But all that is about to change, we are about to move into a different way of life, for a while.

In the past 18 months the longest we have stayed anywhere is around three weeks. That has meant a lot of travelling and a lot of movement. While we have enjoyed it, it has had its toll. Work has been affected by the time we are on the move. Deadlines have been slipping on my lighting design work, posts have not been written on the blogs, finances have not been dealt with. We have talked in the past about how we need to stay somewhere with an internet connection to get work done, we have looked at that situation and decided to make a shift.

The first change is that for the next three months we will be staying in a house we are renting in Tilburg, The Netherlands. We have come back to Europe because we both have work commitments that need us to be around occasionally for the next few months. I have a project, a theatre in England, completing and I need to be around to complete the commissioning. This is likely to be my last large lighting project, and a complex one at that, so I want to be around enough to get it right.

Cheta has a show in Tilburg on Monday June 21st. She is part of a year long piece of work by Zeus Heunderop, the city’s ambassador for the arts and music scene, the Nachtsburgermeester. Each of the 13 moons in the year has a moonscout and Cheta is one of them. She is looking at the area of femininity through the eyes of Amanda, the heroine of her show. So she needs to be around to work with the actors, musicians and technicians (including myself as lighting designer!).

This period will give us a breathing space to work on the specific projects as well as develop ‘Earth Pilgrim’, ‘Male eXperience‘ and ‘Female eXperience‘. In addition I am working a new online project to bring the world of Lighting Design onto the internet, but more on that later in the year. We have both made a decision to combine the writing we have been doing on ‘Rising from the Ashes’ and ‘ChetaLive’ into ‘Earth Pilgrim’. You may already have seen an increase in the articles on this site, you will in the future see a greater posting frequency on the site. We are focusing ourselves to make best use of the time we have available.

The second change is an even bigger one. From the end of July we are starting a house-sit in southern Spain. It’s a beautiful house in the hills above the Mediterranean. The fantastic thing is that this will be for a three to four year period! We will talk more about this later but for now all I can say is WOW! This will be an amazing time for us as we get used to settling in a house, with all that entails.

The great thing about it is that the owners will be going there, from Belgium, on a regular basis so we will be travelling for around four periods a year. We have great plans for this.

So when is a traveller not a traveller. In my view it’s when he stops travelling, at all…

It’s a mistake to think that you have to be travelling all the time, it’s the attitude of mind that is important. For us it is important that we are not settling into our house and leaving our life as Earth Pilgrims behind. Our aim to let go of possessions and concentrate on the nature of our lives is still at the forefront of our lives. We have reduced our footprint in the world and it is our aim to retain that. Settling in Spain, for a fixed period, is just part of our aim to explore and understand the culture of travel.

We are still Earth Pilgrims and we still see our lifestyle as substantially different fro what we lived in the past. That is important to us and will remain so.

What do you think? How do you live your life? What is crucial for you?

Let me know in the comments, I would love to explore how other people live.

A year ago I left my cottage in the Derbyshire hills in the UK and joined my partner on the road. She had given up her house several years previously and had been travelling ever since. I earn my living as a designer and so I needed to make careful arrangements if this money was to continue. I achieved this and started a new career as a writer, speaker and blogger on travel and men’s issues.

In the past year we have travelled all over the world, several times, and only increased our thirst for, and enjoyment of, travel in all its forms. We have been to Australia 3 times, Fiji, Bali, India, China, Singapore, England, Ireland, Netherlands, France, Belgium, Spain. We have attended seminars, house-sat, stayed in hotels and apartments and travelled by plane, train, boat, car, bus and foot.

The important issue is how to do this and keep a business going, maintaining your income and sanity. Here are a few pointers on how:

1. Home

Let your house or flat go. It doesn’t work if you keep a base, you keep going back there, confusing the issue completely. I did this through 2008 and cost me a lot of money and created a lot of difficulty for me. In the 6 month rental of my cottage I was only there for 6 weeks.

2. Storage

Get a self-storage unit which is convenient to an airport you tend to use a lot. In my case my base was in London so I chose Heathrow. This is a busy airport and one I am likely to use through work and family visits. I put all my ‘stuff’ in here that I don’t want to travel with but don’t want to part with yet, that bit will come later, I assure you.

3. Address

Arrange for a virtual office address in a convenient location. I use a company called OfficeFront in London, again convenient to Heathrow. I used to have a physical office there but now they look after my office phone number – passing calls to my mobile anywhere in the world or emailing messages, my physical post – scanning and emailing it to me once a week, my banking – banking any cheques that come in. Most important of all they provide me with an address I can use as my home address, something you cannot do without.

4. Luggage

Get 2 (and only 2) bags that are tough and not too big, for all your travel ‘stuff’. In today’s increasingly difficult travel worlds baggage has become a dirty word with airlines. The big one, for check-in should be a maximum of 20kgs and the small one 7kgs, although i’m usually around 10kgs. Best to carry it on your back, the attendants tend not to look at it there. I carry a small digital scale  with me so I can deal with luggage issues quickly, especially in the airport. You can have some lightweight pack away bags in your luggage to cope with ‘weight’ issues. If your hand luggage is being checked for weight take your laptop out first. It always works and it reduces the weight considerably.

5. Computer & Internet

Take great care to plan your digital and electronic needs, the amount of equipment can spiral out of control. For me a working laptop and gear are essential. I am working as I travel and I need all my software and data. I have a MacBook Pro with Parallels so I can run Windows as well. I have a lovely Apple wireless mouse and only the cables and adaptors I need. I carry 3 international power adaptors for computer, phones etc. One absolute essential is a portable wifi router. Connecting it to a fixed ethernet point creates a wireless network for me and my partner, although the MacBook creates a great wifi net work as well. I carry 2 phones, my UK 3G phone, mainly for incoming business and family calls, and my unlocked phone for a local PAYG sim card. I use Skype wherever possible for outgoing calls.

6. Other Bits

Your home is where you travel so carry some personal bits to aid your comfort, travelling is not about roughing it. The main I carry item is a CPAP machine to help my Sleep Apnoea and my snoring, believe me this is essential when I don’t know where I am going to be sleeping! I have an extension cable drum for this, which is also available for computer use out in the garden. I carry a small amount of essential items such as, salt, pepper, herbs, vegetable stock, extra virgin olive oil; they help my cooking. I have incense to help deal with unexpected smells and stuff for mosquito bites. I carry a small stock of DVD’s and books which I send back to the office when I am finished with them.

7. Clothes

Clothes are so personal that it’s not something I want to say too much about. Keep them few and make them washable and crease-proof. Buy cheap clothes as you travel and keep rotating them by throwing old ones away when you buy new ones. I have a set of smart clothes and shoes, I never know when a lucrative deal needs personal negotiation! Colour matching is important and weight is critical. When flying wear small, soft shoes (no metal!) and leave your belt in the luggage (don’t ask me why they focus so much on that!).

8. Money

Money is essential… But how you access it is fraught with problems. My debit and credit cards keep getting locked in foreign countries. Their automatic systems think they detect fraud. Always thank them for this but keep the number handy to phone them, they should be able to reset it while you wait at an ATM, if not get another bank. I use HSBC who are very good at sorting out problems. I once had a phone call from them while I was standing at an ATM in India cursing, they were checking all was OK and quickly unlocked the account, amazing service. My partner uses HSBC Premier giving her accounts in different counties, this is extremely useful.

9. Car

What on earth are you doing with a car, you say, I thought you travelled all the time. At the moment I still have it and use it when travelling around Europe, that may well change having calculated that hiring a car when I need it is actually cheaper. When I travel out of Europe I leave the car at an off airport car park near Heathrow. If you book in advance you can get amazing deals for long term storage. At the moment my car is stored for 5 months with Purple Parking for a low cost and it is totally secure.

10. Planning and Spontaneity

We like our travels to be spontaneous having both spent years over organising family holidays. We often move and book on the spur of the moment and have got great deals. Planning is still needed to deal with fixed future events, particularly where work is concerned, and to get even greater deals. A well structured balance between these is necessary for a truly relaxed and stimulating time. I haven’t yet just moved to the single tickets only category yet but I feel that is on the way.

That covers the generality of what I have discovered to date. What have I missed…

After a wonderful trip down through the centre of Spain, arriving at the house in the Sierra Nevada felt great. It looked like a basic cortijo (small house), and guess what, it was! About the size of a London one-room apartment I would say. What makes up for that though is the stunning view of the Sierra Nevada at the back of the house.

At a lovely shaded terrace you can sit down to take it all in. Sunrise to the right, sunset to the left, what else do you want.

Well, water!!! Just before we got here the mains got turned off and `the people on the hill` have no water supply. There are two large depositos that serve as a backup. My first idea was that it wouldn´t be much of a problem. And frankly it isn’t. After one week I am just very aware of the importance of water. And how in the western world we are literally used to having it at our fingertips. The number of times that I have turned on the tap, to get some water for tea for instance, or to quickly clean my hands, to rinse out a dusty cup, or clean a plate after eating, gee wiz! No water for the toilet  – so we flush with a bucket.

Every time we do go out – to the town for shopping or to go somewhere – we make sure we carry all the plastic 5litre bottles we have saved and we stop by a little fountain in the centre of the village to fill them all up. Together with the water in the deposito, that keeps us going for a couple of days.

Getting to the house is an adventure in itself. Luckily Graham has a 4×4, as you can only get there over a 4 kilometre dirt road. And although that sound interesting, 4k of bumping around every time you want to go somewhere is proving to be a bit of a challenge for me…

The pictures on the 2009 Photo Album page tell the rest of the story…

Click here to watch my video

I made this small video to reminisce about the stay.

Leave the town on the south side. Follow the tarmac road until you see a sign on your right saying: Welcome! (and more in Spanish).

From that sign, you drive along the road to the second big bend to the right. In the middle of that bend you turn left onto the dirtroad that goes off from there. You follow that dirtroad up the hill.

When you come to a fork in the road covered in red sand, you take the lower road to the right rounding a ploughed field. You follow that dirtroad for about 2 kilometers.

About 25 meters after you reach the lowest part of the second slope, you turn left between the bush and the bamboo, onto another dirtroad.

You follow that dirtroad until you hit a T-junction with a figtree in the middle. Turn right here.

Follow this dirtroad until you reach a ruin on top of a hill. The road turns 90 degrees in front of the property. You STOP there.

Turn the car around and drive BACK on the same road you came up on. After about 10 meters you see a smaller dirtroad going off to the right. This path is the entrance to the house.

Now, see how your TomTom deals with that…