As I was writing my Scotland book, I was thinking about what it was exactly that made this trip—just one of many I have made in my life—the first I’ve been moved to write about. How was this trip different from others I had taken, and even different from any I had read about in travel literature?

The trip was conceived as a literature-based tour of Great Britain, but in the process of researching the literary settings, many non-literary sights landed on the list of must-sees as well. After all, if I were going to travel over four thousand miles to start this journey, I should see everything I want to see, right? The resulting itinerary, I was dismayed to discover, was longer than anything I could realistically tackle in several weeks. I had no desire to take a whirlwind tour of the island.

At this point in my planning, I came across a newspaper article written by Lynne Martin on the pleasures of extended travel. Lynne and her husband sold their home and traveled the world like gypsies, one rented house or flat at a time. While I wasn’t ready to give up my home just yet, I wondered if I might be able to apply the concept to my problem. Rather than drastically cut the itinerary to fit into the few-week time I had allotted this trip, could I extend the trip to, say, several months? I had no idea if I could even afford to be on the road that long, but I was determined to make it work. The idea just felt right.

I started planning a trip that would include it all. The only way I could squeeze everything in, even on an extended trip, was to plan to cover five to six sights per day. But I was careful to add “days off” to the itinerary so we would not burn out on sightseeing after the first few weeks. I shopped for clean and comfortable accommodations online—places we could curl up on the sofa and call home for a week at a time. I began making lists of everything that had to be accomplished before we left home. This trip was very carefully planned so that it could be flawlessly executed. We would work our way through the itinerary from beginning to end, taking copious photos to share with friends and family through my travel website.

To be continued... what actually happened when we were on the road.