I am sure your positive and capable attitude will come across in your profile and once you get those first few reviews the world will be your oyster. Good Luck
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Hi @kellyoldroyd. We did a 12 month tour through Europe, hoping to do housesitting throughout our endeavour. I didn’t quite work out as we hoped!
The visa comments in this thread is very useful, please take careful note of these.
We found it very easy to get back-to-back sits throughout the UK (only). Ireland, France, Germany - still easy enough but with some gaps. Then the problem started with Portugal, Spain and Italy - very few sits. Most of these sits are in the mountains and require a car of your own, which we luckily had. But there are just not enough sits to keep you going full-time, resulting in huge gaps. We had to spend a good amount of our budget on Airbnb’s, and they ain’t cheap, not even off-season. If you want a continuous tour throughout Europe, it would be nearly impossible to do this by housesitting alone. If you are happy to spend the majority of your time in UK, Ireland, France, Germany etc. - then it might still be possible with careful planning.
On the other hand, we did a 12-24 month purely housesitting tour through Australia in 2019/2020 and it was easy as pie to find back-to-back sits. There are so many opportunities there. We do recommend a car if you are going to stay a while. And of course, as always, study the visa regulations carefully.
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Hey Kelly
Like others have said, covering a whole year could pose some challenges unless you were okay with the possibility of potentially longer gaps between assignments.
One of the biggest challenges is the 90/180 rule in general, but one of the biggest specific issues is sits in European countries outside the Schengen area–many Balkan countries for example-- are not super common, so you couldn’t really bank on finding ones there for sure.
The UK would be your best bet for finding sits for the 90 consecutive days you would need to leave the Schengen area before coming back-- if you stayed 90 days in a row-- or bouncing back and forth between here and Schengen countries. If you go in and out of the area, there are sites that help you track your days there and how long you can stay.
This is probably the only country in the region where you could be 100 percent sure you could cover any amount of time you wanted to stay because the amount of listings far exceed the number of people applying for them.
You may also be able to find some sits in Turkey --not far and airfare wouldn’t be that expensive. Sits there are not super common but enough get posted it could be a real possibility. You may also occasionally see a sit in other countries not far from Europe like Morocco.
In your case, it might be helpful to book as many sits as possible before you leave. Owners vary in how far ahead they post their listings, but many will at least several months in advance or more. Of course there is always the chance of cancellations, but in the grand scheme of things, that seems to be relatively rare.
As someone who housesits full time, I have seen firsthand that it is possible to get consecutive sits (barring small gaps in between the end of one sit and the start of another) for years on end.
But when someone is concentrated on one specific country or region for the long-term (barring countries like the UK or US which have hundreds or thousands of opportunities at a given moment) that changes things a bit. The more specifics we have, the less opportunities there will be naturally.
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Thank you so much for this information! I’m sorry your sitting didn’t go as planned 
You’ve honestly helped a lot with this first hand information thank you!
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Thank you so much for this information! 
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I would underline that. Sometimes sits don’t turn out exactly how you imagine and they end up being very stressful. Read ads carefully so you understand the pet owner’s expectations. Many do not want their pets to be alone for more than 4 hours or so, making it challenging to do tourist things.
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How did you get on? I’ve just joined THS with the same intention as you had. I’m doing local sits in the UK for and then I want to do six months to a year in Europe. I’d love to know how you got on. I have the advantage of a European passport, so a Visa is not a problem. Having read the thread I’m wondering whether I should just do six months to a year in the UK instead of Europe?
We’re a Brit Turk combo who sit & travel full time. We’ve done two 3 month stints in Europe in the last two years and never had a problem finding sits. You just need to be able to flex on locations but with flixbus and cheap flights it can all work easily. Your passport is a huge advantage (we manage with one UK & one Turkish which is challenging). Popular locations go fast in Europe so set your alerts up, and there are nowhere near as many sits as the UK but you can also join local FB groups and Nomador if you’re keen on France. Three years & 19 countries (no 20 on Tuesday 
) & all is going to plan beautifully so far. Enjoy the journey @HelenR - there are lots of other members with good advice am sure. #happysittingtravels
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Hey, thats so lovely to hear about you having such adventures @Cuttlefish . Thank you for taking the time to comment. Enjoy your travels too. I’m so excited at the prospect. My daughter is off to uni next year and I’m planning to take a sabbatical from work. It’s encouraging to hear that others have done these stints in Europe too. I’m enjoying being part of this THS community. I’ll. have a look at FB groups too.
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I recently returned from a 4 month ( all UK) adventures ( U.S. citizen) and a seasoned traveler. My sits were in Scotland and England and unfortunately it didn’t work out to have back to back, so I had a fair few gaps and was prepared. I had amazing HO’s who were generous and had me stay a few extra days to cover some of my gaps which i was extremely grateful for. I began all my research about 8 month’s in advance. Some of my gaps were intentional as I wanted to be on my own. I’m sure with your positive attitude and intentions you’ll find some perfect opportunities. Wishing you all the best on your adventure.
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@HelenR We’ve done a lot of sitting in UK and mainland Europe so I can give you a little heads up on our experiences.
We spent the summer of '22 - May to September and this past 'winter- Nov '23-March '24 sitting around the UK. We set up back to back sits the whole time and found it super easy to fill our schedule- in fact we gave ourselves a challenge to try and avoid all overnight costs! The summer tour we managed it!
And the winter tour we needed just 2 overnights!
On the continent its more difficult to arrange that but not impossible! Last summer we sat in France & Spain for 6 months straight and had only about 4/5 airbnb nights total. This summer in France & Spain again we’ve had a few more gaps plus a 2 week cancelled sit to cover. In the UK we’d have had no problem to find a replacement sit for those dates in July. But in Spain there was nothing suitable at all at short notice.
We’ve also sat in Germany and Switzerland. We’re currently on a sit in France and the next one is in Germany with a family visit in between.
We use THS exclusively but others use FB groups or other sites like Nomador for France. So its worth trying other options too.
In the UK THS is all you need!
It depends also on how flexible you are with location/properties/pets and also whether you’ll have a car or be reliant on public transport? We have a car which makes it all a big road trip for us and we live out of the car!
But we’ve also flown in to sits. Once we were invited down to the south of France for 3 weeks- Villa with pool 2 cats 2 dogs car included! That was worth flying down for!
Whatever you end up doing I wish you a fabulous adventure! 
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Thanks @catgoddess_99. It’s really encouraging to hear that your doing long stints on house sits. I guess it takes a lot of planning but it sounds like its worth it. I hope your adventures continue.
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