It dawned on me last year that, as I approached my 60th birthday, I had the option of taking my teacher’s pension. I only taught for around 18 years, so this was never going to be enough to retire on. However, along with a couple of other pensions from other careers, it was enough for me not to have to work full time anymore. And so began what I’m jokingly calling Project 60. This involves me taking my pensions, dropping to three working days a week and, significantly, taking the whole of June off to go travelling. I was delighted when my request for these last two options were accepted by my employers!
I’ve had a number of possible ideas in recent years, adventures I’d love to do if I ever had the time and money. The first was to set foot on Antarctica. I’d long been fascinated with the history of the early exploration of the great white continent- Shackleton, Amundson and Scott, among others. This would involve picking up an Antarctic cruise ship from Ushuaia at the eery southern tip of South AMerica, having flown from Buenos Aries, having flown there from the UK, and probably not directly. The cruise alone would cost around £7k. Amazing though this experience would have been, it was going to absorb a considerable chunk of my resources for probably just a couple of brief excursions onto the ice.
My second idea was to spend a month on a rented narrowboat, undertaking a grand voyage of the waterways of England. Despite absolutely no experience of this, it had an appeal- the pace, the changing scenery, the geocaching opportunities! It was certainly going to be cheaper than Antarctica! However, my research soon showed that negotiating endless locks would soon become a chore at best, bordering on impossible to do alone.
Then I hit upon my third idea, an extended rail journey around Europe! Along with video phone calls and visiting Estonia, taking a train from London to Europe had been an impossibility when I grew up. The creation of the Channel Tunnel and the Eurostar service schanged all that. Apart from one weekend in Paris about 15 years ago, I’ve never really availed myself of this opportunity, and so I started to do a bit more digging. Where will I go? Which places interested me? Where would I stay? What would it cost?
I love planning a trip almost as much as the journey itself, and so the next few weeks saw me sketching out a route, scouring the Interrail website and looking at geocaching highlights in the cities of Europe. I now had a wildly ambitious itinerary in mind and needed an injection of reality! That came from a chance conversation with a friend who mentioned a Facebook group called Interrailing for the Older Crowd. I lurked there for a few weeks before bravely sharing my early thoughts and draft schedule. The comments confirmed what I suspected, that I was trying to cram far too much in. I was in danger of making it an exercise in ticking places off rather than discovering them. I cut down my long-list and spent many evenings looking at reasons why I might want to visit a place (and finding one particular geocache was not reason enough!) I started to develop a few rules to help identify possible destinations:
- Was it straightforward to get there by train?
- Was there enough there to interest me for a few days?
- Were there some interesting geocaches for me to find?
- Did others have positive experiences of visiting there?
It was likely that barring the odd day trip, I’m likely to mostly be visiting cities. I’m fine with that though. I’ve never lived in a big city, but have always enjoyed my visits. Cities bring with them many benefits for this sort of trip- easy access by rail (and air), plenty of options for accomodation, plenty to see and do and learn about, and people to meet.
I soon discovered a number other useful resources, including the fabaulous Man in Seat 61 Tools such as this, along with other social media feeds, helped me avoid some big mistakes, and introduced me to a number of hints, tips and suggestions. A few other important ‘rules’ started to develop in my mind:
- Although I love geocaching, and recognised that it often served as a tour guide in its own right, this is not to be purely a geocaching trip.
- I want to enjoy the journey as much as the destination. Rail is one of my favourite forms of travel and brings with it opportunities that you don’t get from driving, flying or (my least favourite means of transport) coach travel.
- Although I’m very happy in my own company, I want to meet people. I don’t mean that I want to collect loads of new friends, but I want to learn about how people differ from place to place, not just the buildings, beer and banknotes. I’m a natural extrovert, so chatting to people won’t be a problem. I might even hold a couple of meet-and-greet geocaching events! I often hear of people who meet others on their journey, become friends, decide to travel together and, in some case, enter relationships with them. It’s not my intention to do any of these things, or to be diverted from what I want to do just to hang out with someone else, but we’ll see!
- I want to be as flexible as possible; I don’t want to become a slave to my itinerary. Maybe I’ll stay in a city a bit longer if I’m enjoying it, or leave if I’m ready to move on. I hope to be spontaneous, rather than have a strict schedule in each city. This brings with it other challenges, such as ensuring that I have accomodation and that there are trains when I need them. A couple of friends, and my daughters, hope to join me at various points and so I’ll need to have some fixed points along the way
- I also want variety; variety in the types of trains I used- Eurostar, local trains, sleeper trains, international journeys. I intend to stay in different types of accomodation. I don’t mind using hostels, and have continued to use them far longer into my life than most, although the thought of my entire trip being in shared dorms didn’t thrill me! Air BnB has brought affordable, quirky and plentiful opportunity, and the comfort of an occasional hotel certainly has its appeal! I want to do different and intersting things, and not the same thing in each city. If I enjoy a walking tour of Brussels, that doesn’tnecesarily mean I’ll do the same in Luxembourg.
- I’m going to try and avoid places I’ve already been to. I’ve had many holidays in Spain, Portugal and France; I’ve visited Poland, Estonia and Finland, but there’s a swathe of countries running NW to SE that I’ve rarely been to. If I’m prioritising, I’ll also try to avoid going to places that I’m likely to return to for a separate holiday, such as Amsterdam and Rome.
- I want this to be a reflective trip. I don’t mean I’m going out there to ‘find myself’ or anything like that! My life hasn’t given me many opportunities for extended travel like this and I want to make the most of it. I intend to read up on the places I visit, improve my frankly terrible language skills, avoid experiencing it all through my phone screen, and to try new things- culture, art, music, food, beer. I also want to chronicle my trip in some way. No doubt I’ll be taking many photos and logging several geocaches. But this very occasional blog could also become a useful repository for my experiences and thoughts and a place where family and friends can keep up with what I’d been up to if they’re interested.
So here I am. Maybe I’ll run out of steam or get bored of this. Maybe it’ll get repetetive and uninteresting or I’ll start to resent the time it takes to do. I probably won’t update it every day, or even in every place I visit. Perhaps it’ll become a thing I do on the train? I’ll probably do a couple more pre-journey updates before I set sail but I don’t want to peak too soon, and I definitely don’t want to bore you!
There’s still a few more months before it happens anyway, and lots can change in that time. For now, however, here’s my early plans:
Thursday 28th May – head to London after work, stay near King’s Cross, with a geocaching Event at the Union Tavern (GCBHY12)
Friday 29th May – take the Eurostar to Brussels and stay there for three to four days
Tues 2nd June – Luxembourg
Friday 5th June – Hamburg, where I’ll be meeting with my BFF Jane to do some Beatles related stuff, among other things
Monday 8th June – Berlin. So much to do and see there. For someone brought up duiong the Cold War this is another place I never thought I’d ever get to visit. That and the Bowie/Lou Reed connections…
After that, possibly Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, Vienna, Bratislava among others, then home via Paris and the Eurostar back to London. I was originally intending to get to Instanbul, but I think that just takes me too far east and will lead to me rushing to get home again! This route will undoubtedly change between now and June, and then again while I’m travelling, but that’s part of the appeal!
Anyway, that’s anough waffling for now. This was really just an introduction to what I’m going to be doing in June. I’ll try and do a couple more updates before then, as well as, hopefully, a couple more posts.
Andy – February 2026
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