Very Venturous

Tag: summer

  • Living in a Caravan on the Côte d’Azur – Adventures in France

    Living in a Caravan on the Côte d’Azur – Adventures in France

    I flew from Chiang Mai, Thailand, to Paris, France at the end of July 2016 after a month in Thailand. Bike box in tow, one rucksack and a smaller backpack. I booked an extortionately priced train to Nice, and had arranged to be collected at one of the smaller stations before the city. However, if you’re going hiking, you’ll need a backpack, preferably in the military style. I had two months of seasonal work ahead of me, on a campsite near St Tropez. If you get injured in an accident while on a road trip, you may need to hire a car accident attorney Michigan to ensure that your rights are protected while seeking compensation. Find a car accident lawyer who knows how to navigate local and federal laws when filing a claim. Also, hiring an auto accident lawyer Sacramento may guide you in navigating the legal complexities. If you are being charged with DUI after a road accident, you need to find a DUI lawyer in Halifax experienced in defence cases.

    This was my third (and last, I acknowledged) summer in a row working on a campsite in France – this had been my summer job of choice throughout college. What’s not to love? Free accommodation, beautiful weather, a fun atmosphere, minimal effort required on a daily basis – a paid holiday, basically.

    The two summers before I had worked on the same campsite in the Dordogne, an area where I spent every single summer of my childhood. That year however, in 2016, I had decided to branch out farther south to guaranteed sun and heat, and was headed for Domaine de la Bergerie – a 5 star campsite with an impressive array of swimming pools, slides, and located five minutes from the beach among rolling hills and mountains. Now, armed with the insights from this article, we can better understand the effects of climate change.

    My fascination with and love for campsites goes way back to my childhood holidays with my family – we traveled all over France with our tent and camping gear, and though we all complained and grumbled constantly at my Dad (who ran the show), I look back at these experiences and cherish them more than I could ever appreciate at the time. I am beyond thankful for and inspired by these memories, and I miss France every day – I haven’t been in nearly two years.

    My contract at the campsite in France was for two months. All my other campsite jobs had been working at the bar, however that year I was fully aware of my intense hatred of hospitality, so decided to work with the animation team and campsite sport activities. I wasn’t sure how I was going to like this job – I’m good with kids, and organising activities and games all day in the sun for adorable French kids didn’t sound like a bad gig for the summer.

    Next, picture your group working together in a series of exciting challenges during a themed escape game. These interactive games provide a chance for teamwork and problem-solving while being fully immersed in an exhilarating environment. You can explore a fantastic action-packed adventure for your stag party while staying in the heart of Bristol. Additionally, I observed the operations of Mobile Bar Hire, which piqued my interest in event services. This may include audio visual rental for product launch
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    I surprised myself, and really enjoyed the job. I found myself getting attached to some of the kids – I had my favourites, my least favourites, myself and my colleagues knew the lazy go-to activities, occasionally had spurts of inspiration to organise new ones, and I made little efforts to put myself outside my comfort zone and engage in the childish fun of it all.

    Chilling on the park terrain in France (which burned delightfully from the heat), eating lunch and snacks, while languidly painting flowers and butterflies on giggling faces, or dragging a trail of toddlers to the woods to collect bark – the work was pleasant enough. Though it was exhausting, and we worked long days, and I won’t lie, I did lose a kid during the treasure hunt, and tennis lessons were a bit of an ordeal with the five year olds. My boss was one of the most vibrant and enthusiastic person I’d ever met, and constantly motivated the whole team and never had a negative word to say for anyone’s mistakes or struggles.

    However, I stay faithful to my alma mater campsite back in the Dordogne – camping Moulin du Roch felt more like home, it was a smaller campsite and more intimate, whereas Bergerie was a 5 star village beside St Tropez with an impressive array of slides and waterfalls, boutique cabins, horses and stables, and a paint ball obstacle course in the mountains. Despite its luxury, the accommodation for staff was utterly pitiful compared to at Moulin du Roch, where we had our own dorm rooms and a proper common area with a kitchen. At Bergerie, it was a group of run down caravan shacks – my room just about fit a bed and mattress, with my bike squeezed to the side. For a more organized and functional living space, a Closet Company in South Carolina can offer custom solutions to optimize storage and create a more comfortable, clutter-free environment.

