When Nikki Collinson-Phenix first suggested to her husband Ian that they leave their home on the Isle of Wight, pick up their children Laanii, 12, and Raif, six, from school and go traveling for two years, she was “crazy”.
But an attack at work changed his mind. Ian, a trained carpenter and fencer, was working as a prison officer at the time and chiropractor Nikki also had a back injury that put her out of work for a year. During this time, Nikki re-evaluated her life and priorities.
“We would drop the kids off at the breakfast club first thing and pick them up after they had their tea, so we only saw them in the evenings,” she says. “We would spend our weekends doing laundry and taking them to and from clubs. When Sunday came and Monday approached, I was already getting ready to start all over again.
Nikki decided that if things didn’t change soon, the kids would grow up and life would pass them by. She had always dreamed of traveling the world after having trouble backpacking while traveling through Asia, Africa and Australia in her 20s.
“I never actually went on holiday as a kid,” he says. “I wanted to give my children a childhood different from the one I had, with lots of freedom and different cultural experiences.”
Nikki, who runs a number of online businesses including Global Trailblazing, an online youth club and social network for children, which she describes as being more like the Scouts, started planning their trip and thinking about how they would coordinate everything.
“My husband and I are polar opposites,” she says with a laugh. “I’m very organized and describe myself as a perfectionist in recovery, whereas he’s messy but very practical. “I’m the brain, he’s the brawn, we joke around.”
They started planning their trip in 2019, when their children were two and almost eight. “I wanted Raif to be fully potty trained when we left because I didn’t want to deal with diapers in the trailer,” says Nikki.
“We didn’t want to be one of those people who sold everything to fund our travels, so we rented our three-bedroom house to a friend, replaced our old caravan with a new one, and set up a two-year-old caravan. time scale.
They had planned to leave in April 2021, but the third lockdown delayed things and they set off in September 2021.
They started from France, went to Spain, then Croatia, Portugal, then through Spain, France, Italy to Slovenia and the Balkans. In the Balkans, the family discovered they were not so constrained by post-Brexit Schengen visa regulations, which stipulate they can only spend 90 days in the same country in any 180-day period.
Nikki, like many parents, says that after the lockdown, she realized that it would be better for her daughter Laani to pursue online education and self-learning rather than trying to get education from her.
“We both take turns homeschooling Raif while he teaches live online lessons for core subjects like English and maths,” she says. “I’ll do the morning sessions, Ian will do the afternoons.”
They also host live meet-ups with local “world school students” once a week, hosted by Nikki through an online group, and live fitness and mindfulness sessions once a week.
Raif was also enrolled in many local schools in the places they traveled, including Romania and Bulgaria. Laani also joined a girls’ football team in Croatia and a gymnastics team in Bulgaria.
Nikki says she was mostly ignorant about homeschooling before leaving the UK, but finds it brings huge benefits to both children.
“Raif is now about two years ahead in terms of maths and English skills,” he says. “He is very intelligent but also quite lively and I think if he were in a regular school he would be labeled as disruptive.”
Despite being constantly on the move, their home, the eight-metre caravan they bought for £14,000, and the children having the same online classmates every day maintain a sense of stability, she says.
Some of the highlights of his worldwide training include “magical” trips to Greece, Vienna, and Venice. “My daughter started reading the Percy Jackson books based on Greek myths,” explains Nikki. “He started asking if we could visit some of the places mentioned in the books, so we planned a trip across Greece, including the Acropolis, Olympia and Mount Olympus. “Seeing him so happy and in awe meant the world.”
Their son Raif is also a big fan of Go Jetters, an educational show on CBeebies in which four adventure-seeking superheroes explore locations around the world.
“Raif watched this episode where all the canals in Venice were turned into roads, and he became very interested in the idea that an entire city could be built on water,” says Nikki. “So we included it in our travel plan and went to Venice. “He loved riding gondolas and mapping the city.”
So what’s next for the intrepid explorers? “Hopefully Central America and Southeast Asia,” says Nikki.
But these aren’t all perfect “memory-making” moments. “Overcoming all the visa restrictions, language barriers and Schengen restrictions has been really challenging at times,” says Nikki. “Google Translate is a lifesaver when it comes to overcoming language barriers.”
There’s also the matter of ensuring their children socialize and meet other children of the same age regularly. “We’re now better at finding other families arranging play dates for the kids, but it can still be tricky in some areas,” says Nikki.
However, he still believes that although traveling the world may seem like a pipe dream, it is actually quite attainable.
“I’ve met so many families who love doing what we do but don’t think it’s possible. It really is. “We are not special people, we just set a goal and had a dream that we achieved it.”
Nikki Collinson-Phenix wrote a book called Wanderlust Calling – The Ultimate Guide To Worldschooling and Full-Time Family Travel and offers more advice for those who want to follow her path.
