Monday 30 December 2013

Looking Back through 2013

This year's been one of ups and downs.  Far from being a 'bad' year, we've made some decisions that will no doubt influence 2014.

I've been ill for most of the year but appear to be on the up and am looking forward to getting back to the gym and out on my bike.  I also hit my half-century back in July.  To be honest I don't feel 50 - it seems to worry others more than it does me - it's just a number right?

We've enjoyed some good holidays this year.  February found us in Lanzarote for a winter break.  The weather wasn't great but we enjoyed exploring the island.  June was our main holiday when we hired a motorhome and toured France for a couple of weeks.  We travelled widely, probably too many miles to chill out as much as we could, but that was a valuable lesson learned.  We also realised that the large, coach-built motorhome was not for us as it was too big - more on that later.  We had a short break in the hired motorhome to Cornwall in September as I had a work conference to attend; that reinforced the view that a smaller van is better for exploring the country lanes.  And finally, we headed off to Barcelona for a week in November to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary - a great week of chilling on the beach and eating good food.  Christmas has been quiet - just as we like it and New Year's Eve will be even quieter as we look forward to 2014.

On the motorhome front, having again hired a large coach-built CI Mizar, we realised this was too big for us and started to look at panel van conversions, based around the Adria Twin.  Our idea was to hire one of these to see how we got on.  But a combination of our friends selling their motorhome hire business, and talking to them about ideas for buying in the future, plus my health problems this year, made us realise that life's for living now and plans should not be put off.  So, I crunched the numbers and we found with some financial juggling, we were actually in a position to buy a campervan now.  So we eventually decided to have a new panel van professionally converted.  This is in progress and we should get delivery of our 3 berth Citroen Relay 'Sunseeker' campervan around the end of February.  We are very excited!!

So 2013 has been a good year, with a great summer, some lovely holidays and some key decisions made on our future.  The clock is ticking on our countdown to retirement - the plans are in place and so long as our mortgage pay-off idea comes to fruition, we'll be off in less than 5 years!

Our thoughts are now turning to 2014 and all the exciting things we have planned.