In search of the prodigal me.

The past few weeks have been slightly odd. Last year the summer months were busy and interesting. In June and July we were in the States - New York, Washington for 'the 4th' , Atlantic City, Long Island, New England. We knew it would be our last long-haul road trip for some time paid for out of Gill's final months' salary as a worker. We do have plans for a trip to New Zealand, but that will have to wait until we are closer to our state pension age, or when we've downsized the house. Last year we also managed a couple of summer trips in the UK and had the excitement of A level results day and our youngest's preparations for university. At the same time I was writing-up my MA dissertation. So in no time at all, suddenly we were making last minute arrangements for our big trip; time had rushed by.

This summer, for the first time since I retired, time has hung heavily, we've really had a tedious few weeks. Circumstances seemed to conspire against us getting out and about. We left the van for the bodywork to be repaired at Camperuk in Lincoln. We thought it would be there for a couple of weeks. In fact it took five weeks for all the components to arrive from Germany. Then we were stymied by the weather. The early summer months were pleasant enough, but August and September have been rainy, unseasonably cold and generally miserable. So rather than being busy and active we've ended-up pottering about - neither of us are too happy just pottering. We did build a new shed and have continued our gradual process of de-cluttering the house, but it all felt like just watching the days go by before we headed for Greece in late September. All the while my brain seemed stuffed with cotton wool. I pick-up a book, then lose concentration after half a chapter, my memory went fuzzy, words eluded me, the names of people and places slipped my mind. Without having a focus and a sense of purpose time drifts away. I read the blog posts I wrote just a few months ago, and I don't recognise the positive, good humoured person who wrote them. I hope the prodigal me returns once we hit the road.

Another difference from last year is that whereas taking-off for a few months was a really exciting prospect, right now I feel a bit apprehensive about our next trip. Partly I think concerns about Gill's Dad weighs on our minds. He is is now 91 and has just lost his driving licence on medical grounds. It's great he can still live independently, but will he be OK while we are on our travels, It's a bit of a worry. 

Then there is the trip itself. Our original plan had been to reverse last year's jaunt by travelling through Western France, Northern Spain and Portugal on the autumn leg, then return home via Southern Spain next spring. But the overriding organising principle for our travels was to visit new places, and doing the same journey, but counter-clockwise did not seem adventurous enough. Then someone posted-up Peejays Greek Stopovers, and we decided to go to the Peloponnese and Sicily. Since then, current affairs seem to have made our planned destination the centre of world attention, but not in a good way. First we had the banking crisis; now we have one of the biggest humanitarian crises of recent decades unfolding on the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean. Does it make sense to drive straight towards it - another lingering doubt.

Nevertheless, despite all of the foregoing, travel arrangements are all sorted, the van is spruced-up and ready for the off, last minute shopping lists have been made and the final glitch in our plans overcome at the last minute...

The last minute glitch....

You may be thinking, that's a handsome looking glitch, and it is indeed. Anyone following our blog will know that our ebikes our very much a secondary means of transport, not just there for the odd jaunt but things we rely on to go to the shops and  scoot about without having to constantly find parking spaces big enough for Maisy. You will also, as avid readers of Heels for Dust, know we have been plagued by problems with the electrics on the bikes. After we returned home in the spring both machines went back to where we bought them to be fixed. In all fairness we've used them quite a bit over the summer and they have been trouble free. About ten days ago I decided to clean and lubricate them. When I took a soft cloth to clean the mud from the bottom bracket two plastic rings dropped off and neither bikes' electric motor would work. The fact that identical components failed simultaneously on both bikes was uncanny.

With only 10 days before our tunnel crossing and two lumps of inert grey metal on our hands, as you can imagine we were both feeling very grumpy. So 'outraged of Buxton' here phoned Amps ebikes, UK suppliers of Wispers ready for a row. I suppose being used to robot customer care phonelines and off-shore call centres having your concerns dealt with by an interested fellow human-being is actually a rare and refreshing experience. I got straight through to the owner. David Miall listened to the problem, was upfront about there being a moulding defect two years ago in a batch of the failed components  and suggested a solution. He would mail two new parts to us and recommended we take the bikes to a specialist in Bolton who would fit them and check the bikes thoroughly. He even offered to reimburse us for the cost of the repair. Good man!

