Welcome to

The Olivia Rose Diaries.

Tales of a travelling life in Europe

Have you ever dreamed about changing your life? Thought longingly about taking that huge leap and leaving it all behind in exchange for the freedom of a travelling life?

In 2017 my husband Michael and I made that leap and we have never regretted it. We sold our house, moved to France and bought a boat called Olivia Rose. Since then we have spent our summer months afloat and our winter months using house-sitting as a cost-effective way to explore Europe. If we need to stop and slow down for a while, we retreat to our tiny, off-grid cabin near the Pyrenees.

I began this blog in 2020 so that I would have a record, not just of where we have been and the things that we have seen, but in the hope that I could capture a snapshot of the precious, everyday moments that are so easily forgotten, the personal highs and lows. I wanted to see if this travelling life changed us, whether it brought the contentment that we were looking for, whether you can ever really completely get away from it all. The title reflects the fact that I initially assumed my blog would be a record of our time on Olivia Rose, but then fate took a hand and sent us in a direction that we had not foreseen, and so now it follows us in all our travels, on land as well as afloat.

If you would like to join the ship’s crew, we are happy to welcome you aboard! Come and share our adventures through this blog. Perhaps it will inspire you to take your own leap of faith, or you might prefer to simply enjoy the journey from the armchair. And if you want to delve a little deeper into our story I have written a series of four books under the umbrella title of ‘A Simple Life’. Details can be found in the ‘About me’ section.