Well, the clock is ticking now till I hand back the keys to my Melbourne apartment, and in the nick of time I’ve booked some flights: yes, all roads lead to Spain!

Plan A – ride Volty across Oz – was in the end a non-starter, alas. Even doing things cheaply, prices here in Australia seem to be escalating by the day, making long-term travel a bit of a no-no in terms of stretching my dollar to the max. (I was chatting to Austin and Lois at the Adventure Travel Film Festival this weekend and they said their latest trip here is woefully short because everything’s so expensive). Add to that the vast distances (huge tracts of nothingness) between places in Australia and the fact that all the most interesting areas are  hundreds of clicks off-road, and I finally had to admit that my 250cc Suzuki road bike just isn’t cut out for the kind of trip I really want to do.

So, long story short – Plan B! Head to Europe and look at picking up a Suzuki VanVan or similar to go touring through Europe, North Africa and beyond. And, well, that’s all the plan there is. With the money pocketed from selling my possessions and my beloved Volty (sob! I can’t talk about it, it was a wrench!), I’m heading first to Granada in southern Spain. I’ll base myself there at least to start with, and start checking out bikes and potential routes while living as frugally as I possibly can. I was there a couple of times last year and couldn’t believe how cheap it was to live. A good friend has a house in the Moorish part of town – the Albaicín – so I’ll head there and figure things out as I go.

My Spanish is rusty as f*** (I did a degree in Spanish and French and used to be fluent), but hopefully it’ll come back as I mingle with the locals again. Obviously the money’s a worry longer-term but I’ll work that out on the fly – hopefully by doing a bit of freelance TV work in Europe and using my TEFL certificates to get some casual teaching work. Oh and then there’s the writing, of course.

So there it is. I keep calling it the “Non-Plan” because it’s a plan that isn’t really a plan. And I must say, I’m rather liking it so far!

I’m now in a final frenzy of cleaning, packing, selling my last items on Gumtree, and generally winding things up ready to hit Melbourne Airport Tuesday afternoon. Then it’s all change as I head to Spain to start a whole new chapter.

Let’s see how it goes, eh…? 🙂