I phoned Ian at the North West Electric Bike Centre. After an initial cagey greeting followed by a confused exchange where he mistook me for an aggressive salesman who had been hounding him for weeks he too was sympathetic, and even though he was busy with other work agreed to look at our two bikes straightaway when I told him about our impending trip to Greece. Yesterday we collected the bikes - they are fantastic,working  better than when they were brand new. David Maill had mentioned to me that he thought Ian was one of the the best ebike engineers he knew. I just dismissed this a placating flannel, but I think he may be right. So, a big thumbs up to Ian and David. Two days to go, just the garden to tidy and the lawn to cut. The long range forecast for Eastern France and Switzerland is looking sunny - what is there to feel apprehensive about really? Nothing of course, time to get excited like a big kid!

MyMap fest...

Google 'MyMap' function has become a bit of an addiction recently, and over the past week I've produced three maps for use on our forthcoming trip, they may be of help to others.

1. Motorhome storage in Southern Europe

I have updated the map I posted a couple of weeks ago with some additional places that are willing to provide secure storage for motorhomes in Southern Europe. It is important to agree arrangements with your insurers who have varying policies towards leaving vehicles in storage abroad. Some won't do it, others have no problem. Our insurers - Aviva brokered through Motorhome Facts - require a questionnaire to be completed, then make a decision - always for an additional fee! Last year they charged £35, this year £60 - the price hike presumably because the place we have in mind is run by a campsite, not a dedicated vehicle storage depot.

2. Lidl stores on the Peloponnese and LPG stations (from LPG Stations in Europe site)
stores in red, LPG in blue.



3. Jean's Wild Camping Spots in Greece

Jean Williams, a participant on the Facebook site 'Motorhome Adventures', posted a really useful list of places where she wild camped last year in Greece. It gives some really good locations next to important archaeological sites in the Peloponnese, as well as some good stops in Northern Greece for people driving through the Balkans or arriving by ferry at Igoumenitsa.

4. Peejays Greek Stopovers. We are all indebted to Peejays comprehensive 'gazetteer' of free places to live the Hellenic dream.



5. Lidl Stores, IperCoop and LPG Stations in Sicily

With this one I have attained near epic levels of geekiness. It soon became obvious as I cross-referenced Google Maps with the European LPG Site that a good number of the POI's relating to LPG in Sicily were either no longer there, wrongly placed, or had been put there by garages aspiring to sell LPG as part of some vague future plan. So, I started to use streetview to see if the garages that claimed to sell LPG  had either signs outside advertising the fact or pumps in evidence. There are a lot of POI's in Sicily. Normal people would have given up, but I firstly I am stubborn as hell, and secondly, not exactly OCD, but certainly more than averagely interested in mindless detail. So, here you have it. The LPG stations on the map below do advertise that they sell it, at least they did when the Streetview car last chugged past. For most of the island this happened to be in the last three months, but just to indicate  the recency of the information, I have annotated most of the POI's with the date of the latest Streetview 'sweep'.

As well as LPG, I've included the locations of Lidl Stores (red pins), and if the need to do a megashop strikes you, then I've included where IperCoop hypermarkets are too (orange pins).

Really, the tunnel crossing on the 29th cannot come soon enough, I am running out mindless routine tasks, I need to leave the country very soon before OCD tendencies take a hold completely.

A little Lidl idyll

It's all coming together....

Message from insurers:

We acknowledge with safe receipt your email.

Underwriters have accepted the storage location, Sarabeo SAS (Camping Scarebeo) from 06/12/2015 till 06/02/2016.
The temporary storage will not alter your annual premium, however a fee for the sum of £60.00 shall apply.

We CAN leave Maisy in Sicily over Christmas (Hooray!). Cost of additional cover is almost double what it was last year. (Boo Hiss!)

