Anyone else believe in Karma?

 So, we’ve got started on our latest adventure and it’s been interesting already to say the least.  You try to plan for every eventuality but, of course, you just never know what’s going to happen.  And that’s a learning point right there, to prepare your best but then to just go with the flow.  One of my favourite sayings at the moment;

One of the hardest things to do though is to be patient to let the way become clear, and when at home like lots of people I tend to try to fill every waking moment being useful and moving things forward.  As a result, I tend to get frustrated when things don’t happen quickly or I don’t get a response from someone.  But, of course, I realise, especially when travelling that it is often in the quiet moments when you’re just pootling along that things happen.  Maybe because it’s then that you give other people time to respond and do things?  I think this is because we often can’t do things completely on our own, as humans we need to collaborate with others to truly make progress.  And that’s already happened on these travels in so many ways as follows;

·       People who travel in campervans or motorhomes seem to be in two different camps – from those who book every campsite stop in advance to those who completely wing it and just travel in faith and find somewhere suitable as they go.  We tend to be in the latter group although sometimes we do like to have an idea or two in mind.

·       For example the first two places we stopped were largely planned to fit in around our ferry trip from Newhaven to Dieppe – they weren’t anything special and rather just safe and convenient places for motorhomes.  I remarked on this to Melle, although both of us had our fingers crossed at the time, just how well they had worked and everything gone to plan in the first couple of days.  Believe me when I say it quite often doesn’t work quite so smoothly and on previous trips we’ve experienced lots of things go wrong from Homer breakdown to forgetting some vital piece of equipment or document.  Maybe we’re just getting more experienced at this?  But let’s not get over confident!!

·       We also like to be flexible to be able to respond to opportunity and I thought that opportunity had sprung up when a day or so later we saw that the snow had started to fall in Super Besse in Sancy Massif.  This, I thought, could be a great opportunity to visit a beautiful part of France not usually visited by Brits and experience something a bit different, as well as ski.  What I didn’t realise was that with the snow were strong winds and sometimes heavy rain so skiing hasn’t been on the agenda yet.

·       However, with the weather so awful here in Super Besse and as we haven’t skied yet we didn’t just sit in the van reading all day, we went out for a coffee in the local café.  Where we met a lovely French family who come here every year from Brittany.  It was fun to hear how they do their holidays and to learn things from their approach.  They appreciate the relative quiet and ease of access to this ski / outdoor area.  It was also a good chance to speak and engage with French language as there’s less English speaking here compared to the usual Alpine resorts.

·       On a completely different tack we have also been trying to do things differently in terms of making a living since I retired and although we opened our house up for Air BnB bookings at the start of the year we didn’t get much interest initially.  But we’ve persevered (eg Melle learnt how to create a great Facebook reel) and had great support from friends and made a few changes to our listing which suddenly seem to have made a difference.  And if we hadn’t had a quiet day in Homer because of the weather we probably wouldn’t have had connection to be able to respond.  It’s weird how things work out…..

·       Also, in order to get more WiFi data so Melle can teach online and we can use phones, watch films etc we bought a Sim card from Spain but it means that our wifi thinks we are in Spain.  This has caused a bit of havoc with our TV and Amazon firestick thinking the same and making things like the six nations rugby tricky to watch – and after nearly signing up to a new and expensive online platform I eventually worked out how to switch my phone sim so our TV firestick thought we back in UK.  So maybe through patience I’ve also learnt how to virtually ‘time travel’ too?

·       And finally, I had been a bit worried that going off travelling would have a negative impact on the activities I’d set up in the asylum hotels and communities I’ve been working in over the last 10 months.  And I know it’s early days but it’s great to see that already others have started to step up and take a lead on communications.  It’s reminded me that sometimes you need to step back from things to let others take the lead and to put their ideas into the mix.  Often these end up with better solutions than mine and I’m sure this will happen for some activities and connections here too.  I imagined I would be doing more communicating and posting myself but largely, so far, I’ve just been watching others take the lead.  I’m sure I’ll need to give encouragement and positive emojis as we go but so far it all looks good.

So that’s the first few days, being reminded of some old tricks and maybe learning some new ones too.  Especially that I need time to stop and take stock, in some ways to let time catch up with me.  So the way can become a little clearer, and the weather too…….

 

This blog was written by Chris 😀