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The Simple Pleasure of being in Nature and (of course) … A little Ode to Heather 3

Even after so many weeks we still don’t have enough of admiring the wonderful Scottish nature and also not of gazing at the blooming heather everywhere.

It’s so peaceful and tranquil when you go for a walk and nearly see no other people… sunshine warms your skin, a soft and refreshing breeze strokes your hair, a lovely river gurgles in the distance, bumblebees fly from one flower to the next and look so incredibly fluffy … what else do you need to be happy? 😀

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What a Royal Surprise ;)

Driving through the Cairngorms today we saw a sign ‘Glen Isla Highland Games 23th August’ and off we went following this sign into nowhereland (it seemed), no cities around, just meadows and hills … and just inbetween: the Games. But we were not the only ones who seemingly had this idea, Prince Charles seemed to have the same one and surprised all the people at the games with his royal appearance 😉

It all seemed so easy going, just one security guy accompanying him when he said hello to the folks, smiled for the photos taken by the parents, who wanted to have a picture from him with their daughter or son. And Prince Charles seemed like a nice guy you would really enjoy having a cup of tea with 😀

And one picture for the Highlands feeling 😀

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Dunnottar Castle – historical Scotland meets GoT

Dunnottar Castle is a very important historical place for Scotland and it still provides its power.

You can feel it in the sourounding…

…and see it in the beautiful nature

We are pretty sure G.R.R.Martin got some of his ideas for GoT from here

  • Dragonstone
  • The Eyrie
  • A dragon egg
  • King‘s Landing cave
  • Red Keep back entry

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World Drifting & Zen

World drifting is for us like practising Zen. Always a kind of letting go of fix plans and thought patterns. If we want to plan ahead, especially for the colder winter months where staying overnight in DumbleBee is not possible, we just do it (so we are booked out as house & pet sitters till end of April next year). Otherwise we mostly don’t plan our days … we drift through the day, do what needs to be done or what comes to our minds. This freedom of living is what we really enjoy 🙂

Being a world drifter for us also doesn’t mean that we drive or fly through the world all the time. It means more like that the whole world is our home and we like to drift through it. ‘… off to see the world’ means macro and micro viewing for us.

Never knowing what will come or happen next. Being open to what life offers us every moment, good or bad (surely we have some tough moments, too,!). Don’t clingging to any expectations we may have of whatever (if possible). And trusting life deeply. That’s our day to day life style.

We, for example, don’t know how long we will be house & pet sitters. As our sits for the next 6 months are in the UK, even Brexit may affect us somehow. And confirmed sits are also getting cancelled or changed by the house owners or emergency sits pop up – nothing of it is written on contract papers ^^ And that’s what we love, too. Having plans, but staying open to unexpected changes every second 🙂

As a relaxation therapist I got to know and deeply felt connected to the Zen way of life. So world drifting is also something like our kind of living a Zen life. Again and again it is a letting go of what we thought before (our fictive barriers in mind), how we ought to be or not, how others may think about us and what we think of others. We now encounter so many different people with completely different life styles, so amazing! Who would judge what is right and what is wrong? We live at people’s houses, which could not be more different: from very rural and simple to very exquisite with hot tub and mega tv. Also the pets are completely different.

Then again we live in a very simple camper van, don’t have a toilet or shower and drive through the country to find a good place to stay for the night. Completely different kind of life again.

All of this is what we enjoy so much: The beautiful diversity of life! You don’t even have to drive in different countries to wonder about all the endless variety how life is lived and perceived.

What’s also very interesting for us: nothing of all the staff we use in the houses we sit belongs to us! We enjoy it when we have it, we take care of it, but it’s not ours. Especially for me, as being the house wife or carer before, a very interesting feeling and I often realize old thoughts, like: it would feel more comfortable and easier, if the things belonged to me and if something gets broken, it would be my stuff and not from somebody else … the moment I realize such a thought I often have a quiet laugh about how mind is working. I just let these thoughts pass by and at once I am at peace again and enjoy everything I touch with all my senses. This sudden feeling of awkwardness was just a thought and I realize that being not the owner of all these house interiors helps me to stay attentive with every part of it. Why would I need to be the owner of a thing, a cup for example, to enjoy it? To really ‘be’ with a cup with my whole attention is what makes it special in this moment, not that I own it! So being not the owner also helps me not getting unconscious when I use things. Same with the pets, I don’t need to own them to love them and take the best care of them that I can offer.