Send email to the very friendly Angela at Scarabeo:

Dear Angela,

Our insurers have approved cover for storing our motorhome at Camping Scarabeo during December and January (hooray!) We shall arrive at Scarabeo Camping in early December and stay at the campsite for two days before storing our motorhome with you. Our flight from Catania to Manchester is on Saturday 5^th December at 11.15am. What we would like to do is put the motorhome in storage on Friday 4^th December and take the bus from Ragusa to Catania on the Friday. We shall book a hotel in Catania for the Friday night so we are not in a rush to catch the Saturday flight. If your shuttle could take us to Ragusa on the Friday that would be excellent.

We will be returning from Manchester to Catania on Wednesday 3^rd February arriving around midday. We shall arrive back at Camping Scarabeo in the late afternoon to collect our motorhome from storage and stay at the campsite for a few days while we sort ourselves out.

Do you need us to pay in advance for the storage, or are you happy to sort out payment when we arrive?

Please confirm you are happy with the proposed arrangements, Looking forward to meeting you in December,

Best Regards

Pete and Gill Turpie

Jolly reply....

Dear Mr. Turpie,
ok for everything, see you in Decembar.

Best regards

Angela Di Modica

The Tunnel is booked. Brindisi/Patras ferries sorted, Motorhome storage fixed, Manchester/Catania flights confirmed, hotel overnight in Catania all sorted... three weeks to go... we've planned a route, identified stop-offs, the van is in better nick than ever having spent a small fortune sorting glitches over the summer - we are ready to go...

Multi tasking! Peejays Greece Stop-offs and our excel planning sheet...(I am very boring....)

It is true, I am very boring. I entertained myself this morning annotating a Google map with Lidl stores in the Peloponnese, then added in LPG stations from the LPG.eu site just for good measure. Will I ever use it, well maybe, might it be useful to others...perhaps, so here it is (red dots=stores, blue dots=LPG)

Why am I never miserable in Italy?

I have just re-read my previous post. and am forced to conclude it is sad, but true that I have a propensity for grumpiness, and it's also fair to say that this does not seem to be diminishing with age. However, I am generous in my grumpiness, and willingly spread my sense of abiding misery in all kinds of places about many things -  family weddings, Christmas, most countries in the EU, the ambiance of the world's great cities, every theme park I have visited, but especially Disneyland Paris, on planes, trains, cycles, whilst driving, while being a passenger, when walking, or stuck in a queue, grumps about fellow humans and various fauna, about my countrymen, about foreigners, dogs, cats, dog-owners, Facebook cat lovers,  pigeons, seagulls, horses, horse riders, people in the street, people on-line, the arty, the sporty, food fascists, food snobs, health freaks, the cultured, the uncultured, the semi-cultured, politicos, Tories, eco-warriors, the radical chic, champagne socialists.... I am proud to say that my grumpiness can at times reach Larkinesque levels of inclusivity, except I get really grumpy with people who use the word 'inclusive'. The abiding exception to this dolorous mindset is Italy, where I have never been anything else but blissfully happy.

I have often wondered why this is, and two bits of Italiana - if there is such a thing - that I came across over the past two days does, perhaps, hint at the reason.

Exhibit A

Nowhere else on earth would you get a bus company announcement that managed to combine the fanciful and literal, the ornate and banal as:

"YOU TALKING TO LORDS THAT TRAVELLERS FROM THE August 13, 2015 August 16, 2015, FOR THE FEAST OF MARY SS. OF CARMEL, BUSES ARRIVING AND DEPARTING FROM ENNA AND CATANIA will perform A SINGLE STOP IN LARGO Emanuel LOI (SUPERMARKET forgot).

This slightly surreal aspect to social interaction in Italy, though probably infuriating for natives, comes across as disarmingly charming to fugitives from the north used to marketing gobbledygook. I assume 'lords travellers' more colloquially would be 'esteemed passengers'. No customer of Megabus or CrossCountry Trains would ever dream of being 'esteemed'; esteemed railways were phased out long ago. The best we can hope for is that we are valued customer whose needs have been fully met in accordance with ORR (Office of Rail Regulator) quality standards.

Exhibit B

The other aspect of the Italian experience that puts a smile on your face is their capacity to perform even mundane and workaday tasks with a bit of style and panache. Take airport parking, the very words strike terror into the heart of the British traveller. Who has not been ignored, unhelped and generally disabused by the zombie operatives of Purple Parking?  King Parking at Rome airport are quite another matter. Their 'meet the team' flash video is so infectious that you are tempted to drive to Rome airport just to meet them - Bravo!

