It was Sunday morning, the flat looked empty and yet there were piles of things in the lounge, the kitchen and the bedroom. It looked chaotic. Each room had up to three piles of things, either labelled: Mo Ho, loft or bin. I felt nervous and excited all at once. The day had finally come. We had been plannning this for nearly five years. 

« It’s a new day, it’s a new dawn » is how the song goes and that song was playing in my head. As things were frantically placed in the loft, the bin or the car to be taken to the Mo ho. We were on a tight deadline. We wanted to be in our first campsite in Salisbury, 111 miles away by 2pm.

The story of how we got here will come later. This is the story of day 1 and the start of a new life, it was a big day. We were closing the door to our corporate life, working for other people and the flat which we owned outright, to live in an 8.8meter motorhome, to travel and see and do the things we wanted to. I took a photo of the door of the flat, below, it seemed poignant and a good visual of the doors that we had chosen to close for now.

We unpacked Pedro our steady Passat in Hertfordshire where Beatrix the Mo ho had been stored. We parked Pedro up knowing we would return to sell him at the end of the month. We packed everything into Beatrix the Carthago M Liner, below, and headed off to Salisbury. If you have ever driven in a large vehicle over 7m long and 6.5tonnes you will know that you can’t go too fast, we drove sedately down to Salisbury our first booked site. It was exciting, the first day of our new life. It was a Sunday and what was brilliant was that we didn’t have to get up for work tomorrow or any other day, we could chose how we wanted to spend our time.

Everything about this day had taken a little longer than it should have. The plan was to be at the campsite at 2pm, however we didn’t leave Hertford until 1:45pm and ended up arriving at just after 4pm. The folks at Salisbury were wonderful, they had saved us a pitch that we could fit on. We filled up with water (no mean feat as the water tank on Beatrix holds 300litres!). We parked up, plugged into the electricity supply. I cooked pasta with Carbonara sauce and we watched Groundhog day on the TV and then fell asleep.

It had been a long day getting everything ready for this new life. The emotions had also been running full which added to the tiredness. Below a couple of images of Salisbury during our first stay.

Thanks for reading

Sally, Toby and Merlin