Three years. Three years since the ‘beforetimes’. Three years since we fled from Portugal, abandoning our journey as borders closed behind us. We both retired from work at the end of 2018, so we didn’t really have much time to get a handle on what that was going to mean for us before our world, like everyone else’s, was upended and our lives put on hold. We’ve been doing other things in the meantime, for sure, dabbling, exploring new places in our own home countries, learning new things and trying out different lifestyles. Looking back at this website, those three years have elicited only seven posts; I guess not much really settled for long enough – or we were lazy in thinking and posting. Being unsettled can do that. Whatever. But we’ve stepped back on to the road, returned to where we left off to continue our interrupted journey. It’s time to knuckle down. Time to re-tackle a project.

On the surface, most things seem to have returned to the way they were pre-Covid. The masks have pretty well gone, the roads are as crowded as ever, and few countries are still requiring Covid testing or vaccination certificates. Below the surface, though, much has changed. We’ve been shocked at how much our confidence has been knocked after so long away from long-term travelling. And how the rules have changed; familiar countries are suffering unrest and it’s no longer deemed advisable to travel there. Chris’ new passport is black, our European Health Insurance cards have become something different, and we collected an entry stamp in Faro – our first European passport stamp since Bergen in 1981. Covid masked some fundamental changes; that open-ended European journey we started in 2020 cannot now be completed in one spell. We can only remain in Europe – in the Schengen Zone – for 90 days within each 180 day period. And no, there isn’t any way of extending that.

But – enough of that! We’re so very happy to be on the road again.

It’s always good to know that the bikes are aboard!