A year like no other

Of course there have been many moments of crisis in human history. It is no coincidence that in popular culture the four horsemen of the apocalypse were dubbed War, Famine, Pestilence and Death, and 2020 has provided a sharp reminder that technological ingenuity can only provide a partial panacea. Death and Pestilence have run roughshod across across the planet, while their compatriots skulked in the background; small wars broke out  in Nagorno-Karabakh and Ethiopia; closer to home, Marcus Rashford reminded us that children going hungry is not merely some distant third world issue. . 

What has made this year unique is the extent to which our attempt to 'control the virus' has affected the minutiae of everyday life. It is not difficult to find precedents for limits on travel or the imposition of curfews - in times of plague, war or totalitarianism. Where this year has been 'like no other' is the extent we have readily accepted legal restrictions on the intimacies of social space. I cannot think of an example from the past where social gatherings have been so micro-managed, from the imposition of the 'two metre rules, to complicated and ever-changing regulations about who can meet with whom and what constitutes a household. Who could have guessed this time last year that the word 'bubble' would become a verb?

Around  New Year I usually do a bit of arithmetic and tally-up our travels over the previous twelve months, updating the spreadsheet I have kept since we retired.

As you might expect we have spent fewer days on the road than in recent years, but surprisingly given the circumstances we still managed three months of wandering about. Half of those were in January and February before Covid went global, then we took the opportunity in the autumn to snatch six weeks in Italy when infections were declining both here and in Europe. What went by the board was our mantra about visiting new places; on the whole we followed familiar roads, though in the autumn circumstances were such that even familiar places seemed slightly odd. 

In past years there have always been stand-out moments or new discoveries to treasure. In 2020 those have been few and far between. Perhaps the crystal clear winter days we spent around Sagres in early January will remain memorable.

The drive from Beas de Granada to the Capo de Gata across the Tabernas desert, in scintillating light, with the snow-clad peaks of the Sierra Nevada gleaming to the south, that too was a wonder to behold, reinforcing our belief that Iberia is the only place in Europe where you can capture the grandeur of an American style road trip.

Tuscany in autumn was oddly subdued. Italy without the habitual street theatre of the everyday simply did not seem right. We avoided cities and eating out, compensating for the gastronomic deficit by almost daily visits to gelateria. Maybe delicious ice-cream is destined to be the abiding memory of the trip.

So far as 2021 is concerned, finally we have become reconciled to the prospect of being holed-up in Buxton until late March or early April. With over 53,000 new cases of Covid reported today a second national lockdown seems inevitable. The more virulent strain of Covid which emerged in the Southeast during November has spread across the UK, and with smaller outbreaks occurring beyond our shores most countries are banning British visitors. Amongst all of this, the new restrictions on European travel due to Brexit seem almost a side issue, January 1st will come and go and no tourists will be there to grumble about border controls at Dover. As it stands Kent seems like an exotic destination given that Macclesfield, twelve miles away in Cheshire, is off-limits. Our horizons shrink day by day.

My brooding sense of claustrophobia has been amplified today with the first significant snowfall of the winter. It looks very seasonal, but I would rather be staring at the sparkly Med than the Peak District in monochrome.

Finally, I have accepted the inevitable and changed our crossing to Santander from January 19th to March 23rd, hopefully the situation will be much improved by then and the pair of us will have been vaccinated. All we need to do between now and then is to find a way of staying sane during the most dismal months of the year with no immediate prospect of getting out and about.

Meanwhile, all that remains to be said is to wish everyone who reads our blog all the best for 2021, stay safe, keep well - better days lie ahead, even though our freedom to wander around Europe as we wish has been somewhat curtailed.

In pursuit of the uncertainty principle

Finally, I've caved, no amount of scenario modelling, contingency planning or nocturnal machinations will enable us to 'game the system' to ensure we are somewhere in the sunny south by mid-January. The combination of the effects of a mutating virus, chaotic government and the likelihood of a period in January where  'no deal' chaos reigns means it is impossible to second guess tomorrow never mind next month.

Last Wednesday Boris called a news conference asserting it would be 'inhuman' to cancel Christmas, three days later he did exactly that citing the virus mutation as the game-changer. Within 24hrs most of the near continent closed its borders to travellers from the UK, France going one step further, banning all HGV traffic too. The result, early onset no deal Brexit...