So, I am looking forward to Monday 5th October when, if all goes to plan I will drive from the strictures of Switzerland into chaotic freedom of Italy, and all grumpiness will mysteriously evaporate. If gloom threatens, well, I'll just think of Mirko and his King Parking 'Squadra'. Go, on play the clip again, if you don't grin, then you are probably dead, and don't need anyone to park your car anyway.

So bored, I am blogging about parking.

To prevent the onset of cabin fever I have enbarked upon a  strict regime of occupational therapy. Gradually these have evolved from the pointless, but intellectually stimulating, towards the uninspired. but useful. Immediately after arriving back in early June I found myself  assiduously ploughing through the backlog  London Review of Books that had built-up over the past six months; I wrote an essay on recent epic poetry in America for a New Jersey based literary magazine and read a couple of classics of English psycho-geographical fiction. Meanwhile, practical tasks such as de-cluttering the garage and tending to our somewhat forsaken garden were consigned to the back-burner - we had months at home before our next long trip - why rush about? In a sense, this was true, time has hung heavily over the past few weeks, but of course, it also has slipped by inexorably.

However, once we could to say 'when we set-off for Greece next month' priorities changed, and suddenly we embarked on a de-cluttering fiesta. We have frequented  the local Household Recycling Centre so often that we're best buddies with friendly guys who work there.  Now they greet us like regulars down the local pub as we arrive with the next consignment of garage junk bulging out of our estate car.

A couple of weeks ago during a brief lull in the rain, we demolished our large, but seriously rotting garden shed; it has served us well for the last quarter century. We replaced it with a much smaller one on the basis that clutter increases exponentially in relation to available storage space. We imagined it was going to be a straightforward job, actually it took the pair of us four days of hard labour resulting in aches and pains that 25 years ago probably would have vanished in a couple of hours, but now persisted for days. Our sixty-plus bods are showing signs of wear and tear. Vintage may be cool in terms of music, clothes and bric-a-brac, but it's never going to trend corporeally! So far as bods go, there is no shabby-chic, just shabby...

So, in two minutes forty seconds, a synopsis of four days hard labour:

Here's the odd thing. The more active we are the more brain dead I become. The inside of my head is like cottonwool. When I try to read a book it's as if my eyes bounce along from word to word without my mind making any sense of it, I keep forgetting the simplest facts, names and phrases - what is going on? Since the onset of the rainy weather I have taken to absorbing myself in useful, but utterly mundane tasks. Now the map book of Italy is annotated in detail with every ACSI campsite and sosta; I have cross referenced the UK Road Atlas with 'Pub-stops' and cheap campsites; increasingly I have ended up in fatuous exchanges on Facebook, and even managed to embroil myself in a ridiculous spat on-line about the merits, or otherwise of some stupid hobbyist drone called 'Lily' that can follow its owner and take video of them from on high like a floating selfie stick. Astonishingly I really did find people  who considered this a 'cool idea'. God help us. However, in amongst the slow motion trainwreck of my mental faculties I did annotate a Google Mymap with my research into secure storage for motorhomes in southern Europe. At least this aspect of my unexpected enthusiasm for routine clerical tasks might serve some purpose over and above passing a few pointless hours watching rain come down while counting  the days to escape by tunnel from from Cameron's Dismal-land.

Oh for a beaker full of the warm South...

Gill and I met forty years ago this summer. Since then, by my reckoning we have only spent 5 or 6 summer holidays in the UK, and the last time was 20 years ago, the year our youngest daughter was born. Consequently July and August in Britain is a foreign territory to us; I feel homesick, for the South! This feeling has been exacerbated by two things. Firstly the  last year's travels were a fantastic experience. A new place every few days, changing landscapes, sunny skies for the most part, new tastes, interesting  wines cultured and convivial cities... the routine of being back home was always going to be a bit deflating. This has been made worse by the fact that this summer, at least here stuck 1000 feet up in the Pennines, has lived up to the worst stereotype of a British August - wet, chilly, blustery and changeable.

