One word? When seven would do…

January was quite an up and down month. We saw 2011 in with Marcus and Michelle, with a visit from The Barts on New Years Day

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I turned 37 ” alt=”” />

We had a visit to Lynda & Stuart’s, Willow went off to have some last minute stuff done to her (which ended up not being done and she went somewhere else instead). We found tenants for the house, Ady and I both handed our notice in at work, the whole getting ready to leave ramped up another gear.

The kids and I spent time at the beach joining in with the World Beach Project pebble picture making ” alt=”” />

There was a real feeling of biding time on one hand while time was fast running out on the other.

February Early February was packing up the house, turning things off, closing things down and generally shelving our lives.

I left the library and overindulged at my leaving party
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Ady left his job and was also packed off with many gifts and well wishes and we had our Bye Then Party which was just fabulous and bought home to us once again how fab our friends are 🙂

We finally left Osborne Drive, just over 17 years after we moved in. An emotional but right feeling.
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And we had our first night in Willow – slightly scary that it didn’t happen until after we’d actually left the house, but a very exciting and monumental happening just the same.
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We had our first dramas in the van – a campsite not being at all suitable so having to pull over and ring around to find another one and a big puddle of liquid under Willow when we woke one morning It seems funny now to think either of those things fazed us really, a marker of how far we’ve come 🙂
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In March we spent a week getting used to living in Willow on a fairly deserted campsite where we were not allowed to walk on the grass. Davies experimented with swearing, we tried our hand at public transport, we saw an otter and we took our very last picture of us as pre WWOOFers.
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And then we were WWOOFers! We started at Steward Wood, an intentional community on a very steep hillside in Devon. It was a total baptism of fire, two weeks of the hardest physical work I think either Ady or I had ever done, carrying wood up and and down hills, chopping wood, cooking on a woodburner and eating a vegan, alcohol free diet. We used compost loos, slept in our tent in temperatures as low as minus four, lived off grid, washed our clothes with a washboard and mangle, washed ourselves in an outdoor bathhouse with water heated by a wood burner and had the most amazing two weeks ever! The kids still cite Steward Wood as their favourite host and certainly I walked away with tears in my eyes knowing I’d changed forever as a result of my time there.

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Next was Paddington Farm Trust, a week long WWOOF host in Glastonbury. We had a dreadful start there as Davies and Scarlett were attacked by a girl which traumatised all four of us and had us questioning our whole adventure. It remained a slightly odd place to spend time for the duration of our week there but did lead to meeting Jill the next door neighbour who has become a very influential person in our lives. And we got loads of animal contact there with chickens, ducks, pigs, sheep and goat. ” alt=”” />
oh and tractors! ” alt=”” />

We left there and went next door to Jill’s for two weeks which took us into the beginning of April where we stayed in various holiday cottages, went swimming, spent time getting to know Glastonbury, I had massages, we got to know Johnnie, Johnnie’s parents, Sheila the office manager and really enjoyed being part of the Middlewick family at the very beginning of Jill’s time there.
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From Somerset we ducked back down to Devon again to Windy Ridge, a beef cattle farm and little C&CC campsite. Easily the best fed we were in the whole year as WWOOFers, infact quite possibly the best fed we’ve ever been in our lives, we had Famous Five style lunches, beef based dinners and enormous puddings with cake for morning and afternoon tea breaks. We did a lot of gardening and the kids did a lot of dog walking but I honed by mowing skills which proved very useful through the year to come. We had a visit from most of The Clarkes and we had our first (and only!) go at milking cows 🙂
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We saw April out at Evergreen Farm, another accidental WWOOF host which wasn’t actually a WWOOF host where we probably learnt the most all year – slaughtering, taking livestock to the abbattoir, processing and butchering, selling at market, buying and selling livestock at auctions, helping create a campsite and generally getting involved in pretty much everything you could think of to do with farming and smallholding. It was our longest time spent at any host, nearly 3 weeks and despite challenges it was a very valuable experience.
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May saw us back to Glastonbury again, a week with Jill where Ady celebrated his birthday with a walk up and down the Tor and a trip to Chalice Well followed by award winning fish and chips at Knights.” alt=”” />” alt=”” /> ” alt=”” />
We left there and were time share WWOOFers for a week just down the road. We did some time with Jane and Rob on their micro smallholding where they hand shear their sheep and we went to a Humble Pail and Peter who mostly has cups of tea and wees around the perimeter of his field to keep deer away! We did our annual photoday and thrashed lots of nettles. ” alt=”” />
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We then holiday cottage sat for our friend Lesley in Montgomery, Wales. It was a lovely few days break having our own space, time to call our own in a pretty location and we ‘earned our keep’ doing some gardening” alt=”” /> and then we finished the month with friends at Jan and Jonathan’s, the only real gathering we managed to get to in 2011 so all the more precious for it. ” alt=”” />
And I rolled down this hill too this year!

