30/08/2026
Every once in a while we feel inclined to reintroduce ourselves. We’ve had a bit of a growth spurt recently, so now seems as good a time as any.
We’re Nige and Diane, and after almost 30 years in the British Army and around 15 years running our own business, we decided to call time.
We effectively retired early. We sold our house, closed the business and downsized our life into a van.
For the last 20 months, we’ve been travelling.
We spent our first four months exploring Scotland through the winter, including six weeks in the Outer Hebrides. Then came a slow three-month drive around France, taking us through spring and into early summer, before our Schengen clock eventually ran out and we headed back to the UK.
We used that time to invest in our future travels and changed our van for the one we’re travelling in now. It was always part of the plan, but circumstances brought that decision forward a little.
With the new van, we left the UK again in October 2025, taking around 40 days to head south through France and Spain. In December, we crossed into Morocco and spent the next four months having the adventure of a lifetime.
As spring arrived, we headed back into Europe and spent almost three months drifting north through Spain, France and Italy. Once again, the Schengen clock caught up with us, so we crossed into Bosnia, where we spent a month, followed by another month in Montenegro.
We’re currently in Albania.
Towards the end of September, we’ll cross into Greece, where we plan to spend two or three months before continuing into Turkey, Georgia and Armenia. We’re also investigating whether we can make a detour as far east as Kazakhstan for a month.
Our current plan for the journey back to the UK will take us through Turkey, Albania and southern Italy before crossing to Tunisia for another North African winter. In early 2028, we’ll start the slow journey north again, eventually returning to the UK for an MOT, some maintenance and, of course, a catch-up with family.
Beyond that, there are a few more adventures on the radar.
We’d like to take a year travelling south through Africa, potentially as far as Senegal and The Gambia, before turning north towards Scandinavia.
We want to push further east too, into the ‘Stans — another trip that would probably need at least a year.
And, eventually, we’d love to ship the van across to Canada and spend time travelling through North and South America.
Of course, very little of this is actually set in stone. Our plans and routes change once in a while and occasionally reality comes knocking. But that’s part of the appeal.
For now, the plan is simply to keep going until we physically can’t anymore, or until we lose the spark.
Hopefully, neither happens anytime soon.