Whereas we had been gearing up for seven of us to be gathered here at Christmas, now there will be four. At least we managed to post Matthew, Laura and Connor's presents to them in time for them to arrive before the 25th. Now plans centre around scheduling Zoom calls to fit everyone's Yuletide habits. Mid afternoon could be a good common time. Let's face it, we Turpies are individualists with very different personalities, however there is no way any of us could be deemed monarchists, 3pm is definitely a possibility Zoom-wise. Anyway, a useful précis of this year's Queen's speech has already been leaked on Facebook.

The other day I found myself ruminating about how the pandemic has been a gift to the Tories. Their hold on power is strengthened by playing on people's fears, prejudices and anxieties. It is difficult not to  conclude that the government's messaging is a clever mix of fact and fiction using inconsistency as a ploy to wrong foot critics. Maybe I have simply become cynical and curmudgeonly, I wondered. Then the next day's Guardian articulated a similar thought much better than I ever could:

"The virus thrives on indecision. Johnson’s method is effective for one thing, though: it guarantees a sustained pitch of political drama, with the figure of the prime minister lit centre stage. It forces the nation to hang on his word, waiting for him to act, while the consequences of his inaction play out. That bathes him in an aura of power, but it is not leadership." Rafael Behr

In the meantime the rain pours down, darkness falls by early afternoon, people get on with life as best they can hoping for better times. Hardly  the promised  sunny uplands. Buxton, December, early afternoon, the Gregg's socially distanced lunch queue... says it all really.

I know, from a personal view point our 2020 has been uneventful in comparison to others. No-one in the family  succumbed to the virus, no one has been furloughed or suffered redundancy, none of our kids is a front line worker, all of them can work from home. As for us, we managed a two month trip to Iberia last January and February and escaped for six weeks to Italy in the early autumn. Our big building project over the summer was challenging, but was finished on time without a major hitch. It's important to acknowledge the positives. Still, I am a traveller, happiest with the thought that next week I will be elsewhere, these days of lockdown will pass. As soon as we can head off again we will. 

November - quarantine then lockdown.

We spent half the time driving back from Italy regretting our decision to head home. Other people were blogging from sunny Spain, posting gorgeous pictures of empty beaches on the Costa de Luz in scintillating light while we trundled northwards across the monotonous plains of northern France, dull and foggy. In the event our decision was probably sensible. Since we got back three weeks ago the virus has exploded exponentially in France and Italy. Today the BBC reported two more Italian regions were now designated 'red zones'.

Campania and Tuscany will join other regions placed under the strictest lockdown measures from Sunday. Authorities in Campania, which includes Naples, have warned that the health system there is close to collapse.

We probably over-planned for our two week quarantine Our anxiety about running out of food proved ill founded. Little wonder given that our daughter took a weekend break in Buxton a few days before we returned and bought us some essentials. Then we spent £264 in Auchun before we crossed the channel. True, most of it was liquid, but we also took the opportunity to buy fruit and veg as well. The Tesco shop pre-ordered on-line in Italy duly arrived half way through our Covid purdah. By the time two weeks had elapsed and we were allowed to go to Morrisons we only needed a basket shop, the fridge was still full of all the stuff we had overbought previously 

Morrisons, the most  exciting thing in our lives right now. In terms of getting out and about that's it for the next three weeks. At the end of week one of quarantine Boris popped up to announce the month long national lockdown. 

I  spent our two week quarantine ordering hundreds of pounds worth of timber and ironmongery in preparation for my late autumn project - to build a deck to link our new dining room to the garden. It was all a bit stressful, so easy to make an expensive mistake. When the truck from the local builders merchant arrived and the pile of wood almost filled the drive it became clear that cutting the timber by hand was not really an option. I celebrated my right to roam by heading off to B&Q to buy an industrial sized drill bit capable of making neat 12mm holes in concrete slabs. Then I found a deal on portable circular saws at Wickes - so I ordered one of those too. Though trapped Buxton, in between the usual Pennine showers we have managed to occupy ourselves.. 

The plan...

the foundations...

the frame..

boards in place...

view through the bifolds...

I am pleased with the result. Lengthways the deck is only 2cm.different to the drawing on Excel and the width within 5mm.   It's square and perfectly level . If I was on Master Chef or Strictly I might assert that I had .nailed it'. This would be wholly unfair to my trusty assistant. Gill did most of the hammering while I concentrated on drilling, sawing and swearing. It has kept us occupied for a couple of weeks during  lockdown, though progress has been slowed by shower dodging. 'Is November always this wet?' we asked ourselves. Facebook keeps telling me our recent ones were bright and sunny, plucking random photos from Seville, Cadiz, Costa de Luz, and on this day five years ago - Syracuse. 

