'If you make me travel home, I'm going to divorce you'

A couple who decided to quit their jobs and spend a gap-year travelling across Europe in a motorhome are still on the road a decade later.

Karen and Myles Davies have visited 30 countries and racked up more than 100,000 miles (160,934 km) since leaving their home in Milverton in Somerset, in 2016.

Myles, 59, who has been married to Karen for 38 years, said: "About five weeks in [to the gap-year] Karen said to me: "I don't want to go back - if you take me back, I'm going to divorce you"."

Karen, 58, said: "I was really worried I was going to be a bit too high maintenance for a 7.5 metre (24ft) [motorhome] but I loved it."

The couple met in 1988, while working for a large insurance company in Cheltenham and were married 18 months later.

But it was while trying to run three businesses on the Isle of Wight, that they decided to sell up and move to Somerset for a quieter life.

"We were both caught up in the corporate hamster wheel - we were doing three jobs between us, working crazy hours," said Karen.

"We were both completely burnt out - and we knew that we had to make some different choices."

But after three years of trying to get his golf handicap down in rural Somerset, Myles said he was becoming a bit "bored".

"I thought there's got to be more to life than this," he said.

To celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary, the couple hired a motorhome and took to the roads of New Zealand for six weeks.

Despite feeling "ready to come home" at the end of it, Karen said motorhome living had got her "thinking about a different way" of life.

"We'd meet up with people, have a great evening and then we'd go our separate ways," she said.

"There was something about that freedom, that absolutely liberated me."

With no children or parents who needed their support, Myles suggested they go travelling again for "just a year" and then "come back and start [their] new life".

So in March 2016, the couple packed up and despite setting an "exhausting" itinerary in the first couple of years they both "loved it".

"I wanted to see the next cathedral and the next beautiful village - it was so enthralling - except we got absolutely exhausted by that pace," said Karen.

"It was the fear of missing out. Now we have a much slower pace."

Along with knowing when to "put the handbrake on" for a few days, the couple have also "learnt a lot about each other".

"I don't think you could do this sort of lifestyle in 7.5 metre (24ft) of van if you didn't get on," said Karen.

"If you have a row, there's nowhere to storm out to - you haven't got another room to go to."

Despite "ups and downs - with broken engines and blown out tyres", Myles said the only thing he misses is a "nice soak in the bath".

While Karen said it may not be "all Instagram moments" but after 10 years on the road, she still loves it.

"There's nothing much that we miss because when we shut the door to our van, which we call Scoobie, we are home," she said.

"It doesn't matter which country we're in - in this space we're home."

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