Change of Plans: An Unexpected Digital Nomad Detour to Cap a Wild Week

Checking in en route to a moody French castle via plane, taxi, ferry, bus, and train. Plus, this week’s dispatch includes reflections and good reads on stuff, stability, and nomad values.

Good morning from Edinburgh, Midlife Nomads! (We’re into the afternoon here, but I slept like hell and have a big day ahead, so it’s “my” morning.)

It’s been a whirlwind of a week. A homicide case I’ve been reporting on for two years, as proceedings moved from our hometown in Canada to Edinburgh in the UK, suddenly and unexpectedly wrapped up the Scottish end when the three men involved agreed to extradition.

I had packed for a month, just in case. We were in court for 20 minutes.

(I am really glad I didn’t book the monthly rental I had considered doing… often, monthly rentals are the more affordable way to go, but Edinburgh is so wildly expensive that it would have cost a small fortune. Still, it was the more attractive option for a short time there when we thought this could drag on for a while.)

Anyway, that sudden agreement in court led to a flurry of articles, interviews, and updates, then the realization that plans I’d had to cancel when this hearing date was set are now back on!

You may recall my starry-eyed ramblings about a French coliving castle earlier this year. I had signed on for a stay there with Digital Nomad Girls, a group of women who work online that I’ve been a part of for several years. Unfortunately, this hearing date was set for the day after the coliving group started, and I haven’t yet been able to access cloning or teleportation technology (someone really needs to get on that).

Image credits from chateaucoliving.com, and I hope to have some of my own to share with you shortly!

I think I’ve figured out how to get there from here! Option A was to fly to Paris and rent a car, then drive for over three hours to the castle. I’m a fairly confident driver and speak French, so wasn’t worried about the drive.

But I’m not keen on dropping an extra several hundred (or a thousand) Euros to have a car mostly just sit there as I flit about the castle, as you do.

And so I’m catching a quick flight to the south of England this afternoon, grabbing an Uber to the port, and taking an overnight ferry across the English Channel to the Normandy coast. From there, it’s just a bus, a train, and a car ride away 😁

The great thing about connecting with a coliving group or facility like this is you aren’t completely on your own. Jenny from DNG has already sent me pics of the schedule at the bus stop I need to find, I’ve put in a grocery order for Katia from the castle to pick up with the rest of the group’s orders tomorrow morning, and someone will meet me when I eventually get to the train station nearest the castle.

And of course, a group like this has a program, so there’s nothing for me to be super-prepared for; wandering in partway means picking up wherever the group is at.

So! Wish me luck, and hopefully the next time you hear from me, it’ll be from an antique desk hidden away in the turret of a moody French castle, stuffed chock full of cheese and inspiration, writing madly.

Until then, here’s what I’ve found interesting and informative recently.

Recommended Reads

I appreciated Chris Englert’s reminder of just how much “stuff” can weigh us down. It’s difficult to be flexible when you’re worried about baggage limits, where to store things, and having this specific product or that. In reality, most of what we truly need is out there, and finding it can be a fun part of the adventure.

If you find yourself hit with that fear of not having what you need when you need it on occasion, this one’s for you.

Pack Light. Eat Light. Live Light.

Next up, what people love most about Portugal might surprise you.

I absolutely loved this essay from Gregory Garretson, in which he takes a qualitative approach to analyzing the results of a survey he conducted to dig deeper into what people really love about Portugal.

And no, it’s not the cost of living. I’m thankful for that, honestly, because so much of the talk about relocation I hear in expat circles suggests a wide swath of expats might just be the cheapest and most exploitative people on the planet.

Not all expats, fine. But it gets tiresome to hear people complaining about having to pay a local a fair wage, or getting charged 10 cents too much for a piece of fruit.

Anyway, Gregory dug into the sentiment and values underlying the responses received, and it’s a lot more interesting than “it’s cheap there.” Check it out:

👉🏻 Read What Expats Love Most About Portugal on Living Elsewhere

You might choose remote work but not nomad life, and that’s okay, too.

Rhoda Adeola, a UK-based tech recruiter. Photo credit: TechCabal

I appreciated this story for a few reasons, the first being that we tend to focus hard on who’s making nomad life “a success” and also need to acknowledge that it can have big drawbacks. One of those can be the lack of stability — not always, but often — and it’s not a failure to want more stability in your life.

COVID brought a sudden realization to many who’d worked in-office their entire lives that it didn’t have to be that way. With that “I could work from anywhere” epiphany came a lot of experimentation. Some, like Rhoda, have given in a real try and found that being able to work from anywhere doesn’t mean you have to.

Plus, I love to see a Nigerian woman who relocated to the UK the star of a feature length digital nomad story. Too often, the focus is on white, middle class North Americans and Europeans moving to places their money goes further.

Read Rhoda’s story here 👉🏻 Digital Nomads: The global tech recruiter who can chose where to build a career at TechCabal

And ICYMI last week, I dropped a new resource and it’s yours free, for full subscribers:

Safe travels and talk soon,

✌🏻 Miranda

You might also like:

The Midlife Nomad’s Guide to Self-Publishing a Book

Ditch the Office, Keep the Paycheque: Earning Remotely on Your Terms