I haven’t read the whole thread, but have read all your posts, @GotTheBug . I’m not really into telling others what to do, but, fwiw, this is my experience:
I re-mortgaged and then rented my house (single parent of adult kids) in my early 40s, when I had far less than five figure savings and lived on a narrowboat, travelling for much of the year and working temp jobs over the winter and when needed. Three years on, I sold my boat at a profit, and emigrated for a few years. My house was not trashed. I did use an agent, so factor that cost in, but I think that was thoroughly worth the fees. When I came back, in my early 50s, it took me three months to find a job, and three more before it started, so, again, I just did temp jobs to tide me over. Zero regrets and some fabulous memories and friends from those days.
When I was 59, and by then married, my husband was diagnosed with a life-limiting illness, and we realised that if we wanted to do more longer-time travelling, it should be soonish. So a year later, we sold our house, downsized to get rid of the remaining mortgage and give us a financial buffer, cashed in one of my husband’s pensions, and sodded off backpacking round the world for two years. When we came back, our house was slightly damaged (about a thousand quid’s worth) and we had to stay with friends for three months before the tenants left. I’d planned on early retirement, but was bored, so after six months or so found a job in a new-to-me field on an initial two year contract, which led to other roles with the same employer, all the way through to retirement in my late 60s. No real regrets, but cashing that pension may have been a mistake, as my husband (given a 2 - 5 year prognosis 10 years ago) is still alive!
My mum died when she was younger than I am now, very shortly after she retired, and since I retired I’ve had a couple of injuries and a failed corrective surgery, which limits how active I am. Similarly, although my husband is still alive he’s now less mobile (and travel insurance for a long trip is prohibitively expensive - we recently had a quote for a continuous year of travel that was £8k!) so we are glad we made the choices we did.
One thing I did do was to pay voluntary NI to cover missing years, so I get a full state pension. My other pensions took a hit obviously, although when I was working I paid extra in when I could, but it’s worth factoring that into your planning. It was still worth it though.