The REALITY of TRAVEL in 2020 🙄 // S05E03

As travel lovers and full-time nomads we have spent the past three months of the pandemic in foreign countries and we can tell you that it's confusing, the rules change almost daily and practically every plan we've made has had to be cancelled. The boat has been cancelled again! But we can also tell you that we are not the only people trying to make the most of summer 2020. So in this video we're sharing what it's really like to travel now and if it's actually worth it. Just read our news app and the top article is millions going back into lockdown around the world. We are attempting to drive around the world, you guys are invited too so subscribe and buckle up. It's one heck of a ride! So far on this attempted repatriation from Africa to the UK we have been making our way north and doing our best to stay away from other travellers. In Spain that wasn't difficult as people slowly emerged from lockdown but now in France the school summer holidays have started and families are on the move across the country. I got my water checked to go to France. That's it just wave at them and they're like woohoo! We're in France. That was easy. Is that really the border crossing? Are you kidding me? They've stopped the checks from Spain to France. So now where? North to the UK I guess. North to the UK. We would love to go and explore France but we only have permission to transit through Europe and must return to Bentham island of Jersey. So we drove across the entire country to the northwest region of Brittany. So at this exact moment the EU has opened up its borders to other EU travellers and the UK travellers but not other foreigners like Australians unfortunately. We are booked on the first boat back to Jersey. Actually the first boat since this whole pandemic started. When we get to Jersey there's a high likelihood that Lia won't be allowed to come back into the EU so right now we are waiting to get on that boat. Hopefully the boat goes and in the meantime we are going to be enjoying Europe as much as possible with this last little bit of northwest France. It feels so good to be here in this forest. This forest is amazing. Do you know what? This really feels like home. I know this is France and I'm not from France but the landscape is so similar but it's just being in this climate even I'm so close to being home but I'm just not there yet and it feels like I'm home like this time of year as well with summer and the late evenings like everything about this region just like resonates with my soul and makes me feel like I'm home and we almost are so very excited. It's like we're at home but with better cheese. Sorry Jersey you got good milk. Yeah you're just right. You know what I'm thinking Lia? It's been a while since we broke out the slackline. All these trees. Slackline? Yeah. Let's do it. Doesn't this slackline remind you of San Diego Lia? When your second time in the Kombi you were trying me out for size. Yeah. To see whether you'd stay. That was nice wasn't it? We were just like asking people if they wanted to come and try the slackline. Yeah. Just completely as a way to socialize with people. I love this for that reason. Obviously now is a different time isn't it because we can't socialize with people so much. Yeah. I was just thinking that. I was thinking that this activity is very a good social distancing friendly activity. Covid friendly slacklining. It's got the Kombi life approval. Gotta think about these things. Yeah. Brave new world. Not sure I like it too much. That was close. There is a fern trees and they are so pretty with the light bouncing off. I like to fly my drone while my girlfriend and my dog they run through the forest. For all you French people he's not taking the piss. He does do an accent in every country that we've been in and that's just his French accent. He's not taking the piss. I'm not taking the piss and I will actually say that French people speaking English is the sexiest accent on the entire planet. I agree. What do you mean? I agree. Jersey accent. You're supposed to say the jersey accent is the sexiest. What is the jersey accent? Hola to my lovely. Going down to St. Boems eh? Get myself a nice pod of the farmers eh? 0.00001% of subscribers will understand that. Thank you. Guys we've got some good news and some bad news. Yes. The good news is that international travelers are now allowed into the EU. Yay. Sorry not you America. No. But Australia is allowed in which means when we get back to Jersey we will be allowed to return to Europe and continue traveling and filming this travel series. Woohoo. Yeah it's good news. It is good news. And if you're um wondering what is behind us they don't they're not just stones they are special stones and rocks. So these prehistoric stones were cut from local rock from the area and erected by pre-Celtic people of Brittany in the area here where we are. The stones are erected between 3300 BC and 4500 BC so a long time ago and it's one of the largest collections of stones in the world like this. So there are some Celtic ones in England that have them like this as well but not as many like these are just 3000 prehistoric stones. Did you know that these were here? No I had no idea. We were just driving along and went past this field of stones and you can tell they're they're all lined up they look really old and really cool. What is going on here? So many that goes on for miles down here and they still don't know to this day why they are erected what they're for. They suspect that it's got to do with some ritual or definitely it's got to be religious. I mean why would anybody do something like this unless it was for religious reasons. Yeah it's got to be. Yeah it's really cool and so old. It reminds me one time I was working as an electrician in Jersey and I found an old dolomite behind the house and I was just so blown away at the history the age of this thing and it was just there like you're discovering something like that when you're not expecting it and this is exactly like that only on a much grander scale. It's really cool to see. Oh yeah there was some bad news too. So Leah can now go to Jersey, I can go to Jersey, we can come back to Europe only they have just cancelled the boat because of industrial action. So they are striking in the port in France in Saint Marlowe and the boat has been cancelled again. So we are stuck here in France which I guess is not that bad. It's taken us about five months to get to this point. Yeah so what's like a couple more weeks. Whilst we do love the tranquility of the off-season travel it was great to see other families on their own travel adventures. Right now it might not be practical to embark on huge international trips but plenty of people are making the most of the summer by discovering places closer to home. France is one of the best places in the world for vehicle-based adventures. Every town has dedicated facilities often free of charge which makes travel here easy and cost-effective. Typically this time of year you'd see travellers from all over Europe flocking here to explore this great nation. But 2020 is not your typical year and 99% of the campers on these free campsites have been French. Woke up in this really cool little town today Jocelyne. Very historic, very cool, very