Welcome to Trailing Ivy – the blog

The Africa leg beckons.

Hi there.

Welcome to a new newsletter about our travels and day-to-day life with Ivy, our old and considerably wonky Iveco camper.

We’ve already been travelling in Europe for over a year. As we get ready to enter the Africa leg of our trip, it seems like a good time to launch a blog. I’ve been meaning to do this since we set off, but reached decision saturation as we did the gazillion things required to get going, including moving house and completing another extreme downsizing exercise. I melted down quite spectacularly one day over a page of Wordpress goobledygook and decided to start with social media instead.

You might have already been following us on Instagram or Facebook as we travelled slowly through France, Spain, Portugal and Italy. We’ll still post snippets on there but this longer-form, more chatty, direct format feels better suited to the way we travel and the way I like to record our journeys.

So, Africa. There is much to discuss about the why, the where and the how. For now, it’s enough to say that Africa was our first travel love and we’ve enjoyed many short backpacking trips to different parts of the continent. But driving through it? That’s a different kettle of fish. It’s something we have dreamed of doing and it’s been a long time coming. It’s exciting, and also somewhat intimidating. Contrary to our original plan, we’ll be driving down the west side of the continent because the overland eastern route is currently impossible due to the conflict in Sudan. The west can be a bit tougher than the eastern side, until you reach southern Africa. I think this might be a bit of an understatement. Sometimes we question whether we’re up to it. There may be some swearing and crying. We’ll soon find out.

There’s some more info on the About page. Proper posts will begin soon! See you then.

For now, as we prepare for the 53-hour ferry journey from Genoa to Morocco (mainly snack shopping), here’s just a few Ivy highlights from Europe…

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