Surprise!

Well let me tell you a tale, as its Christmas Eve. Kim and I have been keeping a big secret for a while and now that everyone knows we can blog about it. We have decided to move back to Australia! What originally set out to be a holiday back home for Christmas has changed into a new beginning. Whilst looking at rental prices we found an amazing old unit in Brisbane that an old friend used to have, it's such a beauty that it was too hard not to apply for it. And once we got approved for it we decided we needed a car. After a lot of research and encouragement from other bloggers who have bought the same car we decided to buy the most expensive car we ever had, a Prius. We are so excited to save fuel on the hybrid vehicle and do our bit to save the environment. This is about as much of what we know the future holds for us, we will be looking for work in the big city and getting settled in. We are so excited to be home and had a lot of fun surprising friends and family the past few days. HUGS ALL ROUND. Where the blog is going to go from now.... Who knows, but sit tight. To all who have taken a moment to read this, Merry Christmas, please stay safe and we pray you find joy, peace and love this Christmas.


-morgan

And we are off...

Thanks to the wonders of discount airlines, we are off and away on a 3 week adventure to Scotland, Norway and England. Yesterday we arrived in Edinburgh, Scotland and we having a great time exploring this beautiful city. Today we climbed up to Arthur's Seat, saw the castle, and even had our first deep fried mars bar.
-kim

family

In January, when we first arrived in France, we took the time to travel around and visit Morgan's aunties and uncle. As we were heading up towards Paris again, we decided we would pop back in and spend a couple of days with them again while we were in the area.
We had a great couple of days in Orleans, just relaxing and spending time with the cousins. Now we are in Lardy and have really enjoyed sharing stories of our year so far and eating great food. Yesterday we went to a park we visited last time we here. As a special thing for summer they had row boats available to take out on the creek for free. It was a fun little afternoon, and great time spent with family.
Tomorrow we head to Paris, for 5 days, then jump on our first plane in a while and visit Scotland.
-kim

Dijon

Dijon is such a lovely little city. Untouched during the French revolution, it has a mismatch of buildings from almost every era. Filled with churches, multi coloured roofs and if you try really hard, the smell of mustard. We were so blessed to have stayed with a couchsurfing host in the very center of town. He was such a super, kind guy, with plenty of amazing travel stories. This could be one of my favourite towns in France, made so much better by the amazing hospitality of our new friend.
-morgan

Lyon

We have had a lovely 4 days in Lyon. We were very fortunate to be able to stay at a friend of a friend's cousins apartment in the best area of town, while they are off travelling. We spent our days walking up and down the cobbled streets, exploring the parks, enjoying the views from the top of the hills and eating great meals. When we arrived on Monday night we got see Bon Iver play an incredible show in and old Roman amphitheater. It was amazing. Today we are heading north again, and off to Dijon for a couple of days.
-kim

the french alps

So on Thursday we made the 450Km journey to The Alpes! About one hour into our journey our battery died. We waited two hours until someone had jumper leads. A very long and amazing story short... We pushed started the car with the help of 5 people at different points in the journey, we bought jumper leads and got help from 10 people at different times and 13 hours later, 1900 meters above sea level, with no address of where we were sleeping that night saw some familiar faces waving from their chalet balcony. Needless to say we were so happy to be with people we know in such an amazing place. i'll let the photos do the talking.
-morgan

ps. Have you had a chance to enter our giveaway?

On the road again...

Well we are back on the road, and it looks like we will be cruising around from place to place for the next 6 months. We have just spent the last few weeks finalising plans which includes a trip to the UK and Norway (September), more road tripping around France and a train trip through Eastern Europe (November-December). A couple of days ago, we arrived here in the French alps and over the next 3 weeks we will be making our way over to Lyon, and through Central France up to Paris. There is a lot planned and we can't wait to share snippets of what we get up to when we can. We will probably be instagramming more than we get time to blog, so if you want you can follow us at [morganandkim].
Are you ready for the adventure?
-kim

ps. Here is a little map which brings us to the end of September when we will be working on a Vineyard in Alsace, France.

Lac d'Esparron

On Monday some friends invited us to join them Canoeing around Lac d'Esparron. This lake is absolutely incredible and the colour is the water is breathtaking. We didn't want to take our cameras out on the water, so just have a few phone snaps to share. It was lovely to canoe and swim in the fresh cold water after many hot summer days. We felt very relaxed to sit and have a picnic drinking rose, watching over the lake.
-kim

Arles

The other day we visited Arles, the city where Van Gogh lived and painted his surroundings (right before he went a little crazy.) Many other artists have rented a apartment in Arles in hope that inspiration would hit them. And how could it not? surrounded by sunflower fields, ancient roman ruins and a general smell of provence in the air, this small, walled city is as good as it gets when trying to fill a blank canvas. The day was extremely hot and the breeze off the river was stunning. Just the perfect way to end our time in the south of France.
-morgan

Lavender Hunting

Last week Morgan's grandma wanted to take us to see the Lavender fields around Sault. It was beautiful driving around and seeing all the flowers in straight lines and the contrasts of colours. We also decided to drive up Mont Ventoux, a frequent challenge on the Tour de France route. As we made our way up the mountain in the car it was incredible to see all the bicycle riders making the grueling ride. At the top, people were celebrating their achievements, so proud they had made it to the top. It was an inspiring sight indeed.
-kim

ressurection renault

Some of you may know but when in Biarritz our beloved Renault 4L died. A piston had blown and metal had gone throughout the oil and engine. This happened a few days before leaving for farm life 200km away. We left it in the hands of our new friend Rico, an old German rocker, who lives in Biarritz with whom we speak English. Rico initially was going to help us sell it as scrap and we would hitchhike the rest of the way home to Avignon (500km), but called one day to say he found a new engine for only 150euro!!! We are so happy to say we will be picking her up this weekend to take her on the road again. We have many more journeys around france to have with her and we just hope she treats us well.
-morgan

bon voyage farm

Our time is up on this amazing farm and we have truly enjoyed it. We may be a little sick of weeding, but our appreciation for where food comes from and the hard work farmers do has changed the way we look at eating. We have learnt so much about the land, organic living and sustainability. We hope to work on a few more farms in the future and are in the process of trying to find a cheese farm.
When in France!
-morgan

animal traction

Our time working on the farm has involved many new experience. Last week we got to try our hand at animal traction using 2 donkeys, Parpaillon and Pinocchio. Animal traction has been around for many years, but has faded out of farm life. There is an orginisation in France set out to make it popular again. There are 13 different tools you can set up behind a donkey for weeding, plowing, airing and more. It's low cost, good for the environment and makes for true organic farming considering we don't use a tractor. It's great working alongside the donkey, not as it's master, but as it's friend. We were told to keep in mind, without the donkey and you working together, you both will not eat tonight. After we formed the mounds, we then planted pumpkin seedlings over the whole field.
-morgan