This trinary adventure

We have decided to bring to an end the second leg of our adventure two months earlier than originally intended. Pressing family matters find us scurrying south, albeit at four miles per hour, to take up a winter mooring at Saul Junction on the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal near Stroud.

This is very different journeying to the life we previously experienced in New Zealand and our travels so far on the canals. We travel for longer each day and aren’t taking the same time out to explore the areas we are travelling through, which creates a different rhythm to our journey.

One of the compelling reasons for parking ourselves somewhere for the winter is to oversee the packing up of our house in Loughton. All being well we will have sold our house by the end of September and will find ourselves shedding that key identification mark by which we are all known … a postcode. Much of this gap year had been about discovering identity and the loss of a postcode by which every governmental department and commercial enterprise recognises you seems to be the last step in that process.

We will be looking to buy another house, precisely where is not clear yet, but in the meantime it has been good to know that we are not defined by the jobs we do, the positions we hold or the place we live. Instead identity is rooted in the knowledge that first and foremost we are loved by God. On top of that we are parents to four inspiring children and grandparents to three, soon to be four, amazing grandchildren. That is sufficient.

Reflecting back on the last four months we have been delighted with just how many friends have made the trek to join us on our journey – sometimes just for the day while others have spent a night or two on board. We have gazed upon many beautiful sunsets, have discovered we still like living together after 36 years of married life, have realised that a return to full time employment is not likely to be on the cards for the foreseeable future and that there are so many interesting people to meet on the journey! Importantly it has given us the opportunity to ‘be in the moment’, to take time to look at the world around us and to wonder, without the pressure of deadlines and timetables. A rare gift.

And so therefore we are about to embark on the third phase of this trinary adventure. Those following this blog because you are interested in the physical journey may wish to unsubscribe at this point. However the journey, the ‘gap year’, continues and we will continue to document the path God leads us on – a journey which you might like to stay for.