old, very French. On the mission to find a boulangerie. Getting good with my French now. Gotta find me some breakfast. Come on let's go. Can we just have a moment to appreciate how awesome France is. Look at that scene behind me. It's like a movie set. Honestly it's like a fairy tale movie set and that's a real life scene. I'm going to get the croissants. Merci beaucoup. Special delivery. How do you start a good French day? Thought we'd take you on an adventure today Leah. Are you ready for an adventure? Yeah. You're gonna like this place. Before we head out to explore this incredible town today we have to upload our video for this week. Luckily there is a public wi-fi connection but it is unsecure as often public wi-fi connections are. So we will be using our Surfshark VPN which we use all the time when we're connecting to public networks. Basically so nobody can intercept our traffic and to keep our traffic private and away from prying eyes. We use Surfshark VPN all the time and they've sponsored a number of videos in this series so thanks guys for sponsoring this one too. We like it because we can use it on unlimited devices which is really handy for us. The app is super intuitive and easy to use so it's not difficult and doesn't get in the way of our browsing experience. Surfshark contains certain features which protect you from malware attacks and reduce the number of ads you can see. So it actually improves the speed of your connection which is really useful when you're trying to upload a massive file like we are. Anyway guys if you don't have a VPN and you want to get one Surfshark is really good. We can personally recommend it. We've been using it for ages. The details will be linked below. You can save 85% and get three months free. And by the way one more thing. The whole time that I've been talking to you Leah has been wearing my underwear on her head. True story. What are you doing? They're clean. That's not a hat. She's crazy. It is so pretty. It's nice to be here you know. And I will be your French guide. We're going to a chateau today because I've never been in one and we're always driving past and going that looks amazing. I want to go inside one of those mansions. So that's what we're doing today. What we're really doing is we're going to house hunting. Yeah I wish. I wish we could buy a chateau. Look at how old that building is. So this is the chateau that we're going to check out. These mansions are dotted all around France and I've always wanted to check one out. They are usually abandoned but this one you can go inside. If you ever come to this part of France there are canals everywhere. It's how trade was done back in the day. It's an absolutely fantastic way to explore this region. You can rent these houseboats just like the one coming up the river behind me now. It's basically a camper van on the canal right. So if you can and you can afford it, it's a fantastic way to explore the region and it makes for a great family holiday. I totally recommend it. It's really weird. I just read our news app and the top article is millions go back into lockdown around the world and that does not feel like what's happening here in France. Some people aren't even... there's no masks being worn. There's no rules about people wearing masks. Some are completely relaxed about it and some are very still quite strict about it. So it's all a bit mixed messages here. Definitely. I looked at the stats as well to see how many virus cases there are in France and right now there's not that many. I mean France has been out of lockdown for a couple of months. The borders have only been open to other international countries for a couple of weeks and so maybe it hasn't quite kicked off here. Maybe the testing is not that advanced. But just as we left Spain they were shutting Spain down again or some parts of Spain. So we just left just as we got through. So yeah I don't know why France is being... I don't know. Who knows? It'll be interesting to see. We're going to be tested for the virus pretty soon so we'll find out whether we've got it or not. Trying to put my mask on. It seems absolutely crazy to think outdoors that you'd need something like this. I'm not doing it. They don't tell me I have to. Okay now I'm doing it. This is the chateau. It is the grounds are massive and the house looks huge. The family, the original family, still own it from like way back when they built it and they still live here too. I don't know. Do you guys remember the movie Return to Oz? It was like the dark sequel to Wizard of Oz. It was really creepy and it looks... this statue here looks exactly like the cowardly lion statue in that movie. I still prefer tiny homes. Seriously when you've got rooms this big a normal fire doesn't cut it. You've literally got to burn trees. The logs on this thing are about six foot long. We did have plans to take Leah down this canal on a little rowboat but unfortunately the day has just got away from us. It's already six o'clock and the rowboat place shuts at six o'clock. I think like in northern Europe in the summertime when the sun is still so high and it's the end of the day you just don't realize what the time is. Like I could quite happily be out here at nine or ten o'clock at night and the sun would only just be setting. So maybe somewhere else in Europe we can go explore the canals. I'm sure there's plenty of opportunities. Would have been beautiful though. We have a boat confirmed. Our third one confirmed. Third or fourth or something like that. Hopefully this one's going to be running and we can actually make it to Jersey. So it looks like right now it looks like we're going to get to Jersey but won't get my hopes up because it might get cancelled again like it has been. But for now we've got a ticket and we're going back to Jersey. There is no doubt about it. The new travel is different but is it worth it? Well we think that life is about making the best of the situations we find ourselves in. It's about being flexible and adapting. Give us lemons we'll make lemonade any day. Now after four months trying to get back to my home island of Jersey we can finally get on that boat. But getting into the island is not going to be straightforward by any means. For the first time we will be tested. We're going to see after crossing all of Morocco, Spain and France if we are infected with Covid-19. But that is a story for next time. We are currently in quarantine waiting our Covid results. Can't wait to share that story with you in next week's episode. We are hoping to continue traveling and reporting what it's like to be on the road during a global pandemic because it's massively interesting and things are changing every single week. If you want to help us keep this series rolling please click join below this video. It's the best way to support us and in addition for your support we will make a whole bunch of extra videos. We just did one that was a real-time update with the Kombi crew sharing stories that aren't included in this main episode. Like how are we preparing for the second wave and what happened that time that the police pulled us over and gave us a really hard time when we were driving north through Europe. So if you want to support us please click join. Otherwise we'll see you next week. Have a good one.