What we will miss

It is more a case of who not what; although what does include Marmite, real ales, crumpets, The Guardian, Book Group, the Archers, seeing PNE make it to the Premiership (in Anthony's dreams) the Foxton Centre, chip shops ... and many more things we've not thought of at the moment.

Who we will miss are all of our friends and close family;  Top of the list, of couse, are our son and his fiance, Matthew and Rachel, pictured here in the Lake District.  We're pleased that we will be seeing them in Italy in August and Spain for Christmas and New Year, when they will be coming out with luggage packed with Marmite and crumpets!

It would be fun to meet up with any friends who are visiting southern Europe while we are away.  Do get in touch if you think we might be nearby.

Money matters

Before we left we rang the two banks we have accounts with; Alliance and Leicester and Nationwide to inform them we would be travelling for 12 months. They both said they wanted us to ring them every 3 months, so they could update the information they had and to ensure our cards would not be stopped.

After the first three months we rang them, no problems, apart from the expense of international telephone calls.

After six months we rang them again. Nationwide now said they didn't need us to ring. We checked with the wise and wonderful on Motorhome Facts Forum and they confirmed that this wasn't necessary. Alliance and Leicester now say we need to ring them every nine weeks!

We use on-line banking when ever safe and possible. Alliance and Leicester blocked access in Slovenia, as they don't consider this a safe country to allow internet access. We have been able to access Nationwide everywhere.

Slovenia was the only country we had some problems with cash machines; our cards did not work in all the cash machines we came across.