How many Brits decided to sell everything, pack up and move to Spain in the boom years? Thousands did, and it must be contagious because a young Spanish couple from Mijas has sold up, loaded the touring home and set off on a round-the-world adventure.

Fernando and his French wife, Fleur, both of whom are 29, decided that they should show their two children, Aïsha (5) and Noah (1) the world aboard their trusty motor home over the next three years. When you have to reduce your worldly possessions to items that can fit into a motor home, then there is a lot to dispense with, if you don’t want to travel squeezed between boxes and packages.

What about schooling? Well, apart from all the 1st-hand knowledge that you won’t find in a classroom, they intend to follow a French teaching programme, designed to be followed via the Internet.

The crunch had come in 2011 when Fernando decided that enough was enough, after nine years as a civil servant, so he put it to Fleur that if they didn’t do something like this now, they never would, given their children’s ages. Of course, the state of the country’s economy and the employment market was another factor.

What they want is simply to travel, pass all the time that they can together as a young family and see new things.

Of course, you don’t just get up one morning and drive off – first you need a mobile home, for instance! No, they had their pre-flight list of things to achieve before D-Day, such as hand their notice to the employers, explain what they were going to do to their own parents, find a purchaser for their house and one thousand essential but often very minor things.

They also intend to work along the way to finance the each leg of the journey – good luck on that one! Their adventure has also attracted quite a lot of media attention, so they are also hoping to find sponsors along the way, too.

They set off, by the way, at the beginning of the second week of this month, on course for France, as the first country on their route across Europe and Asia, visiting Italy, Germany, Holland, Finland, Russia and Kazajistán before reaching China. All this should take about a year, they calculate.

The second leg is from Iran to Australia, and from their a ship to Argentina. From their, all the way up the continent. Again, they calculate that this leg will take about a year. The third and last leg, will be a tour of Africa.

If you want to know how they are doing, you can follow their escapades on www.viviendonuestravida.com

They know that the concept of giving up a stable job in these times and carting a young family around the globe is… not easily understood by many, especially their parents who took some convincing, but their minds were made up and they went for it.

Are they brave, naive, to be envied or pitied – only time will tell.

(News: Mijas, Malaga, Andalucia)