Like many other newlyweds, Charles Blockley and his wife, Natalie, traveled for their honeymoon. Unlike other couples, they didn’t return home for a half-dozen years.
They planned to campervan around Australia for six months and instead spent two years driving around the entire country—”until our visa ran out,” Charles says. They crossed the Tasman Sea and explored New Zealand in a campervan for another two years. Then the pair trained to teach English as a foreign language (TOEFL) and worked in Thailand and South Korea.
“We were in a tiny little fishing village near the North Korean border,” Charles says. “We were the only English speakers for miles.”
The couple is now settled in Derbyshire, England, with their sons, 3-year-old Seth and 5-year-old Arthur, who was born with Cornelia de Lange Syndrome (CdLS), an extremely rare genetic disorder. Charles does 3-D modeling for architects; Natalie works for the CdLS Foundation UK & Ireland. Family life hasn’t cured them of their wanderlust—they own another campervan, and use it all over the U.K. and Europe. They’ve even delivered campervans across the continent (see his pro tip below), though at the moment they are sheltering at home to protect Arthur from Covid-19.
Charles shared why a campervan is a great way to travel with kids, how to appreciate the small things, and why everyone should learn to teach English.
What made us fall in love with campervanning in Australia was…
this might sound like a cliche, but the freedom of it. The ability to do what we wanted and go where we wanted to go. The slow pace. We were still relatively newlyweds, so we were enjoying being a new married couple. The sunshine and beaches and food didn’t hurt.
We can’t stand…
going to airports with the kids. Carrying a load of bags and walking a mile through Heathrow is a horrible way to start any holiday.
My greatest travel secret is…
there’s a U.K.-based rental company, JustGo, that buys their vans from a factory in Italy and they need people to deliver them. You can take as long as you like to get to the U.K.—you get a minimum of 10 days and can pay a little bit after that. They give you full Europe-wide insurance so you can go anywhere you like. We’ve done that three times now.
The campervan is especially great for our family because…
our older son can get quite anxious in new places. But in our campervan, it’s our space wherever we go. So we can go to different places, which might bother him otherwise but he has that little bit of familiarity.
I think everyone should consider…
doing TOEFL. It’s a fantastic scheme, especially for people who come out of university and don’t have a job lined up. Most countries will accept you with any degree and a month-long TOEFL qualification, because they’re desperate for foreign English teachers. And you’re really forced in with the locals.
What we love about traveling with kids is…
being able to take them to places and countries that many adults haven’t been to. The last time we went to Croatia, we went to the Roman amphitheatre, and I’m watching these toddlers run around a 2,000-year-old structure in the sun. They’re really good eaters as well. They’ll eat squid out of a food stall or poke the eyes out of a fish and eat them.
When I was growing up we always went…
to France—we had a house in Normandy that we used to share with my auntie and uncle. That was pretty much every holiday throughout my childhood. I did the Scouts and Venturer Scouts thing as well, so camping and hiking. Natalie’s childhood holidays were camping breaks as well.
One of the first things we do in a foreign country is…
go to the supermarket. We love finding anything that’s different from being at home and seeing if we like it. A great thing about the van is it’s got a twin hob and grill. We charcoal barbeceue most nights. We usually take a collapsible fire pit as well, so if we can find wood we can cook over the fire.
The hardest thing about family travel is..
the pace. Sometimes you want to get out a bit quicker or stay a bit longer. But we can’t just bend our kids to our will, we have to slow down to their pace. We know that if we go for a walk every ladybird and every flower is going to be absolutely fascinating. It can open your eyes to things you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.
For any country we go to, we buy a…
Lonely Planet guidebook. Hopefully they keep publishing! I can imagine planning without a guidebook—especially with Lonely Planet, knowing that the researches have been to all these places and seen all these places. I like the tangible thing of flipping through a guidebook. And it’s also a little bit of a tradition for us. We have a bookshelf full of them—it’s almost like bragging rights.
My best advice for traveling with kids is…
just to do it and wing it on the way, really. I think you can throw kids into pretty much any situation. As long as they see that you are happy and secure and don’t have any anxieties, they are going to go along with it.
What I’d like to get out of The Expedition is….
being involved in a social media environment that is not just full of junk and waffle and pointless chat, there’s a little more focus. It’s a great way of virtually meeting people and getting inspiration from them.
I can give other members…
Expertise on campervans and TOEFL. Also Australia and New Zealand—having been there for two years, it’s a different knowledge base than being a tourist.