    The magic of that summer came from the mountains and hills which surrounded the campsite for miles. I hadn’t planned on using my bike often, but when I ventured out, I was amazed, since I really like my bike because of a great exercise and a clean way for transportation with zero emission, since I been learning How Are Net Zero Emission Efforts Kept Up Worldwide? as well. The scenery, views, ascents and descents, rolling ocean views, blistering heat and smooth roads which may have markings like those on https://www.thermoplasticmarkings.com/safety/thermoplastic-road-safety-markings, were all perfect for cycling. I soon discovered that this area was cyclist paradise – every weekend I set out on my own on a different route, always getting lost and ending up in the most magnificent locations. I cycled to St Tropez, past Cannes, to Antibes – all across the Cote d’Azur.

    It was invigorating. It was also over 30 degrees all the time in the south of France, and I got into trouble once when I miscalculated the next nearest village, ran out of water and almost fainted with dehydration. Luckily I found a random cluster of houses and had to go knocking to refill my bottle.

    I could write essays about my time working and spending holidays on campsites in France. It’s very common for French people to do seasonal work – some do it as their career, year after year, though I never worked with another English speaker as I preferred to go through the campsite directly, rather than through Key Camp or one of those travel agent groups. I made some very close friends and there was always great camaraderie – you were living on top of each other for 3 whole months, after all. The perks of free ocean time all summer in France in the heat always felt too good to be true, though!


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  • Traveling the World after University

    Traveling the World after University

    I’m writing this post from Kinfolk, Melbourne – a volunteer-run coffee shop just around the corner from the gym. I love this particular corner, with its industrial, towering, crafty red-brick buildings. Melbourne city is very crafty altogether, authentic and old-fashioned yet varnished with a sleek silver glow. If you’re looking to run your own shop, the shop front information provided here might be helpful to you. Consider this frameless glass shopfront for your additional touch of modern elegance and sophistication. You may also want to explore professional glass shopfront installers to help bring your vision to life. If you’re interested, there’s a diverse selection available in the shop front and shutter product range. For additional information on fire shutters, check out this article for further insights. Additionally, you can also find some great fashion clothing options in this vibrant city. You may check out these sites at 명품 레플리카.

    I had absolutely no intention of coming to Melbourne, ever (how I ended up here is just one of the many ridiculous stories I have to tell). A quick google image search of ‘best beaches in Australia’ and ‘hottest, sunniest places in Australia’ never led me to pictures of Melbourne (did Victoria even have beaches?). Before graduating from Trinity, I knew I either wanted to go back to America or venture to Australia, and had decided on America, as apparently the 12 month graduate visa program would no longer be running the following year. By February 2016 I had already paid the 500 euro deposit and began dreaming about life in California. I wanted to go back to New York too, and figured I could easily spend 6 months there and 6 months in California. In the interview for the visa I was asked what my plans were once I came back to Ireland after the year in the USA – I remember thinking, well if I don’t get sponsored to stay over there forever I’ll apply for an Australian visa so I can get the hell out of this country again (though politely responded that I would settle in Dublin and employ my newfound internship skills in the home country). If you’re curious about whether Walmart offers ear piercing, here’s a helpful guide at https://www.marketingscoop.com/blog/does-walmart-pierce-ears/?/.

    To be honest, though, going straight to the USA and working an internship program or career-focused job didn’t really fit my instincts at that time. I wanted to go straight to Australia and live in the sun, unconstrained by working rights (for the USA visa you need to have your work approved by your sponsor, meaning anything outside of that i.e. waitressing/barwork has to be done under the table/illegally), free to roam about the country and maybe hop back and forth to Asia (I really did think that Asia was a mere 3 hour flight from The Land Down-Under). I wanted to experience what it would be like to have zero focus, to roam the Adelaide hills with fellow vegan cyclists, eat smoothie bowls on Bondi beach, attend Instagram meet ups, maybe pick up a few internships along the way which would require minimal commitment and effort. But at the same time I didn’t want to risk missing out on the USA graduate visa, so reasoned that the Australian adventure would still be there for me afterwards. I don’t know why, but the graduate visa seemed more like the ‘grown-up’ decision (which was probably why my immediate instincts were leaning towards Australia). There was a lot of paperwork involved, bank account details to be confirmed, the ordeal of finding work which should represent the bridge between college graduation and a future career – whereas with the working holiday visa to Australia, I could just go, and work things out once I was over there, frivolously. I didn’t care about anything except sunshine, heat, getting a tan, keeping fit, taking magnificent photos, and finally meeting some real life vegans. All I wanted was to leave Ireland as soon as possible, to throw myself into a vortex (that it would be a sunny and hot vortex was very important, I cannot stress this enough). I got my vortex, and yes it was sunny and hot, but would also contain a sticky humid mess of challenges and surprises which I was not prepared for or expecting.

