I’m delighted that my nomadic experiences have been featured in a book!
10 Lessons for Living #LocationFree:
An insider’s guide to living and working
anywhere and everywhere
Kate Emmerson, the author, was looking for midlife nomads so, in Spring 2020 I completed a comprehensive questionnaire & sent it to Kate. She’s spent many months writing, editing & re-editing her book, but now it’s published – yeeay!
Kate has now asked for all contributors’ to detail our experiences during the pandemic & how this impacted our nomadic lifestyle & the account below may be published on her blog.
It was sheer coincidence that we moved into a long-term rental the day that Spain went into lockdown! A day later & we would have needed approval from the police to move, to drive elsewhere other than to the supermarket for essential supplies.
My unexpected pulmonary embolism in April 2019 had stopped our travels &, due to ongoing medical treatment, necessitated us staying in Oliva for a while. As we liked it here, at the end of that year, totally unrelated to the pandemic, we made the decision to stay in the area for longer & in January 2020, found a new home near the sea.
We’d thought long & hard about our options, whether to hit the road again, or not. I still needed regular blood tests to monitor my dose of anticoagulents & moving out of Valencia would have complicated this.
Even if we had booked another Air B&B, in readiness to begin our onward journey again, it’s unlikely we’d have been able-to set-off once the pandemic was realised. A new tenant hadn’t been secured for the townhouse we’d been renting, so we would have had to stay there longer. The English landlord would have been delighted as, after we moved out, he was unable to find another teneant. It was actually three months before I could meet the agent & handover the keys!
I was always excited when moving-on & it would have been really frustrating to have no choice but to stay – we would have been so disappointed. Of-course, at that time, we had no idea what the virus meant, the restrictions, pressure on health services, the illness & deaths. We’d never had a definite plan, just a vague idea of travelling, staying in each destination for a month or two at a time, exploring & then moving on.
The pandemic in Europe & ever-changing border restrictions, makes it difficult to travel, so for now, we’ve accepted it’s necessary to stay-put. Instead of looking forward to exploring new places, we‘re appreciating the opportunity & extra time available to visit our own area, which is actually very varied & beautiful. We’ve also made some friends here &, in a time when we cannot easily see family in the UK, these relationships have proved to be all the more important.
The virus situation has definitely changed our nomadic mindset & now, I’m not even sure if we’ll resume our journey!
As we’ve not had to pack-up the car to move-on in a single journey, we’ve also gradually acquired more possessions & are making our current rental a ‘home’. The more we become settled, putting down roots, it’s so much harder to consider moving away. Maybe one-day we’ll revise our wanderlust, maybe not. Perhaps we’ll take holidays again instead. We’re just not dwelling on that right now. We’re appreciating each other, our health & the lovely location of our home – that’s enough.
Although we’ve always had a flexible attitude, this year has taught-us that absolutely anything unexpected can happen! So we’re more than happy to adapt & love living our lives.