First Edition: Leaving England for Normandy
Listen to this edition:
It's the 19th of March, 2025, and I'm travelling down to Folkestone with my fiancée Kirsty and our two golden retrievers (Eddie, age 5, and Herbie, age 1).
We're travelling in a 20-year-old Fiat Ducato motorhome we affectionately call Florence. Tonight we will stay at a campsite near the Eurostar terminal, and at 10am tomorrow, we will board the train and embark on a three-month tour of Europe.
I am in a very negative mood—exhausted and burnt out. For the last few months, I have been taking on too much work.
Coming away from the business today, I realise that I’ve totally lost my bearings. I have become quite an irritable person, I'm not very much fun to be around and I've lost perspective on what truly matters to me. I can’t see the wood for the trees, and I certainly couldn’t tell you what I should be focusing on.
I’ve just been working…
One thing I do know is that the very last (very last) thing I want to do right now is to go on a three-month tour of Europe.
To most, it would seem like an amazing opportunity to go on an adventure like this. But all I can think about is how much it's going to cost, how much I am going to lose in earnings and the negative impact it will have on my business.
To be honest, I'm scared that the trip is going to destroy everything I've worked really hard to build. And I’m terrified that everything I have been through will have been for nothing.
In my mind, I need to be working more, not less. I need to be at home, coming up with a new direction, another new big idea, or to discover those 'five simple steps' which will make me a millionaire and solve all of my problems. After all, there are plenty of people online who do have it all worked out and know all the answers.
Yet, before I know it, I find myself driving down the A16 away from Calais on a beautifully hot and sunny day. It’s peaceful and calm. It feels like we could be in the south of Spain, and yet, somehow, we've only travelled across the channel—in March.
This is nice!
After a few miles, we stop to do our first food shop. We collect a delivery of the specific dog food we buy, and we look for somewhere to stay — which is something we've never done before in Europe.
Equipped with the Park4Night app, Kirsty identifies a farm that we can stay at near the village of Tardinghen. Upon parking up, we quickly discover the first (of what will be many things) that will go wrong with Florence on this trip. At some point between home and here, the grey water pipe has been struck by a stone - causing washing up water to leak out of our van at a surprisingly fast rate.
After my brief moment of positivity on the A16, I fall back into negative thoughts: "That's it," I think. "It's time to go home."
But a resilient Kirsty finds a bucket, providing a simple solution for now.
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The next day, and with the pipe repaired (Thank you “Mr Bricolage”), we head west towards Normandy, encountering what seems like a never-ending stream of French motorway tolls.
I have always had a strong interest in history, but I have never had the chance to visit the Normandy beaches before. The. Normandy beaches were the site of the Allied D-Day invasions on June 6, 1944, which turned the tide of World War II.
On the way, we stay at an absolutely beautiful French village called Beuvron-en-Auge. It's the kind of village you would never find in a guidebook, but we stumble across thanks to the Park4Night app.
It feels really strange to be here and to have such a long amount of time ahead of us. Partly, this is because I've always felt the need to work hard every day, and have considered time off to be wasteful. But it's also very strange to break the rhythms I've grown accustomed to, and embrace a whole new way of living.
I go for a walk through the village at dusk and find it beautifully tranquil. Ornate lamps (cast with intricate foliage shapes) flicker into life, and I feel energised at the sight of small cafes and bars that are full of local (not tourist) life. People are chatting and enjoying their food-and I can’t help but feel like I am on a different planet.
The next day, we head closer to the Normandy beaches and I get to visit (and walk on) the original Pegasus Bridge. The bridge was captured by Allied airborne forces during the early hours of D-Day to prevent a German counterattack. It’s fantastic to experience history like this, and I love being able to walk in the footsteps of those men.
We visit Sword beach (one of the landing areas of the British and French forces) and continue along the coast through Arromanches-les-Bains, exploring the artillery battery at Longues-sur-Mer, on our way to Colleville-sur-Mer.
It’s all very beautiful and interesting, but all I can think about during this first week is how negative I am feeling about my business. After 8 years, it still isn't doing what I want it to do.
I've increasingly felt that the things that are the most important to me—things that are integral to my very identity—seem irrelevant in today's fast-paced digital world. We live in an era where algorithms prioritise and serve up (what feels to me) like junk food content. Meanwhile, the success of any creative or artistic endeavour seems to be only measured in likes, shares and return on investment. And all this before we even address the so-called "looming threat" of AI.
I’d been having quite a bit of an identity crisis before the trip, and all of this reminds me of how frequently I feel out of place in the world and that I don't fit in. I know there are many things I’ve got to change about my approach and my mindset - but where to begin?
To start with, I allow myself to question everything I have so strongly believed in up to this point:
Maybe I would be better off stopping the business?
Maybe I don't have the skills or the connections to succeed?
Maybe the things I value about creativity and art aren't really needed anymore?
Maybe I'm just not very good?
It feels good to think in these terms. To be free from being stuck in the business and to test these ideas. It's fun to imagine what I might be better at doing. And I can allow all of this to bubble away for a little while — I haven't got to get back to work tomorrow — I can simply carry on the journey.
Eventually, our travels take us to Omaha Beach, where the American forces landed on D-Day. If you've ever seen the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan with its harrowing depiction of combat, this is the beach where that story unfolded. But the beach today is calm and quiet, Eddie and Herbie enjoy playing in the surf.
Located nearby is the Normandy American War Cemetery. The cemetery is immaculate, comprising of row after row after row of pristine white gravestones, set in beautiful grounds. The sight of all those graves, each marking the resting place of a human being, leaves a strong impression on me.
You see, I have always been the kind of person that doesn't want to waste a moment of my life.
I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how I can have an impact on the world. Reflecting on what my life might be worth at the end. Doing that exercise (you know the one) where you imagine the things you want people to remember you for at your funeral.
And my interest in history means I already know I owe these soldiers a great deal for their sacrifice. So, suffice to say, the importance of 'carpe diem' is not lost on me one bit. But what I realise, standing in this cemetery, is that I have gone far too far with this kind of existential thinking. And it’s having a negative effect on me rather than a positive one.
In a never-ending quest to make my life “worth something” and “worth living”, I realise I have, kind of, achieved the opposite. I have lost sight of what really matters. I have a skewed perspective of what leading a successful life really means. And I can start to see a number of errors in the way I had been living up to this point.
From prioritising work over spending time with my loved ones, saying yes to every opportunity that’s going, putting lots of pressure on myself whilst simultaneously not really going anywhere… I’d been so preoccupied with trying to be someone important, someone who mattered, someone who wasn’t me, that I’d just got myself more and more lost.
But I could start to see it now. I could start to see where I had been going wrong.
The map I was using was simply the wrong map.
Maybe this trip wasn't such a bad idea after all. I didn't want to be here, but three or four days in, I'm already gaining insights about myself that I never would have gained if I'd remained in Norfolk.
What else might I find out over the next three months?
And what might come from all of these big questions?