Another topic of what world drifting and Zen for me have in common is: Letting go of how I think life should be or people should live their lives (e.g. not so stressed or busy). All these different countries, houses, pets and life styles again and again show me in what unbelievable different ways life expresses itself. No matter, if you see people in Asia and how they live and behave or in Europe: it’s all this ONE life in endless diversity playing it’s own kind of game. And we are both so thankful for our part in it 🙂

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Next lesson learned ;)

Yes, we are past 50 now, but we still have to learn a lot ^^ After our midges experience we drove up to the most Northern part of Scotland (as an app told us there would be less midges there). And yes, nearly no midges! What a relief!!! So we had quite a good sleep in Dumblebee (maybe a little too wet and cold at night, but ok) near Thurso at the sea.

Unfortunately we parked DumbleBee in quite wet grass, which we did not notice, and had no chance of getting out of that grass in the morning. After many many useless attempts (with all kinds of stuff we found to support DumbleBee) a very kind Scottish guy with a van helped us out of the deep dip we were in by then. Yes, definitely: Next lesson learned 😉

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Driving the Northern Highlands

Even with the midges being so annoying, we still LOVE the Highlands! Today we drove from Ullapool to the Northern top, Thurso. And again it was sun, rain, mist, fog and even thunder and lightening that accompanied us. Mystical and wonderful 😀

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Life at it’s worst :(

We learned a very important lesson today: don’t camp in the Highlands in August, especially when it’s raining and there is no wind!!!

Nearly got crazy this night and morning as millions of midges first flew outside of our van and until morning had made it to the inside … better not imagine how this may feel, cause it’s even worse! We really got mad this morning with all these nasty bites and had to drive about 30 min in this midge invested car to get to the next town and buy some ‘Kill all insects’ spray to get DumbleBee clean again. Horror and definitely something we won’t do again! The picture were taken at sunset when we thought the midges would vanish until morning … what a mistake!

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Life at it’s best :)

Second time we have been invited for a delicious dinner from Louise & Owen and had a lot of really interesting talks. We could even stay the night in their beautiful cabin, do some washing and to top all of this: the delicious cups of coffee from Owen!!!

We are so much looking forward to meeting both again, at the latest beginning of February next year, when we do our 3 months house & pet sit for them. So good to know that people like Louise and Owen exist and care and do their brave part of making the world a more peaceful and better place.

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Celebrating 34 years :)

Exactly on July 29th, 1985, we two teenagers (Andy 17, Faye 16) became a couple and never would we have imagined that we will spent our 34th anniversary in a camper in the Highlands! Couldn’t have been a better place 🙂

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Isle of Mull

As we have applied for a house & pet sit on Isle of Mull for November and just were kind of ’round the corner’, we said Hi to the lovely house owners and visited beautiful Isle of Mull today with great sunny weather 🙂

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Dumblebee on a beauty farm

Even if our camper van has always been gorgeous we decided to make it more beautiful. Faye has been responsible for the design, painting, outside and interior decoration, Andy did the tech stuff and the fabrics. And as in every realtiy show at the beginning: here are the before and after pictures.

  • Before
  • After

This is the story about the change:

Step one: Clear the environment. So we put everything out of the van and we were quite shocked. So much stuff? How the hell could we live 6 month with two 40l bagpacks?

Step two: erase the water supply. At the first view the existing water supply sounded a good thing, but after 5 weeks we never really used it and it was more disturbing than helpfull. So: bring the shit out.

Step three: All wooden parts of the furniture get white and petrol colours:

Step four: the decoration fabric in the back (so sleeping will get even more fluffy).

Step five: Also the outside got an update.

Last step: all the small pieces, which makes a home a real home.

After two days of swearing, coursing, pain and anticipation of the joy how it will look like, it‘s finally done.

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The Ruin (again)

We have been here last year and directly fell in love with The Ruin and the Ardnamurchan peninsular. As we will be here for one week, there won’t be many posts in this time due to missing Wifi or mobile phone connections … there is none of this in The Ruin (only when we visit the reception building up the hill we have Wifi)

Therefore: So long and thanks for the fish 😛

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Visiting our plot ;)

Yes, we are very proud owners of a piece of Scottish land, a very very tiny little piece, to be clear … it’s just 1 square meter (or 3 square feet) … very, very, very tiny you see … but it entitles us to be called “Lady and Laird of Glencoe” 🙂

That tiny little plot was a birthday present for Andy (bought via Highland titles, a nature reserve plot) a few years ago, but we both like the feeling to be somehow officially connected to Scotland 😉

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Glencoe – one of the most beautiful places on earth!

