What Are We Going to Do Now: Brexit and The Impact on Our Travels

Many people say that Brexit will kill everything it touches. I am inclined to agree but without getting all political and soap-boxy on y’all, it is safe to say that if Britain leaves the EU and ends freedom of movement for EU citizens then the same rules will apply to UK passport holders like us in the European Community. That will curtail our ability to travel all over Europe full time as we have in the past since we would be restricted from being in the Schengen Area for more than 90 out of every 180 days.

 So what to do? Well, we considered several approaches. 

1. 
   

   We could take the wait and see option. It may never happen, or it may happen but with a transition period meaning that we still enjoy our freedom of movement for another year. Or it could happen without any deal and the 90 day clock starts ticking immediately and we would have to rethink how we travel urgently.

   
   
2. 
   

   We could play the 90/180 day Schengen game and still live in the motorhome full time. That essentially means that 90 days out of every 180 we would be forced to spend outside the Schengen. In the motorhome that means basically three exits: West to the UK & Ireland, East to Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria (not currently Schengen but will be in the future) and some other Eastern European countries plus Turkey or South to Morocco and North Africa. There is no northern exit from the Schengen; even Iceland is part of the area despite not being an EU member.

   
   
3. 
   

   We could play the 90/180 day Schengen game a different way and store the motorhome for periods of time then fly away to non-European destinations.

   
   
4. 
   

   We could get residency in another European country which, while still subjecting us to the 90/180 day rule, would exempt the country of residence from that count.

   
   

We decided against number 1 as we knew we still wanted to be in Europe for most of the time and weren’t prepared to just wait and see what happened. We preferred to be proactive and preserve our ability to do mostly what we wanted while we were still EU citizens. Making changes after we lose our EU citizenship may well be harder.

Number 2 would impact the schedule of our travel in a way we weren’t happy with. We didn’t want to be forced into 3 months in the UK and Ireland. We didn’t want to spend 3 months every winter in North Africa. It just would have dictated too much of our timetable and we were not into that.

Number 3 was also an option we considered since there are still plenty of places we want to see around the world. For instance, we could easily have headed to Mexico every 3 months without too much arm twisting. But at this point we have decided spending a 3 month stretch away from our home (the RV or a sticks and bricks home) at a time was not what we wanted.

In the end we opted for number 4. It was actually an easy decision because, as you may know if you have read other posts from us, we have long been looking for a home base where we could potentially settle. The Brexit situation ultimately sped that decision up a little.

We had been constantly exploring locations that could be that home. We considered towns and cities in Mexico, Thailand, Malaysia and Italy. (Notice the warm theme – we have no interest in cold winters!) But the place that has been at the top of our list since we first spent any significant time there was Spain. With the clock ticking on potentially losing our EU citizenship we decided now was the time to jump. So as an update to our followers, we have spent the last few months working to become Spanish residents. We are now leasing an apartment to find out how we like it here longer term and whether this is somewhere we want to put down deeper roots. 

The motorhome is currently in storage in the UK but we’ll be bringing it here before the end of the year and re-registering it as a Spanish vehicle. Our new status will allow us to spend as much time as we want within Spain and to travel more freely all over Europe in the motorhome with fewer restrictions.

I’ll write a future post to explain why we chose Spain, and in our case Málaga city, and detail some of the hoops we had to jump through to be here. We have been mired in bureaucracy and the exhausting process of setting up a home so the blog has been a bit neglected. But we are delighted with our choice; to be honest, having a home base has been something we have been thinking about for a while and the impending Brexshit just created a sense of urgency that pushed us to action. So I guess I have to (grudgingly) thank Brexshit for something!