Europe,  Independent travel,  Travel Blog

Next: A Journey To The Centre Of The Earth

June 24, 2023 /

We’ve been back in England for a month now, easily long enough for the feet to get substantially itchy and for the wanderlust to grow. Both Michaela and I are more than ready for our next adventure, bursting at the seams to get cracking again, and the other day I swear I heard our backpacks squealing “lemme out, lemme out” from inside the wardrobe.

It’s been great to catch up with family and friends, wonderful to see my beautiful granddaughters, for Michaela to have “Mum time”, great to see Cornwall again and, of course, good to have a few English ales, but it’s travelling that sets us free and as of now we once again find ourselves counting down the hours until departure time. So, where are we heading next?

Phil & Granddaughter
Michaela & Mum

It started out as a rough plan to make our way around the Mediterranean, completing a circuit which would start and end on the French Riviera, but it soon became apparent that the number and size of obstacles in our way would mean a rethink. For a start, it would take too long to complete in full unless we did it in such a rush that we didn’t do justice to anywhere: there are, after all, 21 countries with a Mediterranean coastline, 23 if you include Malta and Cyprus.

Next is the fact that some countries are probably not on the travellers’ radar just now: Syria, Libya, Palestine and Algeria all feature on that list of 23. Thirdly, and maybe as big a factor as any, is the fact that by sticking to a purely Mediterranean plan, we would bypass a whole host of places which have been bubbling up on the wish list for a long time and which we don’t want to miss, so there will be a need to make some big deviations away from the coast.

So we hit on the plan for our next adventure, one which, at least for the greater part, won’t involve boarding an aeroplane and will instead feature land and sea travel via various forms of public transport. One of the joys of this adventure will be the level of freedom we can enjoy. No visas to obtain, no time limits in any one location other than the 90-day post-Brexit EU rule, no impossible crossings given that all relevant borders have now fully reopened after the complications of the pandemic.

The timelessness of this trip will be invigorating, making the whole thing feel virtually open ended – we will leave in early July and simply stay out there doing our thing until the Mediterranean sun loses some of its power and we decide to head home. We expect that is likely to be sometime in October, but who knows. In any case this trip could well exceed our previous longest, which were 86 days (California, Arizona & Mexico 2022) and 84 days (Greece 2021). 

Eurostar, London to Paris
Eurostar image from Google

Our first call will be Paris, then down to Provence, from where we have sketchy plans of places we would like to visit as we make our way towards the Pyrenees and across the Iberian peninsula, down to the south where Gibraltar will most likely be on the agenda. Next will be a ferry across the Straits to Morocco, a country we love and where we have unfinished business with more places which we really want to see.

Eiffel Tower Paris. Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@anthonydelanoix?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Anthony DELANOIX</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/paris-france?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a>
Photo by Anthony DELANOIX on Unsplash

From Morocco it will be….. well, we don’t know yet. Because this trip is all about freedom, all about timelessness, we really don’t know how long we’ll spend in Europe or what kind of date we will reach North Africa. So where we head to after Morocco will be undecided until much later on in the summer, much further on into the adventure. Of course we have a route pencilled in, but it is so heavily subject to change that at this stage it’s only a set of ideas rather than a proper plan.

We can see it now: the endless blue sky, great cities, majestic mountains, quaint little towns, golden beaches, bowls of tapas, the dazzling sun casting sparkles on the deep golden Estrella Damm  blue Mediterranean, fresh seafood and maybe even a glass or two of wine as we pass through the rolling vineyards. 

It’s going to be good. Is it July yet?

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