About DAGS - Our Story
Simply, DAGS is an acronym for Denise And Greg and this blog is a record of our travels and experiences as we head off to explore this big country along with our 3 Italian greyhounds, Bella, Rosie and Cricket.
We don't claim to be writers or even a good story tellers in fact i would say i suck at both, so don't expect anything too fancy and as far as spelling and grammar go, all i can say is thank god for spell check!!
Our intention was to provide our family and friends a blog to follow our travels and maybe, just maybe, provide others with some useful information and encouragement to get out and do the same. Who know's?
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and so we begin.... The decision!
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We live in the western suburbs of Melbourne in a pleasant enough neighbourhood with our three Italian Greyhounds living what i would consider reasonably normal lives. We have worked the typical 9 to 5 routines in reasonable jobs and enjoyed our annual holidays and weekend trips away exploring this country as best you can in one and two week blocks. We have collected a heap of gear along the way making each trip away a little more comfortable as we progressed from swags and tents to a pop top camper and ultimately to a full size caravan.
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We had always talked about hitting the road on a twelve month road trip exploring Australia and in December 2017, as frustrations with work and life in general reached new highs, we decided it was time to live life and live the dream.
That was it, decision made, we're going to drive around Australia.
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On New Years Day 2018, a snap decision was made to tick off one of Denise's bucket list items, "lets go to the UK first and do a 6 week road trip through the UK and Europe", we may never get another chance. The same day we booked our airline tickets online and decided our big Australian road trip would have to wait and start mid year!
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By mid January 2018, Denise had finished working and I handed in my notice to finish end of March 2018. Our tickets were booked to fly out in early April and our rough travel plans were made. Our UK and Europe trip would take us into and out of London Heathrow Airport, hiring a car in the UK and following a loose plan starting in Dover and finishing in Edinburgh in 3 weeks later. From Edinburgh we would catch a flight to Berlin, hire another car, visit cousins Ina and Dirk in Dresden and work our way to visit Henri in Villingen-Schwenningen, near the Swiss border. Our plan would take us to Prague, Vienna and various Germany towns in between before heading to France and finally back to the UK.
We deliberately did not book any accommodation and only ever planned our trip a day or two in advance, booking accommodation as we went thanks to Expedia, Wotif and Booking.com. Even the flight to Berlin was only booked once we knew we would be in Edinburgh. We arrived in the UK, we drove where we wanted, saw what we wanted to see and we ate way more than we should have. We flew across to Germany, met with our relatives and saw some amazing places in between. As planned, we returned our hire car in Paris, caught the train back to London and caught our flight home. In all, we managed to drive some 2500 miles in the UK, 2300 km in the Europe, spend 47 nights in 32 different motels, hotels or B&B's, oh and I returned 5kgs heavier then when i left.
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So now we are back home and have a week to recover from Jet lag, pack the Van and make all the final preparations before we are off to see Australia, starting with our Outback Adventure and this time we are taking the dogs with us.
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