A new life as a van dweller

Hello everyone...well we've finally done it. We've sold our house and bought a van to live in. Why...I hear you ask? Well the government didn't help when they made it unaffordable for us to stay in our house of the last 12 years so we had no choice but to sell up.

We were left with the option of moving to a less expensive part of town but trust me when I say that the less expensive parts of Wigan would not have exactly made our lives more fun. We toyed with the idea of moving to a less expensive town...but couldn't find one!!!

So we thought about it for a while and having spent the last 3 years trying to achieve a realistic price for our house and hanging on to the mortgage payments with our fingertips we were left in no doubt that some good times in our lives were much needed. But how would we be able to achieve this?

My wife and I both love to travel and have new experiences. We're the kind of people who always get itchy feet whenever we've been in the same place for more than a few months so it made sense for us to experience a nomadic lifestyle for a while.

About 5 years ago we went through a very tough time when my wife was forced out of work after whistleblowing and shortly afterwards I also had to give up work to look after her when she suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of all the stress this entailed. We did have some luck at the time when two of our friends who were looking for accomodation offered to rent our house which saved us from the dreaded re-posession of our home which we'd both worked so hard to keep. We were able to buy a motorhome which we lived in for a year as my wife began the long slow road to recovery.

To our relief, we found that being unburdened from the responsibilities of finding the money to pay the mortgage and most of the other expenses associated with home ownership allowed us to concentrate on that which matters most...our health and wellbeing. So after a year of living as van dwellers on a campsite we were able to move back into our house and begin re-building our lives again.

This was going well until the government stepped in and removed most of the financial support we were recieving at the time. This event forced us to once again re-think our position and led us to where we find ourselves today. Yes...we decided to once again live life as van dwellers. But this time we will travel with our van and live life on the road.

So we hope you will join us on the road as I tell the story of new beginnings and new experiences as we travel around Europe in our new home. There have been many obstacles to overcome to get to this position and some obstacles still remain but we are now in position to drive away from the past and move on into a new, more positive future as we seek adventure and positive experiences in life.

I've not been on here for the last couple of months as we've been going through the house sale process and I've now discovered that I'm unable to upload images unfortunately. Some things seem to have changed so I would appreciate any advice as to what to do about this to enable me to properly share our experiences going forward.

It's nice to be back and I look forward to the next chapter in our lives and sharing the experience with all you fellow steemians.

See you soon,

STEEMONKEY