About us

We are Brian and Jackie Cross and, since giving up work in 2012, have been travelling the world sightseeing and looking after other peoples pets by housesitting in countries around the world as well as the UK.

Our timeline:

2003: We got married, bought a house together with a 15 year mortgage and rented out Jackie's house to long term tenants.
2005: That was the year, over a glass of wine in our local pub in Alvechurch UK, that we decided to accelerate our plan. Instead of waiting until 2018 to pay off the mortgage, could we do it by 2012? We started a Ballroom and Latin American dancing school (Brian is a qualified teacher) on Wednesday evenings after work for two years. We saved our money and put as much into pensions and savings as we could whilst still managing to have trekking holidays to the Himalayas and Thailand, with skiing and climbing trips in the Alps and UK
2012: We were there. We managed to pay off the mortgages on the house we bought together and on Jackie's house, Brian retired in April selling his shares in his mechanical engineering business and Jackie got voluntary redundancy from the BBC in October. We rented our house to long term tenants so that both houses were now giving us an income. With enough savings, reasonable rental incomes from our houses, moderate expenditure expectations and plans for pet and housesitting for free, we were able to follow our dreams and travel the world as we had planned - and six years ahead of schedule.
2018: We bought our first motorhome, a 2011 Frankia 'Holiday' 680BD 4 berth on a Fiat Ducato chassis, that we named 'Big Ted', in order to give an extra dimension to our travelling. It was always our plan to do a long trip around the world first and then buy a motorhome to tour Europe in between 'further afield' trips. As Jackie said, we will tour Europe and the UK in ever decreasing circles until we're too old and the longest trip will be when Jackie says "shall we go to the library today dear".
We took delivery of 'Big Ted' on 18th June 2018 and started our motorhome touring, beginning with a short trip through Scotland followed by a 6.5 month trip through France, Spain and Portugal, settling quickly into motorhome life and thoroughly enjoying it.

You can see these on Our Motorhome Travels by clicking this link to find out where we went.

2020: The year we'll all remember! After returning from our South African trip we were ready for another motorhome tour of Europe in Big Ted, but after getting him out of storage and setting off to Dover to catch a ferry to France on March 13th 2020, we aborted just 13 miles from Dover. To see what we did and where we went during our lockdown click here.

2023: A year of change in many respects for us: Jackie's mum died quite suddenly in March just after we'd taken her on her first cruise. We spent the summer sorting out her finances and obtaining probate, the end result being that Jackie inherited her house in our home village and we decided to keep it as our base in the UK for when we're not travelling. During this time Jackie reached an age milestone which meant she could start drawing her BBC pension and we decided to sell the house we bought together back in 2003 and invest the proceeds through our Financial Advisor, taking an income from it. It means we now have the responsibility of a house and bills to pay but our new financial circumstances mean we can still keep travelling and keep the house for when we come home, leaving it for friends and family to use while we're not there. A win-win situation we hope, time will tell!

2024: We decided to sell Big Ted, our motorhome. There were several reasons for this, the biggest one being Brexit and our inability to visit Europe for longer than 90 days in any 180, which meant we couldn't easily escape there for winter sun  without the need to return to a cold, wintry UK halfway through. Campsites in the UK are increasingly expensive, the country is not really welcoming of motorhomes and he was really too big to use on some roads. We also found there are so many far flung places we still wish to visit that are too far to take Big Ted. Despite our thoughts that it would supplement our travels we found we were leaving him locked up for long periods without using him and we all know vehicles deteriorate when not used, so we decided now was the time

Housesitting: To satisfy our craving to look after and care for animals, particularly cats, we joined a housesitting website and have had many periods where we have stayed in peoples houses all over the world to look after cats, dogs, fish, goats, chickens, peacocks and all, making, for us, the perfect balance between our travelling adventures and domestication. Click here to see the housesits we have done, with links to the references we have
If you would like to join the housesitting website click on this link to get a 20% joining discount (we also get 2 free months): https://www.trustedhousesitters.com/su/fTdzeTFI

Where we have been: 

New Zealand, east coast Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Sumatra, USA, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, Patagonian Chile and Argentina, Portugal, France, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Malta, South Africa, Eswatini (Swaziland), Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Oman, India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Seychelles, Italy

Click here to see a summary of where we've been with links to more details 

In September 2018 we completed 6 years of travelling since finishing work. See our review of our first six years here: http://brianandjackiecross.blogspot.com/2018/09/review-of-our-6-years-of-travelling.html

What we are planning next:

After our strange 2023 (see above), we got back on track towards the end of the year with a long-distance hike for Brian, the Cotswold Way, followed by a two week visit to Spain to see Jackies dad and Elizabeth, a 33 day cruise to India and the Seychelles finishing just before Christmas, allowing us to spend time with friends and family over the festive season, as well as a housesit near Evesham and in early 2024 we embarked on a two and a half month trip through India, Sri Lanka and The Maldives, getting back home on 15th April. We attended the wedding of Brian's nephew Nick and bride Jessica at the end of June and, shortly after went to the Italian Dolomites with friends for a 14 day Via Ferrata holiday, climbing high mountains while clipped to a metal wire. 

Mid September (next week as I write) we are going on a two week trip to Kenya with my daughter Fiona and husband James for lots of safaris, the highlight being to hopefully see the Great Migration and take a hot air balloon ride over the Masai Mara. In between that we continued the renovation of our house.

Straight after that we are housesitting in Pershore for a week and, on 23rd October we fly to Spain to see Jackies dad Richard and wife Elizabeth, before flying to Arequipa in Peru on 2nd November for a potential 6 month trip through the Amazon, Galapagos, the Salt flats of Bolivia, the Atacama desert, housesitting in Ecuador over Christmas, Easter Island, Chilean Fjords, Argentine Tango dancing in Buenos Aires, Montevideo in Uruguay and more, finishing with a possible repositioning cruise back home.

As usual we have many, many plans: China (if possible), Japan, Canada, tracing the Silk Route and Antarctica are all on our list along with many other ideas. The world is our oyster!

As usual, there are so many places we want to visit and adventures we want to do, we can't imagine ever being bored!

Hopefully that 'visit to the library dear' is many years away yet....

Contact us:

We'd love to hear from you: What are you doing? What do you think of our blog? Can we give you any advice? Have you any advice to give us?

Email us:
Brian: brianfrederickcross@hotmail.com
Jackie: jackiescross@hotmail.co.uk

Facebook:
Brian: https://www.facebook.com/brian.cross.7359
Jackie: https://www.facebook.com/jackie.cross.167


Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIvm2M0f46cVgHfkBWZmD79CaiaJoJluX

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