Road trips no more

For years now my wife and I have talked of becoming “grey nomads” as they are called in Australia. Grey nomads are usually older people, say 65 upwards, who buy a mobile home or a towed caravan and set off on a circumnavigation by road around Australia taking as much time as they like, or more importantly, have. For non-Australians, that would equate to doing a circumnavigation of the United States as the countries are a similar size in land mass. Quite an undertaking.

We have also talked of doing a trip across the United States, maybe following route 66. I was fortunate enough to do a road trip back in the late 90’s for business from Los Angeles through to El Paso with a day stopover at Ventana Canyon Resort in Tucson Arizona. Now Tucson would be a place I would love to revisit.

For a change of travel mode, we would also love to do a canal trip by barge through France and/or England. Or cruise the rivers through France and Germany. I would also love to share the joy of Ireland with my wife who has never been. I wrote about the first of my two road trips in Ireland and I invite you to read about that here.

Our dreams though of further road trips are fading away in the swirling mists of discarded bucket lists. I am no longer able to drive and it would be inequitable to think of my wife doing all the driving. Age and health is forcing a constant reassessment of dreams and aspirations and further road trips haven’t made the cut.