My husband said to me why should he miss out having a ‘Gap Year’ even though he wasn’t a student and asked his employer for time off to travel round Great Britain.

So off we set in our Discovery with small caravan in tow on our ‘mini’ Gap Year of five months. The contents of the caravan were well thought out and neatly stored away – a tidy caravan is a happy caravan!

Our first destination was Holy Island (Lindisfarne) in Northumbria as I had signed up for an art class for a week leaving my husband on the mainland.

We didn’t plan any route before we left as we wanted to see where the journey took us rather than following a guide book ticking boxes saying “We’ve been there, now where next does the guide book say”. I found this prospect exciting, not knowing where we were going to next, seeing what evolved.

We were both agreed that we weren’t going to rush round looking at lots of places and not actually seeing anything, but to stay in one spot for 4 – 5 days and ‘digest’ our surrounds, soaking it all up, seeing what’s in the locality, allowing ourselves to relax without feeling we have to rush off anywhere, not always easy as your ‘mind chatter’ always seems to want you to move on. 

We travelled into Scotland going up the west coast visiting Iona, Skye and Mull to our furthest point of Loch Inver, a wonderful spot that to me personally was the highlight of my time in Scotland.

After 2 months we left Scotland and headed south calling home for a couple of days before we continued our sabbatical heading east this time to Norfolk.

Then onto Suffolk and then before we reached the south coast we headed West all across the bottom of England and into Wales before going home to Cheshire.

The weather was wonderful and sunny for most of the 5 months with the odd wet and windy day in Scotland.
The freedom that you can allow yourself when you don’t have the restrictions of work to contain you is lovely. We stayed on Caravan Club sites when not in peak season but to keep costs down at peak times we stayed on what are called Certificated Locations. These could be a bit hit and miss. The more expensive ones weren’t necessarily the best. Although they didn’t have the same facilities as the main sites they had their own individual character. Also because they were small they felt cosier.

I felt like every time I opened the caravan door in the morning that I was opening up to a new day with a new garden all around me as far as the eye could see.

We went for a walk every day enjoying the simple pleasures of seeing the birds and looking at the plants. The more time went on the less rushed I began to feel and would spend time just observing the landscape and my surrounds.

I feel when your mind slows your body slows also.

I started to dislike going into large towns as I was beginning to feel the more I was slowing down the faster everyone around me seemed to be speeding up. I realised I had been a victim of this and it wasn’t until I could step back from it and observe others that I realised how much I really didn’t want that for myself anymore.

Living in a caravan and not having the facilities your home offers you, you begin to be very careful with water as you only had a small supply and you had to fetch and carry any water you needed. When at home I would spend hours cleaning the house but in the caravan it would take a few minutes not just because of its size but you had to keep everything neat because of the limited space. So I thought to myself all that time I spend cleaning at home limits me in what time I have available doing things I really want to do, but living in the caravan allows me much more time doing what I really want.

I felt the sabbatical taught me to slow down, observe more, to ask myself what I really needed. My most prevailing thought was ‘The best things in life are free’.