Life beyond bricks

GOING SOLO

HI Discovering what’s on our doorstep quickly became one of the unofficial taglines of my full-time travels with my husband and three cats. We chose to spend 12 months travelling the UK as we had never explored our own country. We even spent the first few weeks of our full-time adventure touring our home county. It wasn’t through choice, as we had a few hiccups at the start of our ‘gap year’, but it turned out to be a fantastic way to kick off our travels.

There were so many places we had driven past but never explored or really taken notice of. I guess you take them for granted, especially if you’ve lived in an area for a long time. It was like we were seeing the place we had lived all our lives through new eyes. Suddenly, small details like road names, place names or quirky buildings had a totally different meaning to us. Details of where we lived in times past were revealing themselves, yet they had been there in plain sight all along.

This might sound obvious, particularly if you live in an area that hasn’t been modernised, but it’s something I had honestly not thought about. It has become even more apparent now on my travels, especially when visiting some of the more historic villages and towns.

I recently went to visit a friend, a fellow camper who loves motorhoming with her husband but also goes on plenty of solo road trips. I was visiting her at home and staying in her spare room, so no driveway camping for me on this trip.

She lives not far from Northleach in Gloucestershire, and when she casually mentioned that the mockumentary series This Country was filmed not far from her, she was surprised that I was so excited by this (as she didn’t realise I had watched it, too). So, that weekend, she took me to some of the filming locations, including the famous bus stop.

We went for a look around her local area, too, including an old Great Western Railway Works that has been transformed into a shopping outlet and an old prison that is now a café and tea room, but you