I’m not quite sure how old I was when I first watched The Italian Job, I only know that something about that film stayed with me for a very long time. At some point, possibly during my ‘anything to avoid homework’ daydreamy teenage years, I imagined I would go to Italy, buy a Mini and visit some of the incredible places I had seen in the film and learned about at school.
I guess lots of kids harbour similar dreams of travel and exploration that never get realised. It seemed the Universe had other plans for me too, as I never learned to drive until I was much older and by which time I was focussed almost entirely on being a mum.
Years went by … but somewhere in the back of my mind, that childhood dream was still tucked away, just hidden from view by the pressures that life was presenting. Then, when my youngest son was around 15 years old we were talking about holidays we might take on a budget. He suggested maybe going on a road trip … and suddenly BOOM!!! … The Italian Job was back in the room. It was all so obvious, we’d fly to Italy, I would hire a Mini and we would take a roadtrip from Rome to Florence … easy!
Actually not that easy, mainly due to the arrival of the COVID 19 pandemic, which for so many reasons, stalled those plans for quite a few more years.
But now the idea was out there, and I’d actually started planning an itinerary … set up a spreadsheet, looked into costs, and begun to think about all the wonderful places we could visit. Over the next few years, the idea grew and grew like a tiny bean into a giant beanstalk … I’d added city after city and attraction upon attraction, until my spreadsheet was around 300 lines long!
Realistically, it was becoming clear to me that I could never afford to do everything on my spreadsheet … unless I were to win the Lottery and that was unlikely as I never did it. The time had come to think outside of the box … ironically the answer to my problem came IN a box, a TentBox to be precise!
I figured out that if I were to buy a rooftent, I could put it on top of a Mini, thereby still realising some part of the Italian Job dream I’d been harbouring all those years, and at the same time making my trip practically affordable! It would also allow me greater freedom to travel to all of the extra places I was wanting to visit simply by driving my own car … freedom in a box, perfect!
So I bought a Mini. Ok, not a Mk1 Mini Cooper as used in the original film, but a nice roomy Countryman that could hold my rooftent and would keep someone of rapidly advancing years comfy for the 4k miles I was now intending to drive. Still she was a Mini and just like the ones in the original film, she could turn on a sixpence!
Next up was the rooftent. Deciding on which one to get took months, I looked at loads and loads (another spreadsheet) and finally settled on a TentBox Lite 2.0. I picked that one because it was relatively compact but had a double mattress, so if one of my kids wanted to join me they could. It also has windows on all sides and the roof, perfect for 360 views and stargazing. It was going to be my home for almost 4 weeks, so it needed to be just right … and it was.
I’ve done The Italian Job now, and I’ve decided to write about it in this blog … as I mentioned, I suspect there are other people like me who imagine that travel and exploration are out of reach. But with a little bit of luck and a steer in the right direction, it is absolutely possible! This blog is proof of that and my hope is that it will provide that direction for anyone who needs it.
I’m going to organise my trip by days, because when you break the whole thing down into smaller pieces, you can fit them back together in whatever pattern you like. Also because, keeping it simple makes even the adventure of a lifetime really not that hard to do at all.
Your own mind is the only thing holding you back, and as I realised during a ‘eureka’ moment somewhere in Tuscany, all you have to do is blow the bloody doors off!
Now I know the whole world is out there just waiting to be explored, I’m planning my next adventure, and of course I will share that too. In the meantime, happy travels, I hope to see a whole bunch more of us out there soon.
xx Sheryl xx