So far as future travel plans are concerned we have had many, in rapid succession. When national lockdown was announced we became disconsolate, concluding all forays abroad this winter would be impossible. I figured we might manage a few mid-week trips in the UK over the winter months using the Caravan and Motorhome club sites. I found all year sites in Cumbria, Yorkshire, Somerset, the Cotswolds and Dorset - all near easy footpaths or cycleways. There are aspects of the club sites that annoy me, but they are reliable and in these strange times are probably safer than others. No sooner had we decided we were going to make a concerted effort to use the van in the UK over the coming months when virus infections rocketed here and Boris popped up to announce another lockdown. All sites closed.

Undeterred, inspired by  doughty folk posting images of blue skies and uncrowded Spanish beaches  to the moho Facegroup site that Gill lurks on, I began to think, well, what exactly is stopping us going back to Spain early next year? Insurance? Demise of  the Ehic card?  I swapped our annual multi-trip cover to Staysure who were offering 15 months cover for the cost of a year and had an optional add-on that covered you  for countries currently listed as 'high risk areas' by the Foreign Office. At great expense I booked a crossing from Portsmouth to Santander for 19th January - we will defy the odds and get our annual dose of vitamin D by exchanging grey Pennine skies for the blue of Andalucia...

For two days I felt suitably smug. Then Gill picked up a short piece on the English language edition of 'El Pais' mentioning that Spain was planning to demand evidence of a a negative Covid test taken within the last 72 hours for all arrivals by air or sea. Few days later advice on the Foreign Office site confirmed the new arrangements. It makes travel to Spain from the UK impossible if you live more than am an hour or two's drive from the Portsmouth or Plymouth. The crossing takes 30 hours, the ferry departs at dawn which involves an overnight stay at the docks and a five hour drive the previous evening. There is no way you could arrange a private test and have the results returned to you  within that timeframe. Thankfully we had booked the standard Brittany Ferries ticket not the budget one; we can re-arrange the crossing anytime during 2021 without incurring further charges, maybe delaying it to late December next year using it as the outward departure for 2022's winter trip to Iberia.

Still we clung on to the idea that we could travel in January. France does allow 'transit through the country ny road' as one of the exceptions to their lockdown. I plotted a swift drive from Calais to Biarritz using Camping Car Park aires. They are pre-bookable on-line, involve no human contact whatsoever, so as Covid-safe as  possible. 

Finally some good news - an ant-Covid vaccine with a planned roll-out over the next few months - all vulnerable groups to get the jab by next Easter, Matt Hancock announced. We are in the final phase of the roll-out, after over 80s, health and social care workers and the 70+ have been vaccinated.   Another conversation ensues. Maybe we should delay any foreign trips until we are vaccinated. A counter argument - we are at a greater a risk of catching covid here as in the more remote spots in Spain and Portugal we had planned to visit, perhaps we should head south in late December, returning early in the latter part of February, that way we get a vitamin C sunshine boost, arriving back before it is our turn to be vaccinated. 

Of course the thing to do in times of uncertainty is to 'take one day at a time' and not fret over things that you can't control. I know that is what measured, sensible people would do, sadly I am not one of them. I don't think I am the classic 'control freak', more an inveterate planner and risk assessor. I think I am driven not by a need to control events but by anxieties about the unforseen. Given that life is essentially unpredictable the inevitable result is a state of constant low level anxiety. No wonder i am on medication for hypertension! 

November draws to a close. On a positive note, human ingenuity is proffering a way out of our malaise, that at least is something to celebrate.

Two hours later.... All change again, Boris's 'Winter Covid Plan' hits the media. Most of the north of England is placed in tier 3, including all of Derbyshire. Effectively all non-essential travel beyond the county boundaries is banned. For all our scheming and planning right now we are in a local lockdown for the foreseeable future. Stoke-on-Trent and Stockport as exotic far-off destinations as Seville or Salamanca.

 I feel depressed.

 

Five, four, three, two, one...HIBERNATION!

I've been thinking about how things will be when we get home. We will have to self isolate for a fortnight, but with the virus spreading again across Europe, why merely quarantine? Hibernation might be a better strategy. Get home, lock the door, and simply not come out until the whole thing goes away.

