Le Grand Depart…well, nearly!

Well…time to take a gap year. Yes, I know…at triple 17 as a dart player might say, I’m old! But having never attended university, I didn’t have the chance during my formative years of adulthood.

At the age of seventeen I left formal education. I had attended a ‘special’ school for the visually impaired that comprised of too few staff teaching eighty children between the ages of five and sixteen. Many subjects couldn’t be taught to O Level standard, so at the age of fourteen I was packed off to the local FE College where seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen year olds were trying to advance their learning whilst taking part in pirate radio and drugs! There was no support as such at College, and it’s fair to say it wasn’t a wholly enjoyable experience.

So when I finished my Os at sixteen, and then spent nearly a whole year being disillusioned on a City & Guilds course, I ditched education for the world of hard work. Thus, no gap year.

Now, in as near to a mid life crisis as I can get (no point in buying a flash car as, for some peculiar reason, I’m not allowed to drive) I’ve been given a sabbatical for the whole of 2014.

April to June are already sorted…a 73 day trip round south and east Africa. Ten countries in all.

But what to do for the rest of the year. Realistically, I’ll have to come home for periods of time. But to make most of the time available, I need plans. And that’s the dilemma. There’s so much to see. Countries I have travelled to in the past still have secrets waiting to be unlocked…but there are so many more that haven’t had to put up with me yet!

As my Grand Depart comes ever closer, so will decisions. My good friend, Diane Denney of somewhere2travel2.co.uk (other sites are NOT available) will no doubt begin wondering whether she should go on holiday…if for no other reason than to avoid another series of “what about”s and “could I”s! But in the meantime, confusion reigns. One thing is for certain…I won’t be going to university upon my return.