All Packed and Ready to Go

Monday 3rd August 2020.

So this is it then..

In less than 12 hours we will be wedged into the car on the first leg (of what feels like a mammoth trip) out to Lisbon, Portugal. We have decided to book ourselves onto a 4 week fully immersive Portuguese course where we can get going with learning the language, as we currently only know a handful of words! Where we end up after that is unknown…

It’s not too far in miles (2202km actually) but it feels like a big life journey we are undertaking. Just us, a vague plan and a car full of our ‘most important and essential items’ are making their way to a totally new place to try and live. I went to Lisbon as a small child but beyond that, other than a few recommendations and a bit of research online, its a completely new city and quite alien to us.

All our ‘most important and essential items’ – probably too many clothes..

If you know us, you’ll know a car full of stuff is a very small amount in Alys and Nathan terms. We are the couple who usually take a car full for a weekend away. We have no idea when we will be settled enough to have our pallets of belongings shipped over from the UK yet. Hopefully in a few months we will be settled in a place and then can be reunited with our things. Though you never know, a lot can change in a few months! For the meantime it’s clothes, toiletries, electronics, documents and some other essentials packed into the car. We could have easily chucked some more in but realistically we could be moving around a bit for the first few months and the less we have to pack and repack the better!

Test running the tent in the UK – bit cooler

Oh and of course I forgot to mention; camping gear. We figured as we are mid Covid-19 Pandemic that perhaps camping might be the best/cleanest/cheapest and most flexible way of travelling through France and Spain and into Portugal.

We are all packed up and I must say I’m pretty impressed with our effort. We want to feel as secure as possible while we travel and not have all our belongings visible for when we have to stop. Nathan would say it was his idea, bit it was definitely mine!

So I am having my last bath for what could be a little while, I’m pretty sure our campsites won’t have them, and our first month in Lisbon is in an Airbnb that definitely doesn’t. Then our last supper (we cannot deny we have eaten very well during lockdown), washed down with a bottle of Portuguese red, let’s start as we mean to go on. Followed by a chilled out evening, and a few hours kip before our 3.30AM start to head down for our Portsmouth to Caen ferry.