I have the Tesco's app on my phone, we won't starve, there is work to do in the garden - constructing the new decking and creating a 'pop-up' kitchen garden ready for next spring. Paul, our builder, ordered most of the materials for our extension by standing in our garden shouting incomprehensible lists of things into his mobile - "10 3x5 ouija boards, two dozen crongles (yes fully galvanized), are you still short of masticated cement? What can you do me three pallets of rusticated womble bricks for?" and so on. I am sure I could get the hang of it.

Anyway during last spring's lockdown I managed to improve my fitness without even going outside or resorting to the assistance of some well honed You Tube god or goddess.. We dusted off our venerable Wii Fit, Gill did some of the exercise routines, I took to running on the spot around Wii Fit island. 

As the weeks went by I became very fond of the place. It has a lovely coastline, chalk downs it seemed, like West Sussex. Its main town manages to seem historic and modern simultaneously, part Milton Keynes on Sea, but with an Italianate touch, reminiscent of those Mussolini era public housing projects you get on the outskirts of Rome whose cement faced modernist severity is softened with nods towards the neo-classical or the vernacular.

Anyway, I became very attached to my virtual 3k daily run. I managed to work through Steely Dan's entire back catalogue in chronological order while doing it, before moving on to the dreamy psychedelia of Kurangbin before finally immersing myself in a Trip hop fest. Right now a return to lockdown seems quite alluring.

First we need to get from here (Lombardy) to there (Derbyshire) via Covid central (France). We have a plan, of course we do, admittedly it's scribbled on two post-it-notes stuck to the journey planner pages of our Phillips European Road Atlas, and not, as you might expect, recorded carefully on an Excel Spreadsheet. My laptop seems to have become terminally ill, maybe it's caught a virus.

Anyway, our plan is to get from Lake Garda to Buxton in five days, each stop designed to minimise human contact, using motorways mainly, but risking a couple of big French hypermarket retail fests on the basis that so far as wine and beer goes this is our last opportunity to exercise our rights as EU citizens. Sad, but true.

Hibernation minus 5 - Peschiera di Garda to Cugnasco.  

The route along the Venice to Milan motorway then north past Como and through the San Gottardo tunnel is a familiar one, we must have done more than a dozen times I guess. It involves dealing with the tagentiale Milano. The first time I tackled it I had to pull off into a service area half way around in order to calm my nerves. It's less scary now, partly through familiarity, but also I am convinced over the past decade or so driving in Italy has become less hazardous, people are a little less bat shit crazy behind the wheel and stick within the speed limits in the main. 

I suppose the same could be said of me. On our long haul road trips with the kids we had to travel within school holidays.  A Southern European fix at Easter required getting there then back in three days in order to have a ten day holiday south of the Alps. Whereas then we would do around 350 miles a day, now we average about 150. In order to gobble up the miles our trusty old Ford Galaxy would happily sit in the fast lane at 90 mph; now, I set the cruise control a notch below 90kph, and trundle along with the convoy of HGVs who have done exactly the same. Unexciting driving, that's what I like these days.

What this means is that whereas once we would drive straight through Switzerland from Lake Garda to Mulhouse in Alsace in one go, now we  break the journey somewhere in Ticino, the country's Italian speaking Canton. It's fair to say that our Swiss stopovers have been a mixed bag. When we headed off to Greece in 2015 we stayed a couple of nights the Lugern valley. A kilometre or two up a rough track from the campsite, across Alpine pastures dotted with flower decked chalets you get a stupendous view of the Jungfrau. Somewhat romantically I wrote, 'Is this our earthly paradise?' I don't think I was being hyperbolic, it genuinely felt like that at the time. However, most of Switzerland's alpine valleys are far from paradisical, their narrow floor a sprawl af factories or ribbon-like towns full of ugly concrete flats and malls, the motorway and railway vying for the flattest ground by a lake or stony, emerald river. More often than not the mountains are hidden in cloud. It feels claustrophobic.

So we are fated to have more disappointing experiences in Swiss camp sites than positive ones,  most remaining memorable for all the wrong reasons - the place near Stams where the sanitary block was partitioned off from the rest of the cowshed by flimsy plywood, and as you stood in the shower you sensed the presence of something big and bovine mooching about less than a metre away; a prettily positioned place on the shore of Lake Lugano but right next to the motorway to Milan and the main railway connecting Italy to the north of Europe 

Then last night, we slept in a weird place near Cugnasco, down a track more suited to a scooter than a motorhome, with ramshackle facilities and shack embellished statics on pitches which attempted to out-kitch the Walloons in terms of strange figurines and ghastly ornaments. Germany here we come..

Hibernation minus 4 - Cugnasco to Bad Bellingen.

