So, we're off travelling again! It's a new plan for the rest of the summer after my ankle injury. Gone for now is the walk down Italy, although we've kept the mark in the right page and we still mean to read the book (and it's not just one of those optimistic bookmarks littering millions of copies of 'Das Kapital' halfway through the introduction or stuffed with disappointment at page 17 of Lord Jim).

To avoid too much confusion it is best to point out that this was actually written a couple of weeks ago and so any references to 'yesterday' are in no way to be taken as meaning 'yesterday'. Got it? We have got more written and are planning to operate at a slightly smaller lag with reality very soon, 'tomorrow' or sometime...

Returning to what I was saying, what we've got planned now is a month each in Italy, Greece and Spain. We're following this by a winter in the skiing regions of France. How marvellous it is to swan off around the world just for kicks! Well, sometimes I wish my motivations were as easy to untangle as that. Even if they were, we're working all the way.

It's starting to get complicated enough that it's resembling a real life. Let me try to get the boring details of what is swiftly seeming like a workable plan out in the open for you. We're doing workaways for the next three months which I am interspersing with photographing weddings. Following that we're running a chalet over the winter. The hours will vary from light to ridiculous and to top it all off Julia has found a job for her spare time. I'm having to organise contracts, separate flights for me and a shed load of other things related to self-employment – as is Julia. Our administration overhead in terms of time is roughly the same if not higher than it was in the UK. Something tells me that this means we've got it right this time.

It does raise the question of why the hell are we bothering to escape if we've combined all the difficulties of home with all the hardships of travelling?

It's tough to convince myself of an answer at a restless 1.30am sitting in the midst of Gatwick Airport's slumbering quarters. Home, bed, TV, oven and a liberal selection of my general stuff look bloody good when seen through that particular prism.

So why? Actually it's really simple. It's awesome. Any life that aims to be sustainable for more than a few weeks develops strings and with that basic proviso in place it's suddenly all about priorities. Obviously when there are two of you that issue is impossibly obscure but is usually helped by the received priorities of children, love, house ownership, financial comfort and generally a few others inherited for some reason from someone. Julia seems to be happy to place these in abeyance for a couple of years and I am just about confused enough to go along with whatever seems to be happening at the time.

This all leads us here. It's Italy, the weather's about five degrees too hot to permit rational thought and it's still getting hotter. Julia during her siesta looks like she's sleeping off a heavy night on something too good to be legal but all she's really done is a couple of hours weeding. I'm bearing up well and although I sweat like a pig (I have no idea how much pigs actually sweat so it's all bluff) I'm feeling OK.

We're lodged in a swish caravan in an eccentric Umbrian enclave performing a range of marginally specified tasks for an interior designer (who we assume must be brilliant). It's been great fun so far. I've taken over the kitchen by sheer force of control-freakery and Julia is reading a book on drinking your own urine.

The journey was typically, money-savingly awful. Got to the airport the night before for an Easyjet flight at 7.20am. One hour bus ride to Milano Centrale train station. It's a monster. Not content with throwing madly inflated Art Deco at you it then plasters Roman imagery anywhere a clear wall might seem too tasteful; the kind of ego-trip that could only have been possible under Italian fascism. The marble columns that support the entrances to the platforms are now held up by rusting steel beams. Walking through it I understand that I probably should have been impressed; it left me cold.

It turns out we shouldn't be here at all. Due to the kind of mix-up I previously thought only happened in farce we had been double-booked with a couple of Israelis called Ziv and Keren. Our host had been happily communicating with all four of us imagining we were but two and the first time anyone noticed anything was wrong was the day before we got here when the first 'us' – Keren and Ziv – called up to say they would be a day late, while the second 'us' – us – sent an e-mail at roughly the same time to say we would be there at about 7pm and please pick us up from the station. It confused the hell out of everyone but the upshot is there are five of us here instead of three and so we'll probably get more done.

Well, yesterday the other us arrived. Ziv and Keren are leaner and more tanned than Julia or me; they mix this with an aura of general practicality. So far all I've been able to bring to the table is tomato sauce and lemon sorbet. I happen to know for a fact that our host would prefer a two-and-a-half-times-life-sized Elephant that doubles as a viewing platform and venue for drinks receptions.

Our host seems to be one of those rare beasts, a guy with big ideas and the capacity to see them through. One very big physicality he likes wrestling with is his hot air balloon. I am dying to go up in it and take some photos of/from/at/inside it (yes...inside.). To whet my appetite (well, actually it was a 'balloon MOT') he fired her up today and from close up a balloon is one of those things so big that it has wrapped back around from huge or enormous; you just look deeply into the other person's eyes and call it big. The five of us were running around it like ants trying to control a tennis ball while me, Ziv, Keren and Julia were being told that this was in fact a very small balloon.

Much like our little adventure is a very small adventure. I have two friends about to embark on a trip eight weeks long which blows me and Julia out of the water. Callum and Will are embarking on a journey to the “last great unknown” on the planet. One of the few destinations left so unpopular it's without even satellite pictures, let alone traditional cartography. Central Indonesia, home to possibly the last remaining on-foot trade route, cut through jungles and mountains so irrelevant to outsiders that no-one bothered to map them during World War II (when the rest of Indonesia's maps were drawn up). They are being funded by the Royal Geographic Society and have a simple brief; to see what's there. And carry a baby pig – they're being told it's for science but we think it's a late April fool.

Much like us then, or something.

J-P