If we would make up a list of the top 100 places we would advise you to visit (very subjective, of course) Glencoe would be definitely under the top 5 🙂

We have been here for at least 7 times already, but the magic is unbroken! Especially when you keep in mind the tragical history of it, but combine it with such a great weather like today. Kind of bitter-sweet … one could maybe describe it best.

Taking one of the beautiful walks round Glencoe and then enjoying a cold drink at the Claichag Inn is just as good as it can get on such a lovely day 😉

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Inverness

As we decided to go to Scotland again when we were in Malaysia in February, we already booked some inexpensive, but non-refundable accomodation in advance (didn’t know anything about becoming house & pet sitter by then or going to have a camper van).

So here we are, enjoying the typical touristy kind of living … having a warm bed at night in a hotel room, a bathroom just for us alone and a tv! So we did that funny stuff, we haven’t done for such a long time: watching really bad movies with even worse ads inbetween … and to top this experience we ate pizza in bed! What a change to our ‘normal’ kind of living 😀

And of course we did some walks around Inverness and also visited some local pubs and shops and all the other typical touristy stuff!

  • The Scottish heraldic animal
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The oldest tree in Europe

Visiting a tree that is about 5000 years old is quite amazing! What this Yew has already encountered, unbelievable … and you will find this wonderful yew in the middle of nowhere (a few miles further on from Aberfeldy). No wonder this is also called the Tree of Life!

Fortingall Yew Tree
2 Kirkton Cottages, Fortingall, Aberfeldy PH15 2LL, Vereinigtes Königreich
https://goo.gl/maps/PDZ1YLHTDxwFKP6m7

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Finally: Arriving again in our beloved Scotland!

Yes, we’ve been here for about 10 times at least, but as soon as we arrived here we knew why 🙂 No country feels for us like coming home as Scotland (forget about official nationalities ^^). Especially the Highlands… Just LOVE it.

  • Just got my favourite Whisky at the Edradour Destillery

Scottish drama weather 😉

  • Approaching the Highlands 😀
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Marcos

As we mentioned sometimes before, our World drifting is about locations, encounters and people. Yesterday we had the pleasure to get all three of them. We were in Liverpool, the birthplace of the Beatles. Because of getting hungry we stepped in a restaurant called „Festival Food and Drink Grill‘, an Brasilian one. The menu gave us good choices and we ordered BBQ Ribs for Faye and a double (18 oz) Rumpsteak for me. The delivery was quite quick and the ribs were supersoft and tasty. So with a thrill of anticipation I cut my steak and…. huge disappointing. The steak was totally overcooked, not a joy at all. Even if I don‘t like complaining I had no choice. I called the waiter and told him the steak was unfortunately well done and not medium. The waiter, Marcos, looked at the half cut steak, his eys went sad and he apologized thousands times and immediately offered a new portion. He also asked if we like to keep the current one which I refused (Life is to short to eat overcooked meat). So after another short period of time my new steak came and this time it was grilled perfect. So far so normal, but:

While enjoying our meal Markos came along with 2 cocktails. He offered them to us for free as apology and he said they are especially made for us as they are not listed on the menu. Fantastic cocktail, a mixture between Caipirinha and Maitai, so tasty. We were quite impressed and continued our meal. Suddenly Marcos came again to our table with another portion of BBQ ribs because he didn’t want me to eat alone and he wanted to challenge Faye. Faye was thrilled and she took the 2nd one very brave. After finishing our food we were still impressed about the cocktails so we decided to order a 2nd round, perfect again. The evening passed thru and it was time to pay the bill. After receiving it the next surprise came up. We didn’t have to pay for the cocktails at all (he gave us the second ones also for free) and we even got a 15% discount on our bill (which you only get when you book a special tour).

Finally, we had a lovely meal and drinks for a small amount of money in a very kind environment and we met superfriendly people. Thanks Marcos for this wonderful experience, you will stay in our mind for ever…

  • The double steak
  • The BBQ rips
  • Markos and Andy, both very happy
  • Goodbye picture

If you ever come across Liverpool take the chance to visit the ‚Festival‘ and say hello to Marcos 🙂

Festival Food & Drink Grill
7 Mathew St, Liverpool L2 6RE, Vereinigtes Königreich
+44 151 236 1962
https://goo.gl/maps/vEhfSjkVgq8SmCp39

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Good bye Wales!

