Around the world in a mobile home as family takes a gap year with a difference

Most people who take a gap year to travel do it before they have kids or once their children have flown the coop.

However, one adventurous couple decided to break with convention and travel round the world in a campervan with their entire brood in tow.

Jen and Neil Taylor took their three youngsters out of school for the journey of a lifetime.

The family have just finished their year-long trip after travelling more than 50,000 miles through some of the most exotic and beautiful landscapes in the world. And, incredibly, despite being forced to live in such an enclosed space, no one fell out.

Along the way they rode camels in the desert, washed elephants in Thailand, had a mud bath in Spain and visited a host of historic sites.

Sons Adam, 16, Matt, 14, and daughter Katie, 10, now have plenty of tales of adventure to entertain their pals with.

Mum Jen, 44, said: “It was a great chance for our children to see a bit of the world and learn about different cultures. We knew that if we didn’t do it now, our oldest son Adam would have had too much going on at school and we’d never get to do it all together.”

The family went to Spain and Portugal in the campervan before ditching it back in Spain and getting flights to Thailand, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and other parts of the Middle East.

They then flew back to Spain to get the van before travelling through Greece, Italy, Morocco, Eastern Europe and Austria.

They spent months at a time in each location, making friends and immersing themselves in the culture.

The last part of their trip saw them travel back to Scotland where they met up with family in Perth.

The epic journey cost just shy of £15,000 excluding the cost of the campervan.

Their daily costs rose slightly during their trips to Australia, Thailand and the Middle East as they had to leave their mobile home behind.

However, they brought the overall budget back in line by reducing how much they spent while living in Morocco.

“Our budget was £8 per person per day for food, accommodation costs, travel and everything else,” said Jen. “Although the campervan helped keep this down.”

Taking the kids out of school could have had a huge impact on their education if it weren’t for the fact that Neil and Jen made sure they wouldn’t fall behind during their year out.

In order to do this they bought books which covered the curriculum their children would have covered during the same year at school. They also had to write to education chiefs in France to get permission to take them out of school for 12 months. Once they got the go-ahead, the only challenge left was getting them to do the work on the move.

Jen said she and Neil had the “fanciful” idea of getting their kids out of bed at 7am every morning and working from 8 to 10am but that notion didn’t last long.

She said: “That lasted a week. In all honesty, even a little less than that. It might have worked for some families but it was a disaster for ours.

“We forgot the plain old fact that teenagers have a changing body-clock and mornings are, basically, tough.

“We nagged for a while, being new to it all, but by the time we hit Spain, our first country, we began to relax.”

Jen said the boys were given the task of breaking up what they had to learn and working out when they’d cover each section.

Amazingly, they stuck to their plan and kept up their schoolwork throughout the trip.

Jen said: “The less we pushed the more they did. The nagging lingered for a couple of months but we could see that, as it died away, the motivation rate increased.”

The family are originally from Elgin, where they owned a bakery, but moved to the rural region of Limousine in France in 2007 so their three children could learn to speak another language.

Jen, a former solicitor, now teaches English while Neil, 47, is an agricultural engineer who now works on a goat farm.

The couple are childhood sweethearts who have just celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary.

After graduating, they went on a round-the-world trip that was supposed to last for 18 months.

However, the adventure was cut short when they were involved in a horrific crash in Australia when the car they were travelling in was hit by a lorry behind them. The collision caused their car to career off the road and into a tree.

Neil escaped serious injury but Jen broke almost every bone in her body, suffered a punctured lung and spent almost three months in hospital.

The experience changed the couple’s outlook on life, making them more determined to do the things they want to when they want to.

Jen said: “Since the accident we’ve done a lot of things on the spur of the moment.”

The Taylor children are now getting ready to start back at school in France after their year of sightseeing.

Jen said: “The kids are excited to see their friends back at school and tell them what they’ve been up to. They’re also going to do a presentation in the village hall for the locals.”Read the Taylor family’s travel blog here