By the time this blog appears in your email we should be back in Europe and ready to return to the road (where did the last three months go ?). A bit of a “one off” blog in that it’s mostly about our time away from the road so if you’re expecting exotic pictures and tales from Europe you’d best wait till next week. That said, we’ve had the most wonderful summer and managed to catch up with many ( but certainly not all ) of our friends and ( Canadian ) family. What follows are some highlights of our time back in Kelowna – more a “friends and family” update this time as opposed to our normal travel journal, but we’ll be back to the Europe pics and stories next week.

A friend’s retirement party provided a rare opportunity to catch up with dozens of old colleagues – all at once ( thanks Laura ! ). We have reconnected with other old friends and we’ve also done some travel within BC, taking an opportunity to visit Lois’s brother, Mark ( and his wife ) in beautiful Comox on Vancouver Island. All in all, a wonderful time with everyone – more boats, bars, bikes and beaches than we can remember ! Here is a selection of pics:

In addition to all the visiting, we were also delighted to receive a visit from Kym and Lyn Bolton, an Australian couple who have overlanded much of the world, most recently shipping their Fuso 4×4 from Australia to North America where they will travel for 12 months before shipping on to Europe. It was delightful to have them with us – Kym had been a big part of the inspiration for us taking our van to Japan, a country they had travelled to with theirs just a few months before us. Kym builds overlanding vehicles in Australia ( https://aav4x4.com.au/ ) – they make a great product and quite a few of our neighbours were admiring their rig parked in our driveway.

On a slightly different note we were delighted to be introduced to Alex and Nadja, a couple that met us through a mutual friend and who are very keen to get into overlanding in future. A wonderful evening was spent sharing all our tips and answering many questions; what vehicle, diesel or gasoline, which route, how to insure, the intricacies of shipping, need for carnets, and so forth. Wonderful to be able to share what we have learned and to reciprocate with others the information that we sought when we started this lifestyle back in May, 2019 ( oh my god – 6 years already ! )

Continuing the info sharing theme, good friends, Charlie and Penny introduced us to Kevin and Mandy (their neighbours) who are part way through a van build themselves and wanted some perspective and opinion on our own experience – again, a wonderful afternoon spent sharing tips and advice. Not sure we’ll ever be able to repay the many folks who similarly guided us but we feel we are getting there !

Two birthdays were celebrated – our granddaughter, Hadley’s 2nd and my 64th ( yes, Lois and the kids took very good care of me ). Also picked up a few parts required for some minor repairs in the van ( unsurprisingly, imperial fittings are scarce in metric Europe ) and made arrangements to have our brakes done on arrival in Amsterdam – 102,000kms on the original pads, pretty good, I thought, all things considered. News wise, we’ve been as gripped as any by the unfolding events in the Middle East – perhaps more so, in fact, since it’s one overland route we are considering after southern Europe. Encouraged to see some semblance of normality returning in the past 2 months after a violent June. Let’s hope the peace holds 🙏.

In the last few days of our time at home it’s been busy; cleaning house, packing and, of course, some preliminary planning. Vehicle insurance has been reactivated , medical insurance re-started and so forth. There’s also been some preliminary route planning – I say preliminary because we are always flexible and often change our plans . Just the way we roll…! There’s a little trepidation at returning while it’s still high season in Europe, we know it’s extremely busy in quite a few places- our plan is simply to avoid major tourist locations until September.

Next week we should be back on the road.

Until then…..!