A Little About Us...
With the Covid pandemic affecting everyone in different ways, we won't bore you with our own version of it in the UK. What we learnt, as every single plan laid out for the next two years was cancelled, was to never put off doing something you love that you can do right now. The car? The house? The minimum 40 hour weeks in offices? These weren't giving us happiness. Our focus narrowed greatly to what we truly loved to do which was spending as much time as possible together exploring the world. And so, while consuming far too many bottles of wine late one night mid-pandemic, a seed was planted...
Fast forward to now and after selling all of our possessions in the UK we're fortunate enough to be travelling the beautiful Aotearoa New Zealand and house sitting in some spectacular locations. It's certainly a far cry from when we originally met in Greece where we both ended up on a spur of the moment holiday, Brian from NZ and Gemma from Yorkshire in England. It's been a surreal experience to get to this point and we have a newfound passion for travelling like digital nomads.
With seeing how many house sits go unfulfilled and very happy house sitting clients, we thought we'd share our experiences to offer honest insights to anyone thinking about doing something similar as this has completely changed our lives for the better. We try not to take ourselves or some of the weird situations we find ourselves in too seriously and hope you enjoy our posts about sustainability advice, photography, plant based food recipes and travel tips while we try and live our best life. There will be swearing, there will be lots of content about food and there will be plenty of pictures of the mountains and beaches we came here to enjoy with the eyes of permanent tourists on holiday. Welcome to Bestish Life!
Our Lucy
In May 2023, we made the heart-wrenching decision to sell our Lucy to new owners who planned to travel the country full time. We'd found ourselves constantly in house sits and felt like she deserved to be enjoyed more. We still pinch ourselves at being extraordinarily lucky to have had our Lucy as life was looking very different without her.
In December 2021 we realised pretty quickly how lucky we were to find Lucy. With how hectic life was just before moving to NZ, we were fresh out of managed isolation and Gemma was still temporarily working for her former company while I was busy researching how to fund our new life here. Looking at the sums required to afford an RV to comfortably live and work in, we thought our rough idea of a new life had fallen down at the first hurdle. We flicked between old buses or transit vans which we just knew wouldn't be comfortable and come with a mountain of maintenance issues down the line, or RVs which were near perfect but way too expensive. Thankfully, while staring down the barrel of the normal work/bills trap again, my brother came to the rescue. During a random conversation with one of his wheeler-dealer friends, it just so happened he'd found an RV he thought was in great condition but wasn't what he needed at the time.
After a viewing was arranged, we couldn't believe the condition of the RV and how lovely the owners were. They knew it was worth more financially but it meant more to them that it went to a good home and got used regularly. Gemma couldn't contain her excitement while I was typically guarded at the prospect of handing over almost every dollar we had for this big machine I thought looked good but had absolutely zero mechanical knowledge of. Luckily my brother had a decent idea when he took us to view the RV, and told me that if I didn't buy it, he would.
After a few small modifications, she was ready to live and work in full time. At least, until the house sitting completely blew up and we found ourselves very much in demand. We also had the important job of ensuring she felt comfortable identifying as a Decepticon and got her the badge to suit. Yes, we're total nerds haha. We're still in contact with the owners and always visit when nearby to share our latest escapades.