The Wandering FamiLee

We’ve got a lot to catch up on.

It was in a book that I read all about reclaiming your birth rights as a mother that I came across the term betwixt and between. It wasn’t something I had heard before but it resonated because it felt like a familiar place that we often find ourselves hanging in. In the book, this pointed to the place between labour and birth – so much has happened leading up to this moment and yet the hardest, most rewarding and amazing bit is yet to come.

This, I can kind of remember as it was three months ago that we welcomed baby Rio into the world. There wasn’t long to dwell here as she arrived in a swift 20 minutes following the betwixt and between phase.

And here now, I find our whole family floating in the between and betwixt phase. So much has happened leading up to this moment and so much is ahead of us. We’re almost there, just not quite there yet.

A very brief back story

In April of 2024 (last year), we suspended our full-time travel plans to return to the UK for work and to build our new camper, home on wheels and what will be an awesome overlander. We had brought a 1977 Mercedes 113 firetruck in Germany (all about this here), which meant it was time to sell Hector, the camper we had converted and travelled in for 13 years. Sad times but also exciting to take on the transformation project and build a bigger better overland camper for our family. While we were squirrelling away with work and the conversion, we found out we had a new baba on the way! What was meant to be a six month stay in the UK has turned into a 12 month stay as we decided to have the baby here. We moved out of Hector and into a house, filled it with furniture, paid council tax, took on subscriptions and commitments – literally everything we had removed from our lives when we originally left the UK for a life-less-ordinary. Here we are back again…

Not for long

It’s here we enter the betwixt and between. Soon we will leave all this behind again as we did before. The furniture, accumulated stuff, direct debits and bills are easy to leave behind. The family and friends we have are of course not so. The children who arrived back to the UK a year ago are not the same that we will leave with. Yes we have another one but also Seb and Remi have grown so much and are now at the pivotal ages of 12 and 8. Even our dogs have changed! We came with Barney, Lola and Lenny and we will leave with Lenny and the addition of peaches. In this past year there has been so much love and loss…

It’s time for a new chapter to begin

And so, preparations begin. We are so nearly finished with our over lander conversion, or ‘Rusty’ as we call him. The new box we put on is now filled with all the homely and purposeful equipment we’ll need on the road and the cab is more than underway. We’ve completely overhauled this truck in every way and Jez has literally put his heart and soul, as well as every free hour into making it amazing! We’ll be posting a step-by-step transformation post soon, but if it interests you, you can see how we started and where we got up to on our other posts.

The kids have finished their homeschool groups today. They’ve made heaps of new friends and learnt a lot along the way. They’re looking forward to meeting new friends and the freedom of life on the road. Baby Rio has no idea what awaits, neither does our puppy Peaches. I’m sure both of them will love their first adventure.

There’s all the stuff to sell and let go of and I’m looking forward to how freeing that will feel. It takes some adjustment to live minimally but we really don’t need much. When you’re travelling all the time, you live very much in the moment and less ‘just in case’.

So here we sit

Betwixt and between….awaiting stepping out as a different FamiLee in a different camper with different children and different dogs. Watching the page turn as we start a new chapter.

Not long now…

Love from us

Claire, Jez, Seb, Remi, Rio, Lenny & Peaches x