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Again Serendipity

First we got the opportunity to stay in Doris flat while we are in Karlsruhe (and the flat is not far away from our sons‘ homes) and next my former company needed somebody urgently for an internal project which takes about 4 weeks (exactly the period we planned to stay in Germany). So, here I am, helping them with my expertice and experience, let my brain work again a little bit more and collect a bit of money for our next adventure. Hard to believe, isn’t it?

Indeed: freaky and weird…

Thanks to life, to Doris (again & with big hugs from both of us) and also to Kay!

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A VUCA world ?

If you think about your life, environment, climate issues or politics you easily may come to the conclusion that this world is a chaos.

V = volatile, U = uncertain, C = chaotic and A = ambivalent

That’s the only way our MIND can see it, interpret it.

Then just leave your home, go out, take a walk, look closely at nature, enjoy the open sky above you and suddenly you may realize how much bigger the world is than your little mind. How perfectly everything works together. From the very very small to the really huge. Plants, animals, rivers, forests or the night sky above us. There is an unfathomable intelligence behind all that. What a magic this whole creation called Earth is. It’s just our little mind that may call all this a chaos, a VUCA world. Our hearts, when wide open, curious and child-like feel the deeper sense and connectedness of everything, the immense gift of being alive.

And to realize that you don’ t need to travel far or go into a national park, it’s enough to just step out of the house and have a fresh and open look at the most ‘simple things’ just right in front of you. Wow …

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So now it’s Bye Bye UK

… even if it’s not 31st October yet 😉 After nearly 3 months visiting England, Wales and Scotland we are now back on the European mainland heading towards Karlsruhe. Today there will be 5 countries we are driving through in one day, must be Europe ^^

So folks, whoever is interested in meeting us again, just send a message 😉

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Good bye Northumberland

The last 2 weeks have been a very intense time for us. We had to face some health and personal problems, a crisis that also devastated all our plans we had already for the next 6 months. But like after a heavy storm, when the old plants and seeds all have been destroyed, someday the soil sparkles again with fresh energy and promises new beginnings. We don’t know what we will do the next months. Visiting our family and friends is the only plan we have left for now and then a lot of options … we will see 😉

We found even hills with blooming heather here 🙂

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Holy Island

Northumberland has really lovely beaches, many castles and Lindisfarne, an Holy Island that’s even only sometimes an island (during high tide).

PS: This will be my last post for some time. Time for a blogging ‘break’. So long …

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Farewell Scotland and hello again England!

Turned out to be quite tough for us to leave Scotland after nearly 2 months we have spent there, but we will be back in November!

Funny having one foot on the Scottish side and one on the English one 😉

Now it’s Northumberland waiting to be explored and new dogs & house waiting for a sit. We are excited what life will offer us next 🙂

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Melrose Abbey, Sir Walter Scott’s home & a lot of flowers

Great day with many amazing impressions, especially Abbotsford, where the famous poet and writer Sir Walter Scott lived about 200 years ago, so inspiring, like feeling a time that passed long ago, but still can be imagined in his great house. And the gardens smelled sooo nice, when we sat on a bench, sunbathing, surrounded by all these colourful flowers 😀

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St. Andrews

After saying good-bye to Julie and her lovely dogs, we are on the road to Northumberland where we will have our next sit in 2 days.

St. Andrews was luckily on our way and presented itself with beautiful sunshine weather.

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Time is passing…

…so quickly, even in our life. Four weeks ago we started our sit near Forfar and it feels like yesterday.

While thinking about the past weeks I realized that day after day our unusual way of living got more and more usual for us. We developed routines for the daily work, taking care of three dogs feels like we had them since ever. We figured out in which supermarket we should best buy and which food we like and which not. We implemented ‚slow mornings‘ and it felt absolutly usual for us. So we could live another 4 weeks in exactly the same conditions or maybe even for years.

But we chose a life of continuing changes so there is a smile and a tear drop while leaving. Let’s explore the rest of our living path or with the words of Gene Roddenberry:

The final frontier. Our mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!

So lucky us that we need to move. To another place, other animals, other surroundings. New routines, new rules. We indeed love our life and I‘m sure it keeps us young and we never get bored…

Unspoken, there are several things we will miss and for sure keep deeply in our hearts. Cuddely dogs waking us up with their wet tongues in the morning. Huge eyes watching us if it’s time for feeding. Demanding paws to get on the sofa. And all the great amenities of the house, the common ones like toilets and shower and the special ones like 70“ flatscreen tv and hot tube.

But we never know what we will explore next…

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It’s all about time

After 9 months of travelling and having seen so many countries, beaches and cities, one always comes back to the really really important stuff … having the time to enjoy your day with doing nothing special at all. Just being. That’s definitely the most important part of our world drifting tour.

And having seen a lot of lovely and also not so lovely beaches with mostly very hot temperatures and more or less tourists on it, makes it easier to enjoy a beach walk here in Scotland: no swimming temperatures, about 14°C outside, a little bit cloudy and windy, but therefore you have a 2 miles beach nearly on your own. So peaceful and silent. Only the waves crushing softly on the shore. And you know you have a lot of time … time for all the details, time for being there with all your senses. And that’s much easier for us when it’s not so hot or crowded. And you also have the peace, not being driven to do some more important or cooler stuff, see something different or think about what you want to do next 😉

That’s what we love most! No more hurries like in former days. And nothing we have to see or do, no nasty bucket list that has to be ticked off or any special countries we must see before we die (doesn’t mean we’re done with travelling ^^) … just drift through our precious life time as peaceful, open and mindful as possible, cause it’s all about the time we have 😀

PS: Simultaneously to my post Andy wrote his post and we both didn’t know what the other one was doing and that we both wrote about time at the same time :))))

Beach treasures:

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Sunshine! :)

Even if just for a short time, the sun turned everything into a completely different landscape, so off we went into the glens, enjoyed the fresh green and decent purple of the heather again 😀

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These rainy days …

After so much lovely weather we have to face really hard times now: about 15°C, a lot of rain and grey skies the last days.

So, what to do?

First of all: Be happy that we don’t live in DumbleBee right now, with all this dampness and about 10°C this morning, wouldn’t feel cosy at all 😉

Second: Enjoying really slow mornings (no hurry to get outside, anyway) … having the first coffee in bed, after some time the second … and the dogs cuddle with us … until its time for some food for all of us at about 12 😉

As the dogs have no ambitions for going on a walk when it’s raining, we just leave the door open to the garden for them ….

So we have for example the following options to spend our day: reading or writing a book (guess who?), playing games on the iPad (guess who?), watching TV together and cuddling the dogs or relaxing in the hot tub, maybe with a nice glas of Gin on Ice 😀

So, after all, not that bad these rainy days 😉

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Cloud Atlas

After a day full of rain, sunshine, rain, sunshine, rain, sunshine, rain, sunshine, rain, sunshine, rain, sunshine, rain, sunshine, rain, sunshine, rain, sunshine … such a dramatic cloudscape in the evening! Yep, these are moments, I miss my real camera 😉

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Beach day :)

We enjoyed again perfect Scottish weather (warm sunshine and a lovely refreshing breeze) and found a great beach for long walks. Bathing was no option due to cold water and a bloom of lion’s mane jellyfishes. Really odd to look at such somehow immensely beautiful and then again also really ugly fascinating creatures, some looked like huge brains melting in the sunshine 😉

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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