A Two-Month Trip Through Europe With 10 Kids? Now That’s What I Call Adventure!

You, on the other hand, may call it madness.

I could maybe, sort of, perhaps and at a push understand why.

With little over five weeks left until our European travels begin, I am once again finding myself in the final throes of organisation and preparation for the event.

Co-ordinating and packing for a two month trip for twelve people, ten of whom fall between the ages of 14 and 3-years-old, could easily be thought of as a feat only marginally more pleasurable than poking one’s eyeballs out with a cocktail stick or bathing in a tub of piranhas.

Add that we will be camping our way down through Europe in order to reach our final destination in Greece and you’ve instantly made things a tad more challenging.

Throw in the fact that we’ve only ever camped once before under the watchful eye and guidance of my brother within the safe and secure confines of a Scout Outdoor Centre in the leafy Surrey woodland and you would be forgiven for thinking we might either be completely bonkers or astonishingly adventurous.

I prefer to think that we could be the latter. My hunch is that we may well just be the former. If we were ever to reach retirement age and decided to write a book on our antics, it would likely be titled Insanity Masked as Adventure: How We Raised 13 Kids and Lived to Tell the Tale.

Either way, it’s happening.

The trip, not the book.

Mother’s Day is the launch date for our upcoming travels, where we will be found loading up our minibus and heading off through the Eurotunnel to lands yet undiscovered.

By us, at least.

We will be stopping in Germany, then camping our way through a mixture of mountains and beaches through Croatia, Montenegro and Albania. Then we will be settling in Halkidiki, Greece for a few weeks before heading our way back up again.

Aside from where we will be staying, we’ve yet to secure any firm plans for any of our destinations. Quite happy to leave ourselves open to the serendipitious opportunities that may present themselves, we know that there will be enough to see, do and experience as we go.

Because even the smallest of adventures can be found in the every day.

The most pressing adventure for now is the upcoming MOT for the minibus. As the vehicle is fairly new (to us), we have no idea how it will fare. Whether it will pass and, indeed, be sturdy and reliable enough for our trek through five countries and back, remains to be seen. For now we are honing our skills of simultaneously breath-holding and reciting a “please-don’t-have-anything-expensive-wrong-and-please-pass-the-MOT” mantra repeatedly.

Good MOT vibes are appreciated.

We hope you will follow our travels here on the blog. We will be posting new videos as we go on our YouTube channel so if you haven’t subscribed to it yet make sure you do and you’ll get the latest updates first. We will also be sharing our adventures on Twitter and Instagram too. We’d love you to join us. And if you’ve any ideas on what not to miss do let us know!