hello from gloucester soon to be travelling europe!

[dready sam]

hi everyone

came across this forum whilst looking up natural soap recipes (i haven't tried any yet!)

i have been trying to live more self-sufficient for a number of years now, growing veg, reusing & being more aware of what i'm buying and why. but now we are ready to move on to the next stage of our life adventure! we have given up our jobs & are going to travel europe next month for a while volunteering on organic farms & eco builds in exchange for food & somewhere to park our campervan. we plan to slowly make our way to bulgaria where we plan to buy some land & build an eco home. at the moment we're thinking straw bale but we hope to learn lots on our travels so may find an option that would work better for us.

although travelling we will be using fuel for the van our carbon footprint will still be much smaller than living in the 3 bed home we have now. we will cook over an open fire where possible so as not to use our gas stove & most importantly we will learn a huge amount!

i hope to be able to share ideas on here and learn lots :) i may not be able to access the internet for periods of time but hope to be able to pop in now & then :)

[Green Aura]

Welcome to Ish Sam. Sounds exciting, hope your plans work out.

[theabsinthefairy]

Sounds exciting - have a fantastic trip, and if you are passing through - there's a field for you to camp in if you want to cut hedges back!

[Millymollymandy]

Hi and welcome and it sounds like you are going to have an amazing adventure this summer!

[Thomzo]

Hi and welcome.
Your adventure sounds wonderful. Do keep us posted on your adventures. We'd love to hear about them.

Zoe

[battybird]

Good luck in your travels...love to hear how you get on! There are several places in Central Portugal who take volunteers and all those I have met seem to have a great time and learn loads. This forum is really good to get answers and ideas.

[MuddyWitch]

Welcome to ISH

and 'Bon Voyage'!!!

MW

[dready sam]

thanks for the welcomes :)

theabsinthefairy - thanks, i had a look at your blog & shop... very inspiring :) as an amateur photographer myself i hope to maybe sell some prints to make a little pocket money. we are really keen on helping out people who are living the sort of lifestyle we are working towards in exchange for some simple food & a place to park our van so if you're serious we might be in touch!

ruth56 - yes i've heard lots of great things about portugal & there seems a higher than average amount of people out there trying the self-sufficient lifestyle. its defiantly somewhere we want to go.

if anyone is interested we are volunteering through Help Exchange

[Moonwaves]

Sounds fabulous. I hope to do something similar in a year or two, when I will finally (hopefully!) be debt-free. Won't have much in savings but hopefully enough to put my stuff in storage for a year and then I want to travel around wwoofing and basically trying to figure out if I have what it takes to actually go for a full-on smallholding-type lifestyle. And possibly even finding my 'home' in the process.

Good luck with your travels. Having your own camper van will be a great help with that. You'll always have a home to get back to at the end of every day. Lovely idea.

[7cats]

Hi , we are living in Bulgaria ,do you know what area you want to buy in? theres a lot of very cheap houses & land in our village & we are between Ruse[where you enter Bulgaria if you cross the bridge coming from Romania] & Veliko Tarnovo, about an hours drive from the edge of Romania its a lovely country ,