I’m Dave Jenkins and at the beginning of 2017 I took early retirement (if I’m totally honest, it wasn’t all that early) and it was this as much as anything that prompted the tour outlined in the welcome to this web site.
For some months after retiring I enjoyed lazing around our house in Cheshire doing as little as possible (it felt almost like an entitlement) but such sloth could not be continued indefinitely. There was a bucket list to be developed and acted upon – Just for starters I fancied an extended tour of Europe, possibly around the Balkans and Greece (parts of the world that I had previously seen very little of) and then there was Learning to Sail with the RYA (in preparation for a trans-Atlantic crossing), Improving my SCUBA Skills (that I could dive with sharks in the Deep Blue off the coast of South Africa and of course the Galapagos Islands), Walking the Camino Santiago (starting at Canterbury Cathedral), Trekking the Himalayas (with a quick ascent of Mount Everest thrown in) and… the list is endless.
Back to reality… I reproduce below everything that was first written on this page way back in 2017:-
“I recently bought a 2015 Hymer Exsis-t 564 motor-home and this will be my home for the next few months. In keeping with almost everyone else in the world who appears to have bought a motor-home and elects to write blogs of this nature, I have given the Hymer a name. It is called “The Van”. Not very original, I know, but it has a certain “Je ne sais quoi”.
Over the next weeks, once the house has been sold and furniture and fittings have been either (according to their value) put into storage or dumped, I intend that this site reflect my travels across Europe with “The Van”.
For the moment I’ll not go into any detail about the route because, while I know in the broadest sense what it is I want to do (I want to see a great deal more of Europe), I’ve not yet properly decided whether to turn left or right once I reach Calais.
I have already travelled widely. I’ve lived abroad for much of my life – that is 9 years in Cyprus, Kenya and Germany as an army brat and many more years working across Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent and Asia Pacific as an HR Manager within engineering & construction. More often than not I’ve been in too much of a hurry to properly experience wherever it is I have been staying. This is going to change.
I’m busy researching what it is I would like to see in Europe although, I fully recognise that whatever I intend may change radically as the journey unfolds. I have to make a start somewhere. I will advise as to the proposed route once I have completed my research but wherever it is I go, I will endeavour to take my time and enjoy the whole experience.
Dave Jenkins”
DJ Motor Touring (DJmotortouring.com)
8 August 2017