Just as the Mid-West's tornado alley attracts local storm-chasing enthusiasts then Buxton's spectacularly appalling climate has developed a certain cult following who watch the enfolding meteorological catastrophe with a kind horrified fascination. They are able to do this due to the selfless dedication of local hero, Michael Hilton, who for more than a decade has documented in painstaking detail the months of drizzle, fog, sleet, blustery showers and arctic white-outs on his site. Not only does it contain a wealth of data, but links to local web-cams allows you to view the conditions in real time. It was curiously satisfying while stretched out next to the van on a sparkling blue day on the Costa del Sol in early February to be able to watch the poor sods back home picking their way gingerly through the Market Place's snowdrifts in sub-zero temperatures. Now though, it's less fun dodging about trying to miss the cold blustery showers that have kept us housebound for days. This was the Market Place about 10 minutes ago...

And if you are thinking that this dismal scene may be untypical, then a cursory look at last month's data will soon convince you that the adjudicators who awarded Buxton the runners-up prize in the 'Great Town' 2014 award must have arrived on last year's only sunny day. Unless the strap line on the town sign is in fact a typo, and it was in fact a competition to find the Greyest Town. So last month's stats, August 2015:

                                              Buxton                                               Bastia
Rainfall                                   65.4mm                                                nil
Sunshine hours                        114                                                       341
Average median temp.            12.99 celsius                                         25 celsius

Why the Corsican comparison? Because it's typical of where we buggered of to in the summer over the past 40 years. Retribution for snickering evilly at the miseries of a Pennine winter from Mediterranean climes is to end up to gazing longingly at a Corsican webcam while listening to the steady thrum of rain bouncing off the conservatory roof...

So what keeps us here? Well we have been looking at other places to live, in the west of England mainly - North Somerset, the Wye valley, but nowhere has jumped out - to say, this would be a great place settle in. The other side of the coin is that apart from the weather, Buxton is not that awful a place really. With Gill's Dad - now 91 - living on his own in the North East, the kids in London and Oxford, then Buxton is within a day's drive of both areas. Our house is nicely situated near the park. It has a stream running through a tract of ancient woodland at the bottom of the garden, and though the shade, wet and cold limits what we can grow, we have quite a nice aspect.

Gill, the Weber and the woods

Back in June, it was briefly warm enough to eat outdoors.

Nearby we have nice walks, like here on The Roaches:

There are five really excellent cycling trails within a half hour drive - Tissington, High Peak, Monsal Trail, Manifold Trail and Carsington Water.

On the Monsal trail at Hassop.

So, if it is mainly the Pennine weather that is getting us down, then we could move to South Derbyshire, around Ashbourne, and we've looked at that too. Do we downsize our house, and invest the collateral in an apartment that we could rent out to help fund the next six years until we can draw down our State pensions? If we did do that, then should we buy here, or in Spain?  Eventually there just seems to be too many choices and we stay put and spend hours on Google maps and Streetview planning our next trip. Gill comments from the kitchen, "I think we need to budget for a mid-August trip through the tunnel next year, we can't go on like this..."  She's right, we don't seem to be able to cope with vagaries of an English summer; we love living outdoors, but we're not 'outdoorsy'. Lunches of cheese sandwiches and a flask of tea huddled behind some dry stone wall is not our idea of fun. We want cultured Nature! A sublime view, but never more than a couple of kilometres from a really well made Lavazza. It is possible, rarely, to achieve that here... the coffee and lunch menu at Hassop old station is pretty good, if and when the weather manages to be remotely seasonable..

So, it's a toastie, not tapas... but the coffee is pretty good, and remakably it's not raining!

OK., lets accentuate the positive - the tunnel is booked for the 28th of THIS month, the ferry from Brindisi to Patras arranged for mid-October - "The Isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!" I think we'd better have a blast of Lord B...

Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,
Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swan-like, let me sing and die:
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine—
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

There's nothing like a bit of overblown Byronic Romantic tosh to cheer-up dull, overcast Buxton afternoon, especially one where the outside thermometer is barely registering 12 degrees.