Crossing the Alps is a 'thing' no matter how many times you do it. Of course what you hope for are cloudless skies and white snowy peaks glinting in sunlight. I don't think we have ever seen the Alps that way, today it was grey peaks in cloud, better than the torrential rain last year. 

Lucerne means road works and traffic jams, it always has. When we first started travelling south at Easter they were constructing deep underpasses and tunnels that run under the city. 

There is always a hold-up. We stopped using this route for about fifteen years. Then, when we began our motorhome travels in 2014 there were still roadworks Lucerne, as there was today. I don't think there actually has been two decades of construction, we've just been a tad unlucky, our earlier trips coinciding with the the construction of the tunnels, the more recent ones with their repair. In between the good citizens of Lucerne in all likelihood swept imperiously around their urban freeways marvelling at the wonders of Swiss civil engineering. I feel victimised.

A few kilometres north of the city we stopped for lunch at a service area. The clouds lifted a little and the chain of mountains appeared like a white wall to the south.

 

Glimpsed through the yellowing trees it was a fine sight, a sad one as well, there is something doubly melancholic about driving north in autumn, as if you are so eager for winter that you hurry home to meet it.

We were heading for a stellplatz just over the Swiss border. Because it was in Germany the sat-nav took us off our usual route and onto an A road towards Lörrach. This avoids having to deal with Basel's tricky urban motorways. We might use this route in future, we speculated. We also wondered if there would be checks at the border. There were gaggles of police standing about at both the Swiss and German controls, but they simply waved us through. 

All went well until we neared stellplatz Gutenau on the outskirts of  Efringen-Kirchen. We suffered what Gill calls a 'sat-nav special' directing us down country lanes, more suited as a cycleway than a road. 

We got to the village, found the stellplatz situated at the back of a motorhome dealer who appeared to specialise in doing-up clapped-out rusting VW campers. Reviews mentioned that access was tight for vans over 7m. Impossible I decided. We parked in a patch of mud at the end of a no through road and consulted Campercontact, there was another place in Bad Bellingem, about ten kilometres away, so we headed there.

Luck was on our side. The stellplatz is run by a municipal spa complex, has well designed facilities and good sized bays on hard standing. Expensive at €18 euros per night, but less so if you used the ticket which gives you free use of public transport throughout the southern Black Forest  region, from Freiburg to Basel. It keeps mohos out of the cities' low emission zones while promoting tourism - a great idea.

We were parked next to a Rewe supermarket. Germany is a country we have passed through more than explored. Consequently we have tended to shop at Lidl or Aldi because they are convenient and tend to have pull-through parking spaces big enough for the van. They are cheap and cheerful, ok for everyday essentials. 

The Rewe supermarket was in a different league. Apart from anything else it had the biggest selection of beer and wine I have ever seen. The fresh produce was top quality too and you could have written the definitive encyclopedia of the German sausage based solely on the choice on offer. Up there with Mercadona we declared, which in our book puts it near the pinnacle of food retail gloriousness.

Food shopping is preying on our mind right now as somehow we have to arrive home with enough provisions to see us through the first ten days of our two week quarantine, until our Tesco delivery arrives in early November. Not that the visit to Rewe made inroads into this problem, but it has ensured we will not be short of an interesting selection of German beer with distinctly gothic looking labels.

Hibernation minus 3 -  Bad Bellingen to Port-a-Musson.

Ten minutes from Bad Bellingen and you are across the Rhine and into France. Skirting Mulhouse, past the enormous Peugeot Citroen works, onto the N66, over the Vosges, onwards towards Epinal and Nancy, it's our preferred route when heading home from Italy.

The Vosges are impressive forested mountains, though the landscape is magnificent, the settlements look plain and a bit downbeat. In fact the whole area feels depressing, a bit like mid-Wales. 

However, so far as  scenery was concerned it certainly was more cheerful than when we have been here in early spring. The autumn colour was magnificent.

The second half of our  journey followed the valley of the Moselle which begins as a trickle on the western side of the Vosges, has grown to a respectable sized river by Epinal and become fully navigable by the time we reached our destination at Port-á-Musson. We know this because the place where we spent the night was an Aire run by the captainerie at the halte fluviale. 

There was a small queue at the office when we booked-in, everybody correctly socially distanced and wearing masks, which was not always the case in Germany and Switzerland. The man in front of us was booking a berth for his boat. He was Swedish. We wondered if he had crossed the Baltic at its narrowest point and navigated all the way to central France by inland waterway. I am sure it would be possible.