In June we WWOOFed at Bryn Mawr, our craziest Welsh mountainside hosts who were totally off grid, away from everyone and everything and generally pushed every single button the four of us had. But still educational, with high points and positives and one we eventually with perspective are looking back at fondly.
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My parents came and joined us in Llangollen for a long weekend which was lovely if slightly surreal being taken out for pub dinners after so long living at Bryn Mawr.

We finished June in North Wales still at Pen Y Bonc, a very inspiring smallholding of tiny proportions which managed to be all but self sufficient *and* sell stuff too, keep bees and make mead and the hosts Jonathan and Lisa had a very cool neighbour in the shape of Ian the Apple Guy and friend in Eric Maddern :).
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We had trips to Bangor Pier and the Menai Bridge, to Anglesey and to see puffins while in the area.

July began with some much needed time off – we visited Cae Mabon, Eric Maddern’s place and fell in love with that. Meeting heroes should always be such 🙂” alt=”” />” alt=”” />
We stayed with Lynda and Stuart, wonderful hosts as ever, met up with my friend Jay at MoSI and then had a fab few days camping with FabBabs, the Barts and J&J. It was all fabulous, particularly returning the empty milk bottle in the middle of the night and telling everyone we met about the service and putting Babs in the tent bag 🙂
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We had our encounter with our maddest individual host this year at New House Farm, rather freakily being relatives of FabBabs (although it was the by marriage one who was mad rather than the actual relative). More funny stories to add to the adventure and some amazing sunsets and fab evenings spent cooking over an open fire.
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We had more time at FabBabs while Willow had some repair work done. Added bonus of Bart time there too.

Then to Durham, which I think remains my personal favourite WWOOF host at Cookes West Wood Farm – an intentional community of two families running an organic veg box scheme, living within the local community and building their own amazing woodland homes. I loved the place, the people and the feel of the place. I loved living in a yurt and washing my hair in a trug. The others struggled with various things including the wasps and the James Brown compost loo but for me everything was fab.

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August kicked off with a stay in a holiday cottage with my parents in Silverdale for a week. It was mostly good although it did answer for us the question of whether of not we should go into some sort of venture together with them. ” alt=”” />” alt=”” />. Ady, Davies, Scarlett and I also had a couple of nights in Morcambe before moving to our next host, heading along to the Sandcastle festival on the beach and seeing Eric’s statue. ” alt=”” />.

So to our last English WWOOF hosts, Andy and Ruth at Fairfield. where we had some lows – sanding doors for days on end, some highs – singing along to Andy’s guitar, playing games, watching kingfishers, going to several Humble Pails and some brand new experiences such as caving…” alt=”” />” alt=”” />” alt=”” />

We met up with Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna in Llangollen ” alt=”” />” alt=”” />
for a lovely week camping together – the first time we’d seen them since we left Sussex. The kids had loads of freedom for climbing hills and having adventures and we enjoyed people watching, chatting and playing Shut The Box.
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Then we headed to zone three – Scotland!

We kicked off with a night or two in a campsite near Motherwell” alt=”” />
before taking two ferry rides to arrive at our first Scottish hosts at Daisy Cottage where we saw September in. Lovely people, fab place, Tarbert. Not really much in the way of WWOOFing but we all enjoyed being there and getting to know them and where they lived while doing the odd spot of work here and there, mostly on their new build house down the road.
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Very excitingly Ady and I both used our fishing rods for the first time and caught fish off the pier in Tarbert which we had for dinner 🙂” alt=”” />” alt=”” />

Davies who has always been a far better parent to Scarlett than either Ady or I spent ages patiently coaching her ” alt=”” />

After Tarbert we had our first ever night wild camping, parked alongside Loch Ness. We had some magical times in Willow and certainly far better views and exciting adventures over the coming months but watching the moon shine down over Loch Ness while eating pizza and singing along to the BBC2 festival on the radio with Ady, Davies and Scarlett will forever remain in my memory as one of the best moments of my life 🙂 ” alt=”” />

On from there to Rosemarkie for a fabulous holiday with The Barts and MMC’s, I think the only thing missing was FabBabs! We saw less dolphins but more seals than the previous year, the weather was warmer but wetter and it was nice to be there with a campervan and without a broken ankle!
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We had our only Campervan Birthday this year when Davies turned 11. He asked for cinnamon rolls for breakfast and pizza for dinner so I was busy making dough and managed to decorate Willow with balloons and banners the night before. I cheated with a shop bought birthday cake this year though.
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And then began what for us felt like the biggest part of the adventure in 2011. Sure leaving our jobs, home and belongs behind to go and live in a campervan was a big deal, certainly staying with different families in different counties every couple of weeks was a challenge but it was our six weeks wild camping, travelling up one side of Scotland, across the top and back down the other side that was the most exciting, life changing, tough, beautiful and amazing.
It was a bonding experience for the four of us, life skill and to a small degree survival skill developing, we saw sights, heard sounds, experienced landscapes and discovered wildlife beyond our expectations. We didn’t see the northern lights but we saw more than enough to make up for that. We fell in love with a new landscape every day and frankly when you’re ‘all about the view’ there aren’t many better ways to spend your days than autumn in Scotland in a campervan.

