Day 202 - The Great Gear Cull

A simple plan to post a bag home turned into a reality check on the cost of travelling with too much stuff. What followed was a ruthless clean-out, a long walk across London carrying donation bags, and the realisation that after more than 200 days on the road, we're finally getting better at travelling lighter.

After getting home super late the night before, everyone enjoyed a well-earned sleep-in. We were all up around 7:30–8:00am and eased into the day.

Kia and I started with coffee while the kids slowly got moving. After walking past the post office the day before, I was convinced it was only open for a short window in the morning, so I wanted to get there early to find out how much it would cost to send a bag of gear back to Australia. If it was affordable, we could finally lighten our load.

The plan was simple: drink coffee, throw on my running gear and run to the post office.

Meanwhile, Kia stayed back and got breakfast sorted for the kids. Maddie moved from the lounge room into our bedroom for a bit more sleep, while Emmett happily built Lego and ate breakfast with Mum.

I headed out and ran to the post office, arriving just after 8:30am. I went inside and asked about postage prices, only to be told that I was standing in a sorting and collection facility, not an actual post office.

"The real post office is around the corner," the staff member explained.

Back outside I went, jogging down to the nearby convenience store where we'd bought supplies on our first night in London. Sure enough, tucked away in the back corner was a proper post office.

Unfortunately, it didn't open until 9:00am.

That left me with around twenty minutes to kill.

I called Kia and told her I was going for a longer run before heading back to the post office.

Not far away was a lake, so I headed towards it and ended up doing a lap around the water before returning. It turned out to be a really enjoyable run. The path wound through mature trees and parklands, with beautiful homes surrounding the lake. It was a surprisingly peaceful little pocket of London.

The run wasn't all sunshine and rainbows though.

I hadn't really run properly for several weeks. Morocco had knocked me around physically and mentally, and my body simply hadn't wanted to run. The fitness I'd worked so hard to build before this trip had definitely taken a hit.

By the time I finished the loop and ran back to the post office, I was feeling it.

Inside, I explained what I wanted to send home and gave the staff member an estimate of the weight and size.

The answer nearly made me fall over.

Somewhere between £200 and £280.

Around $550 Australian dollars.

For one bag.

That idea died immediately.

There was absolutely no point paying that kind of money when excess baggage fees on future flights would cost significantly less. We might as well carry the gear ourselves.

I ran home and delivered the bad news to Kia.

With sending it home off the table, we switched to Plan B.

Cull everything.

And I mean everything.

We went through every bag ruthlessly.

Emmett's snow gear was an easy decision. By the time we see snow again, he'll probably have grown out of it.

A lot of our thermal clothing went into the donation pile.

My oversized ski pants disappeared.

Kia's ski gear went.

A pair of Kia's shoes.

Several items of Maddie's clothing.

Various odds and ends we'd been carrying for months but hadn't touched.

Before long we had a surprisingly large pile of gear sitting near the front door.

While sorting everything, I also repaired the zip on Kia's travel bag. One of the zippers had failed, which was particularly annoying because that's where she keeps most of her socks and underwear. Fortunately it was an easy enough fix.

Once we'd finished sorting, everyone repacked their luggage.

The difference was noticeable.

For the first time in a while, our bags actually had some spare space.

That was important because tomorrow we fly to Mexico.

Our flight from Morocco to London had included 23kg baggage allowances. Our Mexico flight only allows 20kg each.

When we weighed our bags, Kia's and mine were both sitting around 22kg and the kids' bags weren't much better.

Without the cull, we would have been well over our allowance.

It felt good to finally get rid of things we no longer needed.

We had lunch back at the apartment and spent much of the afternoon researching options, packing, sorting and generally preparing for the next chapter of the trip.

Eventually it was time to get rid of the donation pile.

The nearest donation centre was 1.8 miles away.

So we loaded ourselves up.

Kia carried one bag.

I carried two.

Combined, they were easily more than 10 kilograms and felt heavier with every step.

