Travels in our campervan and that Monday morning feeling

It's strange how quickly Monday comes around.  It often feels as though you have only just stopped looking forward to Friday when it is time to get up for work on Monday morning! Sometimes it feels like the more you pack into a weekend the shorter it is.  Mia and I have just spent the weekend in Bristol with  my sister-in-law and her young family.  Filled with eating an amazing buffet  at ZaZa's Bazaar ( apparently the largest restaurant in England and definitely the most delicious and family-friendly one ) and very muddy walks through woods and up rivers, the weekend flew by.  And now, here I sit and it is Monday already. I've already crossed the starting line of the day and the finish line seems like a long way off. And a little part of me is wondering why we do it.  Why we go to work, filling our days with other people's stress and deadlines when life is so short and there are so many things that we forget to treasure in the freneticism of each day.

7 years ago Ninesh and I gave up our jobs, bought a battered old campervan, took the children out of school, rented out of the house and spent 6 months travelling around Europe. It was the best and bravest thing we have ever done.  We saw amazing sights: chased dolphins, climbed to the top of a volcano, rescued a hedgehog from the bottom of a cattle grid, sat on the Rialto in Venice, watched wild Flamenco dancing in Spain, let the Atlantic waves wash over us in Portugal, saw bright pink flamingos bathing in volcanic pools in Sardinia and tasted bread made from chestnuts in Corsica. We climbed the Eiffel Tower, looked at the Leaning Tower of Pisa and paced the pavements of Las Ramblas. Joss learnt to swim, Mia fell in love with tortoises.  The kids played " tourtist information," at every campsite. Each day was an adventure, a blank page waiting to be turned.  But the most amazing thing was spending 6 months being a family. We had no deadlines, no appointments to make or meetings to plan for. Nobody judged us on what we had  achieved or inspected the impact of our actions. We were free just to be. Two adults, two young children and a world reaching to the horizon, waiting to be explored. 

Coming back was hard.  Reality really did bite although the kids were very excited to see our house. 
" Look Mia," shouted Joss, " our stairs!" 
" Look Joss," shouted Mia " our plates. They're just the same!"
And it made our hearts sink, Ninesh and mine, because they were right everything was just the same.  We tried to cling on to the sense of awe and wonder of our travels.  We tried to hold onto to the sense of timelessness and  the belief that each day belonged to you. We tried to remember how it felt to be just us,  travelling like a tiny family island through the world.  But life always intrudes in the end.  Ninesh and I found new jobs, Mia and Joss went back to school and started growing up without us.  
But we didn't sell our van.  
We still have it parked outside our house. 
 Waiting. 
Reminding us of a time when each day was a big adventure and that Monday morning feeling was a distant memory.