What a lovely surprise and joy exploring such a beautiful and non touristy country. We also enjoyed our house & pet sitting and having time to sit in the beautiful garden to write or just relax. Now we’re on the road again heading for the Beatles (and also Klopp) city: Liverpool 🙂

Thanks sooo much for everything, Angie & Andy (Jep, got quite confusing with two Andys ^^)

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Serendipity – or The Art of Letting Go

About 7 months ago we let go of a lot of things: of our former life, of most of our belongings, our job titles and our safety thinking, we let go of life as we have known it until then. Then we went on our journey and after some time we were used to being bagpackers, owning very little, world drifters as we called it.

Then a new idea came and it was time to let go of the former life again. Now we no longer just owned some bagpacks and stayed overnight in guesthouses or hotels, we bought a camper van and again needed some stuff for this kind of living. So we started to buy some things again, owned a lot more than before. But therefore the safety of having real walls around us, having a bedroom and a bathroom, vanished. Now we started sleeping just somewhere on our way, places that life offered us. Very different places, where we never knew what would happen next, how loud or how cold it would get in the night.

And even if that was not enough change, again a complete letting go of what we used to live before, we also became house & pet sitter. Today we again have some solid walls around us, a bathroom and even a kitchen, but nothing of it belongs to us and we are no paying guests, we take care of it for someone else and even of pets that we don’t own. Again a letting go of what defined us a few days ago …

So we are no longer bagpackers and also no real hardcore campers, but part of our time we live in someone else house and take care of their beloved pets, part of our time we spent in DumbleBee (our van) and part of our time we will also stay in hotels.

So it seems letting go of any kind of labeling – ourselves or our lifes – is what became one of the most important characteristics for us. Our mind likes to label things all the time to give us some kind of safety and control. But as soon as you put a label on something (even yourself), you deminish it, you fix it, make it static and it loses its freedom of being and flowing. It loses its inert energetic fluidity.

Letting go of being a fixed person that’s this way or that way, letting go of being successful or somehow special, letting go of what others may think about you, letting go of knowing anything by sure or at all, letting go of old mental safety programs, letting go of who we think we are every single moment means enjoying real aliveness. Enjoying the openess and specialness of this very second.

The funny thing is, we don’t need all these mental regulations to live our lifes, we don’t need to define who we are (only our busy mind wants to do this), it’s really enough to live what life is presenting you every instant, no matter what it is. Don’t label it and it doesn’t label you 😉

What happens then is: you feel immense aliveness and freedom! Freedom from being a labeled person, encaged in your own mental files. You are allowed to savor every moment in its isness and yourself in your perfect imperfection. Love it, hate it. It doesn’t matter. It just is what it is. A happening in this very moment. Nothing to become, nothing to strive for, no new label you have to become. Just pure aliveness, right now.

What we realized is that when you stop this kind of permanent labeling and always let go of what you thought before might be right or important, the most outstanding things start to happen in your life – that’s “Serendipity”.

If you live this moment openly, not as a defined such-and-such person, there are no things you really need to have or that need to be changed. Life starts to take over … and so much better as you might have imagined it before. Life can now flow freely through you and offer you one serendipity after the other … like it has for us over the last seven months. Much better than we could have imagined. Not always just nice or pleasureable, not at all! But always worth it.

So when we strolled through Bruges a week ago and the word ‘serendipity’ infused my head like a lovely scent and the descision to give my next book this title was just made, we crossed the corner of a small street just to find this shop sign in front of us:

Unbelievable? Or: just another magical happening of serendipity 😉

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The Magic of Avalon (Glastonbury)

Next stop today: Glastonbury Tor, Chalice Well and Glastonbury Abbey 🙂 So we were kind of pilgrims following the Avalon and King Arthur legend. What a beauty, great energies, freaky people and what a gorgeous day!

First: Glastonbury Tor

Then: Chalice Well (a really unbelievable place of peace, tranquility and beauty)

And finally Glastonbury Abbey (just a lot of stones, so it was me alone walking through the Abbey 😉 )

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Stonehenge by day & by night

Stonehenge is really quite a funny thing. Some love it, some think of it as a lot of stones standing in a circle. I belong to the first category. Andy to the second 😉

So it was me paying the 23 £ admission and Andy waiting outside with DumbleBee. And yes, I also thought that’s a lot of money to see some stones, but I wanted to see them. On the way to the stones I saw a lot of camper vans standing in a rural road, so I asked the guard at the entry, if it’s allowed to stay there overnight. The really lovely man informed me that it’s allowed to stay at such a road for 3 days (some special English law I’ve forgotten how it’s called) and also told me the exact directions to this special road. So, as so often on our trip, by kind of magical happenings (serendipity 🙂 ) we now knew where to stay this night. I enjoyed the beauty of the stones and afterwards Andy could also glance at Stonehenge as we had an unbelievable view from DumbleBee and there is even a free walk right before the stones (with two small fences between). What a great night and morning coffee with such a view!!!! Only negative subject: it got really awfully cold and damp at night …

The pictures above are from my paid entry. The pictures below are from the rural road next to Stonehenge where we spent the night.

