a few more pictures from the last wildly busy week. More soon!

Up and down the stairs between decks on the Brittany Ferry.

The Deck 9 wifi lounge on the Brittany Ferry.

During an afternoon crossing between England and France, Mark is buying 2 expressos at the bar on one of the upper decks of the Brittany Ferry.

Photo Of The Day: HMS Warrior in Portsmouth, England

Today’s photo is from a brief overnight stop in Portsmouth, England a few months ago as we were headed back to France on the ferry.

The ship is the HMS Warrior lying at low tide on an overcast and soggy day.

Historic masted sailing ship HMS Warrior at low tide in Portsmouth, England

Back To France on Brittany Ferry

Long term travel in Europe has certainly been aided by the purchase of a motor vehicle from our first month of arrival over a year ago. We are now on our 3rd vehicle, a diesel van, after fine-tuning our transportation requirements.

Traversing the English Channel or the North Sea several times a year has become normal since we moved back to Europe. And one of the most comfortable trips we have had recently was on a Brittany Ferry a few days ago as we travelled from Portsmouth, England to Ouistreham outside of Caen in France.

Brittany Ferries keycard and brochure for the Armorique

Here are several pictures of the Armorique, a two year old ferry with ample amenities including multiple restaurants and cafes or bars, two movie theatres, several shops, a reading lounge, a casino, and more viewing platforms or decks than we have seen on previous versions of the Brittany Ferries that we have sailed on.

Cocktail bar on Level 7

Duty Free sign at shop entrance

Shops on Level 6

Lounge on Level 7

You’ll notice that there are very few passengers in any part of the ship. That’s one of the absolute joys of travelling in the middle of the winter when it’s a much more relaxed and adult atmopshere. The decks are not heaving with tourists, you can get a meal within minutes, and the hallways in the cabin area are free of screaming children. Bliss!

Dining area on Level 7

Airline style reclining reserved seats on Level 7

Lifeboats with easy to use ramps on Level 7

Deck diagram posted at elevator

Looking through layers of outdoor decks with a blue & white colour scheme

Compact but very comfortable cabin on Level 9

Catching Up and Moving On

Whew! It has been a race to the finish-line for the last few months — but we made it!

Any of you who read my other blog, Multiversal Musing, will know that we have been in prep mode for leaving Australia. We listed the beautiful little house that we had built the year before in June and then it took at least 4-6 weeks longer to sell than we had anticipated. So we ended up with our settlement and moving day being 2 weeks before Christmas. NOT exactly a good time of year to launch off from this country and still be able to find reasonable airfare!

Finding any ticket to Europe was getting to be quite a challenge and the costs were more than double what we would normally expect to pay for flights from Melbourne or Sydney to London. So I completely gave up, kept packing and organizing, and calmed the heck down about it all. Somehow I could feel in my bones that things were going to work out beautifully, even if we had to stay in Australia until mid-January to accomplish that.

Besides, there was SO MUCH to do. We decided to sell off all of our furniture and both cars as well as the lawn tractor and lots of miscellaneous ‘stuff’ so that we could get down to a teeny-tiny storage room that was smaller than our bedroom. And did we do it? Yes!!! We were still selling things a mere few days before departure, but we accomplished our goal and the sum total of our possessions is now approximately 12-13 cubic metres of boxes and bikes. And that is less than half of a shipping container.

I was sound asleep one night, dreaming of snowdrifts while actually trying to stay cool on a hot and sticky Australian night, when I had a physical sensation like someone knocking on a door in my head. My feet hit the floor, I opened my laptop, and I went back online for an airline search on Kayak and the solution presented itself. I had been reading the European newspapers and there were rumblings of rail strikes in France, Belgium, and England. And the weather was predicted to be as harsh and snowy as the winter of 2009-2010.

I changed my search field to flights to Amsterdam and there, on the ONE less expensive day between early December and early January, was our flight to Amsterdam on the Wednesday between Christmas and New Year. BOOKED — and I didn’t hesitate. But ooops! I had no place for us to stay — and we would be arriving on New Year’s Eve!

I quickly discovered that the hotels were fully booked except for the (yowsa!) €300 and up rooms and that is definitely not a part of our frugal travel mentality and weren’t really keen on staying at a noisy hostel.

Our favourite type of accommodation is a short term apartment or house rental because we enjoy cooking for ourselves and not eating in restaurants. We also appreciate having the option of sleeping late and not being awakened by a housekeeper trying to clean the hotel room. So off I went in search of a short term apartment and even those were almost fully booked. Persistence paid off when I heard back from one host at Roomarama who had a very reasonably priced apartment available for the full week. Again — BOOKED!

For our transportation from the Netherlands to England at the end of our one week Amsterdam visit, I chose to stay away from the airlines in case there was a repeat of the massive snowfalls that Europe had last winter. If you’ve watched the blizzard-conditions weather news for the last week, you’ll understand why I was overjoyed with that decision after-the-fact. The final elements clicked into place easily when I booked an overnight sailing on a Steena Sealink ship from Hook of Holland to the English coast in a darling little cabin.

There will be a stream of articles from this point forward covering everything from living-like-a-local ideas to transportation tips, reviews of hotels, restaurants, and suggestions for must-see places around the world.

And remember — frugal travel ideas will be our primary emphasis!