I think the best blogpost summary is the one on Skye but even I started to run out of superlatives to describe everything 😉
The September set of flickr photos is here, the October set here. I can’t even really pick favourites of those.

Even with our previously fairly inconventional lifestyle before our WWOOFing year AND our year of WWOOFing we had never done anything quite like the six weeks we spent on the road. We had no money, no real plans and pretty much just went where the road took us. We grabbed food where we could find it, used public loos to empty our toilet, fill up our water supplies and do stuff like washing ourselves. I think the most memorable shower was in Ullapool where I happened upon a public toilets with a shower block and sent a text to Ady telling him to get there quick with towels and shampoo! I washed my hair with a plastic beaker and a face flannel to dry it at John O Groats and I shaved my legs in Loch Maree! Livin’ the dream 😉

We didn’t manage any fishing or hunting but we did get some bargains at the CoOp and learnt to live with what we had, rationing a bottle of cider and a bottle of coke, a packet of peanuts and some cheap bars of chocolate in a very Famous Five style, playing card games and noting down our daily scores on Popmaster. We have songs and foods and sayings that will forever afterwards transport all four of us back to those intensive times in Willow and as challenging as they were I know all four of us will always treasure those times and remember them for the rest of our lives.

We had a week in a holiday cottage with Lynda and Stuart before we left for Mallaig and our last WWOOF host. Willlow justified the lots of breakdown cover we had running alongside each other this year with a Real Breakdown and as our adventure drew to a close those last couple of nights at Mallaig all playing dare with each other hoping someone else would crack and say they didn’t want to attend the very last host will be times I’ll always remember with great clarity.

We just about scraped in our last WWOOF host in October too, well we arrived on 31st and were there for first couple of weeks of November too.

Eigg was amazing, our hosts Neil and Sue at Croft 13 were great and will hopefully become neighbours of some sort in the coming year. We were sold on the idea of crofting, island living, the small isles and I spent lots and lots of time pacing on the beach trying to get our next move straight in my head. ” alt=”” />
We had a fab time at the community Bonfire Night fireworks, a great night out at the ‘pub’ and made friends and fell in love with this corner of the UK. ” alt=”” />
And thus ended our WWOOFing adventure – for 2011 anyway!

We then started chasing the next chapter, which began with an email conversation with the neighbouring Isle of Rum and led to us leaving Eigg early for a trip to Rum to look around the island and specifically bareland crofts up for grabs. We were taken enough with it to start the process of applying for a croft having spent plenty of time thinking it over and talking between the four of us, opening it out to friends for discussion and learning as much as we can about it.
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Then began the Long Journey South” alt=”” /> to my parent’s house. We caught up with family, friends and belongings.
” alt=”” />” alt=”” />. We had our ceremonial Last Night In Willow before putting her into temporary retirement at our friends’ farm, ready for next spring when we’re hoping to spend time in her once again.
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December kicked off with waking up in Marcus & Michelle’s house. Which along with FabBabs house is the closest we have to a home currently 🙂 We celebrated Josie and Alys’ birthdays with them in Soft Play Hell.

Scarlett had her ninth birthday. Nine, seriously! ” alt=”” />

Then along came Christmas 🙂 Christmas camp was fab, all the more special because it may end up being our last, was punctuated with time at FabBabs either side and had Journey to Bethlehem kicking it off which was ace.
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And Davies did his very fab Jake The Peg performance at Cabaret Night 🙂

Christmas Happened 🙂 Scarlett had The Best Present Ever in Humphrey the hamster 🙂
Davies (slightly belatedly) got a 3DS ” alt=”” />.
Boxing Day we had a walk on the downs ” alt=”” /> and the day after we joined with the Other Goddards for an annual Arundel walk including the now rather traditional Exciting Episode which this year was Scarlett and Jack getting stuck in the mud 😆
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We caught up with more old friends over Christmas and then saw out 2011 in the same company we’d seen it in with – this time with added Chloe 🙂
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We started 2011 not really knowing what it might hold for us. We were hoping to meet new friends and learn new skills. We wanted to test and challenge ourselves, to spend time together as a family and to work out what we really, really want from life. We knew we wanted something different to what we had we just were not sure quite what that might be. 2011 was a year of learning for us, a year of discovery, a year of adventure, a year of wondering and wandering.