You may recall I wrote a blog a number of weeks ago outlining my ambitious plans for retirement.  Part of this plan was an intention to live the life of a nomad for 12 months driving an expensive motorhome from one glorious location to another. Just me, my partner and our dog spending each day deciding what we are going to do, where we are going to travel next and not having a care in the world.

To ensure that this retirement dream did not necessarily become a nightmare in the first week, we hired a motorhome and headed off for 5 days and nights to Port Macquarie as part of a trial to see if we would enjoy the experience.

The verdict – we had a ball!

So much so, that the plan is to it all over again next year and we are even considering another road trip at Christmas, which is a little daunting considering the motorhome is the size of a small truck and the amount of traffic on the road at Christmas.

We did make a couple of “rookie” mistakes – we packed all our clothes into suitcases and put the suitcases in the motorhome when the smart thing to do would have been to pack the clothes and all the essentials straight into the storage available in the motorhome

Second rookie mistake, do you drive in or reverse into a campsite?

Well, this depends on the position of the power; freshwater outlet and grey water drain.

The correct decision to nose in or reverse in needs to be made before you lay out your groundsheet, and place your table, chairs and barbecue onto the groundsheet.  As you do look a little foolish when after you have set up home and then discover none of the hoses or extension cord will reach the fresh water tap, the power or the grey water drain because they are on the wrong side of the motorhome.  After this embarrassing mistake, you now need to pack up the ground sheet and all the furniture and move the motorhome to ensure all the required hoses and cord do reach the necessary connections - only made this mistake once.

I am most proud of the fact that I did drive the motorhome for over 1,000 kilometres without one incident. I did not hit anything, bottom out driving over any humps, drive under low bridges, drive with the tv antenna still up, or have anyone blast their horn or abuse me.  It may not sound a lot but as I have mentioned the motorhome is 24 feet long – a small truck – and the largest vehicle I have ever driven was an old 1969 VW Kombi.

In addition to my driving skills, I, more importantly, did also learn how to correctly empty the port-a-loo toilet cassette into the “dump” in the park without spilling any liquid on me or the ground.

So, the old saying “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is certainly not true.

The experience has given me confidence that the first step in my retirement plan is a definite. I look forward to that day in the future when my working life comes to an end and I am able to hit the road and drive off into the sunset or sunrise.

Of course, this all depends on whether I have driven into or reversed into the campsite.

I should also mention that I do not plan on retiring for a couple more years, the slush fund to pay for the motorhome is still short of the required cash.

What are your plans after retirement?