I was having a chat to a friend of mine today and the subject of retirement came up. Another friend joined in and we had a good discussion about how we all know people who have worked hard all their lives and who had plans for travelling once retired. All too often the dream of overseas holidays, cruises or plans of travelling round New Zealand in a camper all come to nothing. There can be a number of reasons why these trips may be something in the distant future, but also why they may never happen.
My husband and I and also my two friends all have the same approach to holidays. Especially since my diagnosis, it has become very important to us both to plan active holidays and big overseas trips now and not wait until we retire, whenever that may be. We are firmly of the opinion that the time to travel is now, before any further health issues occur or anything else happens in our lives that means travelling is no longer feasible.
We would far rather bank memories than stay on longer than is healthy for us just for the sake of banking more money. While money is necessary and nice to have, it can’t buy your health back if you work longer than is good for your body as it ages.
We have travelled quite a bit over the past twenty years or so and have many lovely memories that we share. Our trip to the UK last year was really special and we have lots of lovely memories and photos of that trip. We certainly ticked one thing off my ‘bucket list’ and that was hiring a canal boat and spending six days together pootling along the Lancaster Canal. No locks to worry about and just a lovely slow pace to life with each other for company and beautiful scenery.
It doesn’t even have to be a big overseas trip. I have been saying to my husband for some time that we should go camping together. We have a lovely tent that we bought and have hardly used, and it would be lovely to camp somewhere beautiful and go for some walks even if we don’t travel far. Hopefully, when it is Springtime when it’s not too hot, we can go and camp somewhere and have a balance of exercise and chilling outside our tent making more new memories.
We are certainly not waiting for retirement to do these things.
We don’t want to be amongst those who have said ‘When we retire…’ and never get there and live with regrets.
My journey with Parkinsons 