Looking Back on 2018

Looking back fondly on 2018. A few days into the New Year and we flew to Lanzarote for two weeks of winter sunshine ahead of starting our new lives, jobs, chapters and adventures. Flying isn’t one of our favourite past times and just reinforces Why We Like to Caravan. We do however need a little bit of sunshine ahead of eight months working without a holiday.

A week and two different sites at the end of February involving training and meeting lots of lovely new people leaves us ready and chomping at the bit to start our new job, our new life.

All set up on the New Forest Centenary Site, Our New Home for the next eight months time to start learning properly . The job brought hard work, snow, sunshine, wind, amazing sunsets and lots of great days out in the area. It was the hardest eight months I’ve ever worked, with long days and more working hours in a week than I’ve ever worked before with the winter break at the end being the carrot dangled in front of us urging us on.

The end of the season arrived after the fastest eight months of my life and we found ourselves enjoying the peace and tranquillity of an empty site, my garden, as we methodically went about closing it down for the winter. Little bit sad leaving on our final day as it had become our home. No one likes moving out of a home. Goodbye New Forest.

Onwards and upwards, we go straight from work to Longleat, our new home for next season and spend just over a week on a pitch as a holiday maker, taking stock of our new stomping ground, exploring the area and recharging our batteries.

From Longleat it was time to head home. Having to Abandon the Caravan Back in Storage was tough. Time to catch up with The Jellybeans, time to enjoy the house, albeit for a little while. Settling back into Bricks and Mortar after living in the caravan isn’t as easy as you think.

A further trip north to visit the family took three weeks and saw us visit Broadway, Burrs Country Park and Chapel Lane. Visiting lots of family and friends and catching up with lots of colleagues that we’d done training with earlier in the season. Lots of Eating local foods and drinking and generally having a good time.

It is enlightening being on the other side of the fence, being on a pitch and watching the shenanigans that goes on on site, things that you are aware of but don’t always see living and working there.

New Year was spent back in the caravan with lots of like minded friends, The Jellybeans even drove across to see 2019 in with us.

Two weeks in Lanzarote, plus 30 caravan nights ‘leisure’ and 249 caravan nights ‘business’. Not a bad year seeing as we were confined to the New Forest for eight months working as assistant Wardens…. and yes, we still love being in the Caravan.

Being ‘confined to camp’, the Inpursuitofadream.com blog had a quieter year in 2018 but we passed the 200,000 page views milestone since ‘start up’ and now, have over 200 blogs on the website. The ‘50 Days in Europe’ book we released Christmas 2017 sold more than we anticipated, we seriously only wanted to sell ‘one’ copy – Mum’s. So the next 900+ sales were a pleasant ‘accident’. The next one will be better planned.

We jet off for some winter sun now to warm our bones, then onwards and upwards for 2019, we’re off to live with the lions at Longleat.