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Last week I received the following report and photographs from two long-time members from the UK - Eric and Irene. They and their American home exchange partners have certainly managed to create a new and innovative slant on home exchanging.

Irene wrote ….

Hi Anne

Now we’re settled back home after our absolutely unbelievable June/July exchange, I just had to write and tell you all about it.

As you will see from our listing, in addition to our three bedroomed home, we also offer full use of our Burstner Elegance motorhome, should anyone fancy doing some touring. Until January of this year no-one had ever shown any interest in the motorhome, then out of the blue we received an inquiry from Louis, an ExchangeHomes member living in Albany, New York.

He explained that he and his family were moving to California in July and they offered us full use of their motor home for as long as we wished during June, July and August, provided we picked it up in Albany and at the end of our holiday, dropped it off at their new home in Pasadena, California. In return, he asked for use of our motorhome to tour the UK during the summer of 2009.

Well, how could anyone refuse such an offer? He sent us a bunch of photographs as well and we fell for his suggestion hook, line and sinker.

We followed all your guidelines about discussing everything thoroughly, but to be perfectly honest with you, I can’t think of anything that would have changed our minds. Our two children were more excited than we were, but part of the reason for that may have been that they would have to miss a couple of weeks of school to make it work. (We couldn’t travel in August because of other commitments).

To cut a long story short, all of us had the holiday of a lifetime. Louis met us at the airport and drove us to his Albany home where he and his family put us up for two nights. While we were there he made us totally familiar with his motorhome and took Eric out on a couple of test drives so that he was comfortable with all the controls.

We spent exactly a month driving across America - although that’s not an accurate description - zig-zagged was what we actually did, detouring north and south from our general westward path to take in as much as we possibly could.

What a wonderful experience it was for the two children. They may have missed some school, but the education they received instead will remain with them for the rest of their lives.

As we drove we saw a number of long-haul removal lorries and each time we wondered if we were passing (or being passed by) Louis’s furniture!

By the time we eventually arrived in Pasadena, Louis had settled in to his new home. Our trip took us into twenty states and through hundreds of towns and cities. We felt a great camaraderie with Bill Bryson!

On the 20th of July Louis drove us to the airport in Los Angeles and we flew back to England. He plans to visit the UK with his family during August of next year, but after travelling around in their huge, comfortable motorhome, our Burstner is undoubtedly small and cramped. Having said that, trying to drive his Pinnacle on most of the narrow roads in Britain would be an absolute disaster.

Thanks for providing this great service with ExchangeHomes.com. Without you, this holiday of a lifetime could not have happened.

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