So it’s been 20 months since I’ve written an actual blog post here but fear not all is well with me and my offspring 🙂 This post will be a quick one but don’t worry as if you want to have more regular access to my stream of consciousness, including pictures I take then follow my active Instagram account via nomadic_dad as that’s my current medium of choice. Given it’s now been over 4 years since I’ve had alcohol I wanted to mark this with a list of what’s changed for me in that time directly relating to this decision but maybe you might identify with some of these too:
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Static Dad
So seeing as it’s been over 12 months since I last wrote a proper blog post which was a rather final one, at least in terms of my marriage I wanted to post a more upbeat update on how it’s possible to transform your life in a little over 12 months no matter how hard things might seem… Since that last blog post we all ended up back in the UK rather sooner than any of us expected due to what I could see coming with Covid. I drove back with all the possessions I could cram into the old family car and was on UK soil in early March 2020 after driving as fast and safely as I could before the world changed forever 😮 I’d amazingly managed to get myself a large flat back at the coast in Newcastle sorted that most importantly had a bedroom for each […]
2020 and beyond
I have been even quieter on the blog post front than normal the last few months but as close friends and family have known for a while this has been due to some life ‘reconfiguration’ my end… Unfortunately once we all settled in Spain for a few months, at the end of 2019, a lot of marital issues arose again. After much soul searching both myself and my wife decided to “consciously uncouple” as Gwyneth and Chris termed their separation several years ago and described in detail here on Gwyneth’s goop site. I am not sure what 2020 and the future will bring but what I do know is that I want to be around my 3 amazing children for as much of their lives as I can to enable them to lead as fulfilling and happy lives as possible 🙏 I also know I want to continue to align myself as […]
1 year with no beer = life with less strife
So I have managed to go a whole year without alcohol which now I have taken some time to reflect on this properly before writing this seems an amazing achievement – well done me 😁 Seriously though, if you had told me 18 months ago I would or even could have gone 12 months without ANY alcohol I would have not believed you! The Human mind is an incredibly powerful thing if you can learn to control it by breaking bad habits and learnt behaviours. This has been especially hard for me as I grew up with 2 parents who were barely functioning alcoholics in the late 90s at the same time as alcopops (Hooch!) were being marketed to teenagers 🤔 Being good at binge drinking also became a HUGE status symbol within the lad and ladette culture of the late 90s and early 2000s especially in my home town, […]
Blog updates
So as anyone that has stuck around here since I launched this a few years ago knows I’m not great with standard blog updates – I’m much better at doing quick social media posts with a nice picture attached. However this quick post is just to put it our there that my intention is to update this site to be more generic rather than the focus on the what led to our recent Worldschooling in a motorhome trip as that is now over and we are all on a different path but still Worldschooling. First up for an overhaul is the link to my Where? page which links to my overall Nomadic Dad Polarsteps account rather than our incredible but now past time living full time in a motorhome. You can still see the full details of this trip under the Trips area of this page but can now also […]
Thoughts from the UK
So I have been back in the UK just over a week now and it’s taken me all this time to finally feel emotionally ready to update you lovely people how coming back to ‘reality’ has gone. I’m not going to lie. It’s been HARD and also very cold with average day temp of 8c!!!!! I have had such an amazing time over the last 12 months that it was inevitable there would be a ‘crash’ of sorts on my part as stopping for any length of time, anywhere, was going to be hard for me. However, coming back to the same house, including all those DIY jobs I put off before we left had made it feel even more like I never left in some ways 😒 In the time I have been back though, far from wallowing in my post travels blues I have been super social thanks […]
Hasta luego Spain
So two posts in less than a month – what’s going on!? Well, writing this as I take a break from packing all our stuff up, in order to try and squeeze it all back into Lightning our trusty motorhome after nearly 12 months away (!!!!) we have some exciting news… First up though, I need to explain that we have been privately considering several options for us as a family for the rest of 2019: One was heading off to Italy, Greece and Croatia this time doing similar to what we have just done over the last year in Lightning but exploring eastern Europe. Another was settling down back home in Newcastle so our eldest could start the great local high school in year 7 whilst at least one of the girls would be homeschooled. The other option was somehow return back to La Herradura in the beautiful Andalucia […]
2019 – the year of…
So I haven’t posted here since late last year, just before Christmas and incredibly it’s the last day of February already!? I figured now would be as good a time as any to try and look back at my start of 2018 post (see here) and some other bits buzzing around my head and try and look ahead to 2019 albeit 2 months in and only around 4 weeks till we get back to the UK… If you haven’t read the above post then in short, 2017 was an “annus horribilis” as the Queen of England once said however we all survived it just AND thankfully came out of if stronger which led us all to hit the road in April 2018 in Lightning our motorhome. 28 days into life on the road I wrote the following… I never had any grand plans for any sort of personal ‘transformation’ before […]
2000+ external kms and 1000s of internal miles
So the last blog post I wrote here was in Lauterbrunnen Switzerland on September 1st, 2018! I did warn regular readers a while ago I would not be a prolific blog poster 🙂 Since that last Swiss post though, I thought in this post I would try and give you some ‘stats’ to try and cover what I have been up to in this time that you might not have picked up from my more frequent posts on my social media accounts on Facebook Twitter Instagram alone. Most of these aren’t very scientific and a lot are simply based on gut instinct but nevertheless hopefully these will in someway convey what I obviously am incapable of doing in the traditional travel blogging way! Number of days since last post 99 External miles I have driven 2000+ kms Number of punctures on the tyres of our motorhome 1 Internal miles I have […]
Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland
Woohooo we are in the Swiss countryside / mountains and it reminds me a lot of Norway and our campsite has waterfalls all around which is a good thing ❤️👏 Seems like our luck with the weather has run out (for now) as the drive in would have been even more stunning. The weather is meant to improve over the next few days so🤞