The Countdown Has Begun – France in T -3 days | A Crafty Traveler

To be honest, the countdown started long ago but a daily posts starting at 78 days would get tiresome pretty quickly.

This weekend is our last in Belfast, as well as the last one in our comfort zone. By next Friday we should be in our temporary home in Pezenas, France, feeling like a couple of English-speaking fish out of water and either thinking “what have we done!?” or “Bring it on!” I really hope it’s the latter rather than the former.

Beacon of Hope sculpture, otherwise known in Belfast as Nuala with the Hula

The rest of our time in Belfast will be spent packing up everything we think we might need for France and then packing away everything else. We only have one small car to get from point A to point B and the plan is to travel light….really light. One of the things that I am hoping this undertaking will help to teach me is how to live with less and packing light is the first place to start.

Our soon-to-be home, Pezenas

We all have far too many ‘things’ and when you’re sitting in the comfort of your own home it’s all too easy to overlook. Do you really need four different frying pans, or 32 different pairs of shoes? If you stop and think about it I reckon the answer would be probably no. It’s just more money spent, resources wasted, things to clean and organize, and probably at some point, pack into a box and move. I like ‘stuff’ just as much as the next guy but I’m slowly coming to the realization that less really is more and I’m determined to be conscious of accumulating things from now on.

Rant done.

In two sleeps (yes, I still countdown to exciting events like a five-year old), we will depart Belfast and make the four-hour journey to Rosslare, Co. Wexford, to board a Celtic Link ferry to Cherbourg, France. Eighteen hour later, yes you read that right, eighteen hours later, we will alight on continental Europe. Night one will be spent in Cherbourg and then we push on towards Pezenas, either via the west coast or over the Massif Central, depending on the weather. We’re hoping to arrive at our final destination on Friday but we may decide to spend an extra night on the road if we find ourselves wanting to stop a lot along the way.