Thankfully it was actually a really pleasant walk.

School had just finished for the day, so there were families everywhere. We wandered through parks, past beautiful homes and gradually left our little area for what felt more like a village centre.

When we arrived, there were three different charity shops.

The first one didn't accept the type of items we had.

The second one told us they weren't taking donations.

Thankfully, the third one said yes.

The ladies working there were lovely. We ended up chatting for quite a while about our trip and where we'd travelled over the past seven months.

The kids both found books they wanted to buy, and Kia picked one up as well.

Mission accomplished.

The bags were gone.

The walk back wasn't direct.

We stopped at a couple of larger British supermarkets to stock up on a few essentials.

I needed a new deodorant stick.

We wanted more hand sanitiser.

We grabbed some electrolytes and other travel necessities.

Kia needed replacement heads for her electric toothbrush.

The sort of boring errands that somehow become major tasks when you're travelling full-time.

On the way home, Emmett spotted a playground and convinced us to stop.

Maddie wasn't particularly interested at first, but once she got involved, she and Emmett spent ages playing on one of the spinning playground rides.

They were having a great time.

Then the rain arrived.

And not just a light drizzle.

Proper London rain.

That triggered a quick dash back towards the apartment.

By the time we got home everyone was tired.

The kids had completed schoolwork earlier in the day, helped sort and pack their belongings, walked several miles carrying gear, visited the charity shops and spent time at the playground.

They'd earned a quiet evening.

We let them settle in and watch a movie while Kia and I jumped onto the laptop to try and sort out some plans for Mexico.

We'd actually tried looking at accommodation options while the kids were playing at the park, but the mobile reception wasn't great and trying to organise months of travel on a phone screen wasn't exactly easy. Once we were back at the apartment and connected properly, everything became much simpler.

The first thing we booked was our accommodation in Playa del Carmen.

We found a nice resort-style apartment complex with a gym and pool and all the things we'd been missing lately. We'll be there for around three weeks, which should give us a chance to settle in, recharge and figure out our next moves without constantly packing and unpacking.

After that, we started looking at what comes next.

Plenty of ideas.

No decisions.

But we did make one very big booking.

After weeks of talking about it, debating it and trying to decide whether it was the right thing to do, we finally booked our cruise home from Los Angeles in September.

Just like that, the trip had a finish line.

It was a strange feeling.

Part of me felt sad.

For so long this trip has felt open-ended, full of possibilities and unknown adventures. Booking the cruise suddenly made the end feel real.

At the same time, it was exciting.

The cruise itself looks incredible.

We'll stop at Kona in Hawaii, a place I've dreamed of visiting for years as the home of the Ironman World Championships.

We'll visit several islands across the Pacific.

And we managed to secure a cabin with a large balcony, which will be pretty special on those long sea days. I can already picture sitting out there with a coffee watching nothing but ocean stretching to the horizon.

With that booking confirmed, our trip now has clear bookends.

Tomorrow we fly to Mexico.

And on September 26th we'll board a ship in Los Angeles bound for Australia.

What happens in between is still largely unwritten.

There's still a sizeable gap between July and late September that we need to figure out, but that's a problem for another day.

Once we're settled in Mexico and have a chance to catch our breath, we'll make some decisions about where the adventure goes next.

Eventually it was dinner time.

We tidied up the last few things around the apartment, made sure everything was packed and ready for our early departure the next morning, and slowly wound down for the evening.

Before long everyone was in bed.

And that was Day 202.

Our last full day in London.

It probably wasn't the most exciting day of the trip.

There were no famous landmarks, epic adventures or memorable attractions.

But not every day on a twelve-month journey is about ticking off bucket-list experiences.

Sometimes travel is about logistics.

Sometimes it's about making life easier.

Sometimes it's about carrying everything you own across a city so you can give half of it away.

And sometimes it's about realising that after seven months on the road, the less stuff you carry, the freer you feel.