Hi, Everyone! It’s #GuestDayTuesday again, and today’s guest,  Rosie Mitchell, is a new visitor here on The Write Stuff. What do you say we give her such a great welcome, she’ll feel great about stopping by again in the future? That sounds like a Plan to me, so Rosie, the floor’s all yours. Take it away! 😊

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Hello fellow writers and readers. I am a newbie at all of this, but I am thrilled to be given the opportunity to be on Guest Day Tuesday.

My passion is travel, which also includes house sitting, so is it any wonder that my first book, Open the Door, is about our early days establishing ourselves as international house sitters, something we having been doing since 2011. Thirty-six house sits and counting.

My husband and travel companion Victor, comes along for the ride and always steers me in the right direction so I don’t get lost. My navigation skills are not the best but I do excel at booking our airlines tickets, arranging the travel insurance and the most wonderful house sits.

House sitting may not be everyone’s ‘cup of tea’, but for us, it gives us the opportunity to travel for extended periods of time, and have the opportunity to explore new neighbourhoods, and feel like we are part of the community and not just tourists. Mind you, every now and again we do like to take ourselves off and spend time in hotels and soak up a bit of luxury.

I should at this point make it quite clear that we do not get paid for our house-sitting services. We feel that it is a privilege to be asked and given the opportunity to stay rent free in such beautiful homes around the world. We miss our dogs who have now passed on, so we are only too happy to shower our love and affection on the pets that come with the property, be they dogs, cats, fish, chooks or whatever. We do draw the line at reptiles. Snakes in the backyard are more than enough to cope with!

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You Can Buy Open the Door HERE

BLURB:

‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’ — Loa Tzu.

Open the Door. Just take a deep breath and one giant leap forward. Venture out into the unknown… As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, ‘The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.’
So, take a chance to dream and explore a new way of life. It’s not going to be easy at first, but the rewards and the self-confidence you gain in knowing that you have achieved something you have wanted for a long time will make it all worthwhile.
So why not seize the day? Fear is the thief of our dreams.

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You Can Buy Avaning Around in Arabella HERE

BLURB:

When the world was gripped by the Covid19 pandemic in 2020, Rosie Mitchell and her husband sold their property in the Riverina, New South Wales. Trapped by lockdowns and border closures and with no chance of escaping overseas, they bought a small caravan, planning to spend time travelling around the wonderful country of Australia.
This book follows Rosie’s first book, Open the Door, which describes their international house-sitting adventures.

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Author Rosie Mitchell

Hello fellow readers. I have now published two books, the first called Open The Door, which is about my early house sitting adventures and other overseas travels through Europe, Malta and the USA. My second book, Avaning Around in Arabella, was written about our caravan travels and house sitting experiences in Australia, which took place during the Covid19 pandemic. I enjoy writing for pleasure. I love to read and when I am at home I enjoy sewing and cooking. Travelling is what I do the most. In June 2022, my husband and I finally escaped overseas on our extended senior citizens gap year. My third book is now under way. I look forward to sharing the dream with you.

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Special Bonus:

Excerpt from Senior Citizens on the Run
Intrepid Tales of International House Sitting
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Chapter 1.
Getting organised and booking house sits in the UK.

You know all those things you always wanted to do? You should go DO THEM!

We decided on business class tickets. Normally we would have been happy with premium economy or even economy, but since the Covid19 pandemic had taken hold of the world, we had become a lot more conscious of needing our own space. We had travelled by road around New South Wales and Queensland for nearly two years, staying in caravan parks and using public amenities without any incidents. So, perhaps we were being just a little too precious.

Finding the right travel insurance, something we would never leave home without, was a nightmare. As well as being exorbitantly high in price, making sense of all the fine print was a minefield. We had planned to travel continuously overseas for two to three years however, we were only able to get a travel insurance policy for twelve months, due to all the fine print about covid cover. This meant that we would have to return to Australia mid-2023, and then take off again, which was not a big problem for us. Perhaps by that time, the cost of airline tickets and travel insurance would be a little more reasonable. We were forever hopeful. With this in mind, we decided to concentrate our travels on the UK and Europe. There were just so many places to tick off on our bucket list.

Having made the decision to escape, within a few weeks we had booked a number of house sits in the UK which would take us through from the end of June to early December. We started off in Somerset, across the country to London, then Cambridgeshire, Surrey, Oxfordshire, back to Somerset, and finally to Kent. Christmas/ New Year would be spent in Huntington, Long Island, New York, where we had secured a house sit from early December to mid-January 2023. It wasn’t hard to get all the pieces to fall into place.

Meanwhile, we spent the last three months back in Canberra, where we had booked a house sit for two months on the north side of town. During this time, we sold our dearly beloved Arabella, the Avan Aliner camper. We sorted out our personal belongings, and stored a few more items in our storage unit in Griffith in the Riverina, which also contained our household items from Stanbridge. Our trusty steed, the Mitsubishi Outlander was next to go, and like the Avan it sold quickly within twenty-four hours.

We were excited to finally be on our way. The dream was at last coming true, and even though a few people thought we were perhaps just a little crazy to be taking the risk, we felt quite comfortable with our decision. What did we have to lose? We had already sold our country property and had spent almost two years in limbo in Australia, so venturing overseas was no big deal for us.

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Buy Rosie’s Books HERE:

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You Can Reach Rosie on Social Media HERE: