Here’s a little bit about us…
So for those who aren’t related to us, know us back home in England or who have met us while travelling, here is some background information on my daughter and I.
My daughter, Katie, the real star of the show, is now nine and I recently turned 30 and in June 2008 we left England for a 19 month round the world trip.
I have been a single mother since 2005 but before that Katies’ dad and I took her on her first trip when she was ten months old. We backpacked and camped in France, Italy, Sicily and Spain. Katie celebrated her first birthday in international style in Catania with Mount Etna towering over us. A month or so after arriving in Spain we bought an old Royal Mail minibus with most of the seats removed which we used as a basic campervan. We used this to tour extensively around Spain before driving back through France to England. I really enjoyed Spain, this probably had a lot to do with the fact that we had our own vehicle and could really get off the beaten track, we went to small villages that probably only saw very few foreigners. Katie was very popular wherever we went, people really warmed to her blond hair, blue eyes, dimples and smiley demeanour. Though this was offset a bit with a very funny incident with a little old French lady as we were getting off the bus from the airport in Paris. She found it very hard to believe that ‘a child as pretty as ours was British’!
By the time Katie was 17 months old she had travelled in planes, ferries, night trains and a campervan. We found camping a very healthy easy experience with her as she wasn’t walking yet and we bought a rug that we carried round with us for her to crawl on while we were by the tent. During the day we were free to sightsee as she was in a stroller and could sleep at will. When we left Britain we bought a convertible stroller that could also used as a child carrier, but we found it neither satisfactory as a stroller or a carrier so we bought a new sturdy stroller in Sicily.
When we bought the campervan and had more mobility we wild camped by reservoirs which was a magical experience, waking up as the sun was rising above the hills surrounding us and fetching water from the lake to wash.
When we returned to England after this trip I found it very hard to settle and we started to think about moving to Spain permanently but instead we bought a house in the East Midlands and thought about doing a much longer trip outside of Europe.
In 2005 when Katies’ father and I split up I thought that was the end of our longer trip as I didn’t think it would be possible to do it as a single mother. Come late 2007 after a very personally traumatic year I made the decision that not having a man in my life would not stop me from fulfilling a dream, a dream that Katie was now old enough to also express a desire in carrying out. In actual fact we had two dreams, to move to Spain or to travel, in the end we chose the latter as we can always move to Spain when we have finished our trip.
I put my house on the market and it sold in May 2008, within two weeks of the sale we were ready to go. I sold as many possessions as I could, threw out anything that was not absolutely essential and the rest was packed into boxes and stored in my brothers loft. He also helped me out tremendously by agreeing to sell my car for me so I was free to leave England straight away.
With a 65L backpack, a daysack for me and a smaller day rucksack for Katie, on the 2nd June 2008 we boarded an EasyJet flight to Dalaman in Turkey and our adventure started.