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I neeed a shower !!!!

After 2 nights sleeping in DumbleBee and only having a cat’s lick we have chosen a simple Travelodge hotel and both enjoyed loooong showers and a good night’s sleep in a (real) room again. You only honour what you have, when you don’t have it … so right!! I definitely honour a bathroom now more than I did before 😉

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Our first 2 nights in Dumblebee

For us Dumblebee is more than a vehicle, it’s our new home. So for sure we will also sleep inside, indeed a complete new experience for us.

The first night was next to Brussels, near the motorway at the end of the village road. We just parked, implemented the mosquito net, pulled down the jalousies and lay down on our brand new matrasses. What a sound, just the birds, the teen bikers, the joggers and the dog walkers. It was awfully hot but anyhow, we felt asleep, woke up thousand times at night, sleeped again.

The waking up in the morning brought us again bikers, joggers and dog walkers but we didn’t care. Some of them greeted us friendly with a ‘Good morning’, which felt quite nice. We used our gas cooker to heat the water for a fresh brewed coffee and enjoyed it.

50°49’47.5″N 4°41’19.0″E
https://goo.gl/maps/isE9ADtWWCKAfgZG6

The 2nd night was in England, on the shore side of Hythe, a small village 20 km west of Dover. We chose a small place next to a golf yard, directly at the coastal road and the beach. We thought the traffic will stop at night and we were right. What we didn’t expect was the beach party with 120 db of arabic music and screeming ‚ladies‘. And, complete opposite to the European mainland, it was fu****g cold at night. So lesson learned: with wild camping you really never know that happens next and life is getting even more an adventure than it was before for us 😉

  • Yeah, Ravioli!

Hythe, Vereinigtes Königreich
https://goo.gl/maps/knDpoeKzT4ncYVdV9

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On our way to the UK

The next 3 months we totally dedicate to one of our favorite holiday destinations: the UK. First from Dover to Wales (for a house & pet sit), then heading north for Scotland … 😀

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A short Bruges intermezzo

Everybody who knows the movie ‘In Bruges’ can guess that we had to have a stop over in Bruges on our way to Calais. What a fancy and extraordinary city, and YES, we always had the bad f**k word in mind – seen the movie too often, we guess ^^ and looked at the famous church tower in gaze! Definitely a city we would like to visit again sometime 🙂

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Good Bye Germany (again)

After 5 days full of errands and to-do’s, many visits and lots of excellent brunches and bbq dinners (many many thanks to everybody!!!), we left Germany today and are heading for Brussels for our first overnight stay in DumbleBee. About 40°C in Belgium, so will be quite hot tonight we guess 😉

Joy and Nelson enjoying their freedom (no more being pressed in bagpacks)
Yammy 😀
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May we introduce: DumbleBee :)

DumbleBee will be our new home and drifting vehicle for the next few years (hopefully). We hope he has the magical abilities and kindness of Dumbledore and the transforming super power of Bumblebee 😉 Definitely needs new interior design, some repair and corrections, new mattresses a.s.o. So will be some work for us the next weeks, but building us a new mini home and travel companion is sure worth it. We already hug the idea of adopting him as part of our family and can’t wait to start our new freaky & weird wild camping life 😀

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What a joy!!!

We met Karin exactly half a year ago in Thailand on the Koh Phangan Island and deeply enjoyed the conversations (and cocktails ^^) we had for a few days before our journeys parted again. Today Karin visited us in Austria and it directly felt like before, talking for hours and enjoying the openness and stories of each other … how beautiful to have met you, Karin! Thank you for driving all the way to Austria and looking sooo much forward to our next meeting (maybe in Scotland?)

Oh yeah, that’s already 6 months ago 😉

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Adieu France & Servus Austria!

Yesterday we crossed (former) borders again and arrived at Mayrhofen in beautiful Zillertal, Austria. And today we already enjoyed a fantastic day at the Zillertaler Höhenstraße. Sunshine all day long … we can’t image anything more beautiful than a blue heaven sprinkled with some nice clouds, high mountains and summer meadows full of wild flowers. All you can think is: Oh my God, what a beautiful world!!! 😀