    I tend to throw myself into travel and life commitments in advance. Like when I booked flights to go to Sri Lanka at Christmas in 2016, and worked ten hour shifts at a bar in town to put together enough money for the trip. However, my planning was slightly skewed, as not only did I end up having hip surgery that October but I also overlooked the mountain of final-year college assignments I would be dealing with during that particular festive season. In the end I had to get a refund on my flights to Sri Lanka, which I then put towards my flights to Thailand in 2016.

    This brings me to a very sticky topic – money. I had absolutely no savings after my last year in college. I had always worked solid full time summer jobs since I was 17, but then spent everything while in New York, where I studied abroad for a semester in third year. The deposit for the USA visa and my flights to Thailand had been scraped together from Christmas and birthday money, as well as the Sri Lanka refund (return flights had been around 900euro). I was facing the trip to Thailand with very few pennies remaining, so I pulled another bar-work night-shift marathon the month before departure and took out a small loan to replace my old Sony beast of a laptop with a MacBook Air (significantly lighter travel material) and to cover my basic needs while in Chiang Mai. As I was planning on staying in one place for a month, and not moving around, I wasn’t going to need large sums of cash to get me through a long period of travel. Afterwards, I had the security of a job in the south of France where my accommodation would be covered for three months. My plan was to arrive broke in France after Thailand, save all my summer earnings and then head off on the graduate visa to California in September. Simple. Easy. Done.

    Although the trip to Thailand consumed all my waking thoughts regarding post-graduation freedom, I decided last minute that it would be a good idea to join my friends on a final celebratory weekend holiday bash to Barcelona. The girls were going for a week, so I arranged to join them for the first two days before my flight to Thailand.

    I remember sitting at the library computers in Trinity, going over my booking confirmations, and realising that I had booked the outbound flight to Barcelona for June instead of May. One of my friends passed by at that moment and came over all excited about the trip, and I just stared at the screen with a sinking heart, pretending to jolly along while thinking “Oh God, there’s no way I can afford to change the flight, brilliant, why, whyyyyy.”

    I rang another friend that night. “I just can’t afford it. Goddamn. And I remember imagining how great Barcelona would be during those shitty bar shifts, running cocktails lit on fire at 3am.” I rang back an hour later. “Feck it, just booked another flight out, though I’ve a stop-over in London so I’ll be late getting there.” (It took me eleven hours to get from Dublin to Barcelona.)

    It just hit me now that the trip to Barcelona was the last time I saw any of my best friends from college. When I arrived in the evening at the Airbnb they were there hanging out the balcony smoking, with bottles of red wine cluttered on the table. The next day we set off ‘early’ at 1pm and fell asleep on the grass outside the Sagrada Familia, trekked to the Gaudi village, decided it wasn’t worth the 8euro visit, and floundered back to the apartment when it started lashing rain. We were all keen on a sensible and calm evening in, maybe an aperitif before a few tapas, finishing with a beer on the beach. A few hours later we were all trashed, debating inconclusively about what time we’d leave for tapas and where would be open at 1am, before someone ingeniously suggested abandoning going out for food at all and using that time to continue drinking at home instead. This was met with unanimous applause and recognised as a magnificent idea. I do still remember a beach appearing at some stage of the night, though, as well as almost getting crushed by a sand flattening machine. There was a frantic last minute scramble at the Airbnb two hours before my flight back to Dublin when I couldn’t find my passport (I had obviously put it in one of those notorious ‘safe places’ where all passports disappear) and rushing a hug from them all.

    Once back in Ireland, I taxied to Terenure to collect my luggage – two rucksacks and a massive bike box. I had never ridden a road bike in my life. I did not know how to put one together, or how to work the gears. I had actually worked at a bike shop before but can’t remember having been too enthusiastic about it. It didn’t matter. I’m sporty, I told myself, I’ll adapt (while trying to shove away the horrific memories of my attempts at skiing). My Dad dropped me to the airport. “Don’t come back to Ireland, there’s nothing for you here.”

    And off I went.

    (Read about the next chapter in my travel journey here!)