The weather became stormy in the evening. A pity, because the town looked interesting. The motorhome aires in captaineries across North East France are great places to stay, especially like this one when they connect to cycleways. The one here connects to Nancy one way and Luxembourg the other. 

It was too wet and windy to do anything except make a quick dash to the boulangerie across the road. 

We bought a couple of croissants, and because we were in Lorraine - you've guessed it - a quiche. It had a good flavour but the pastry was quite heavy. 

Gill filled me in on a dispute concerning the correct outer casing for a quiche. There are two schools of thought apparently, one pro pastry, the other recommending a dough similar to a pizza base. Proponents of each vehemently assert their recipe is the traditional one. Being an a long standing follower of Felicity Cloake, Gill is now familiar with all sorts of culinary controversies. Of course if you are Italian it is much easier than being French where there is respect for culinary orthodoxy and respect for le chef, in Italy traditional also holds sway but is more negotiable,  the correct way to cook anything is the method your Nonna used.

I posted some pictures of Pont-à-Musson on Facebook. Jackie, my sister-in-law, replied with an interesting bit of trivia about the place. Apparently its name is familiar throughout northern France because its foundries produced drain covers emblazoned with the name. Like Kettering in England, she said. It shows how regional these things are, as our local drain covers come from Dudley. It is an odd thing to have in common, an interest in drain cover provenance, even more niche than trainspotting!

We had plans to visit Jackie and Edmond on the way home, but it's too risky. Over the past six weeks we have mingled with different nationalities in many a shower block, and in recent days travelled through four countries where the virus once more is spreading exponentially. The pair of us could be bio-hazards without knowing it. Because of this we have to self-isolate for two weeks when we get home, really we should not be popping in to to visit relatives in France on the way to Calais. 

Hibernation minus 2 -  Port-á-Musson to Cucy-le-Chateau

High winds and driving rain put the kibosh on exploring the charms of Port-á-Musson yesterday. The squalls continued all night; as well as the rain, the southerly blast made the van stuffy, opening the skylights was not on option in a downpour. Neither of us slept well and were in no mood to hurry. It was almost midday before we headed off.

However, we did manage to explore Port-á-Musson's 'centre ville'. Major roadworks closed the main road north, we were sent on a series of slightly hairy 'deviations', across the main square, down a tangle of side streets, some little more than narrow lanes. We made slow progress, the upside of which was we managed to visit Pont-à-Musson by default. It's got a certain Gallic grandeur, not just some old industrial relic. The well appointed aire and local cycleways might bring us back here someday.

By the time we had shopped for lunch at the Intermarché on the outskirts we were definitely behind schedule. Our plan had been to head towards St. Quentin on a mixture of motorways and route nationale to save on tolls, in the pouring rain and with a late start this began to look silly. 

Instead we decided to stick with the motorway and stay at an aire we knew at Cucy-le-Chateau. Tomorrow we could pick up the motorway towards Abbeville and the Channel coast.

Cucy-le-Chateau is just over the border from Lorraine in Picardy. From the motorway the landscape looks like an endless plain.

However the sat-nav directed us off the motorway and across country following the valley of the Allier which was steep -almost a ravine in places. Tricky to negotiate, but the wooded slopes were very beautiful, all yellows and oranges, leaves blowing about in the gusty breeze. 

Moments like this remind you that getting off the beaten track is not straightforward with a motorhome. Ideally these areas are perfect for cycle touring; we had a few long distance trips through hidden France on our trusty Claud Butlers in our twenties. Work and child rearing put paid to that, but we remember those times fondly.

The sun was setting by the time we reached our destination. We took a couple of photos of the castle, then set about sorting out the van, promising ourselves a walk later, it's the fourth day in a row of driving, we needed some exercise and fresh air. 

By the time we set out quarter of an hour later the sunset had disappeared behind a big grey cloud, but least we stretched our legs.

We entertained ourselves after dinner by filling-in UK Border Force's on line 'Uk passenger locator form' which must be completed before presenting yourself at UK passport control - or risk a £100 fine. A bit tricky to fill-in all the required information, really the thing is designed for air travellers and cruise ship victims, that people arrive back by road seems a secondary concern.

Hibernation minus 1 - Cucy-le-Chateau to Wissant.

A simple plan for today, stick to the autoroute for speed, get to Boulogne Auchun mid afternoon, do a big shop, head to the Aire at Wissant, a short drive from there to the Eurotunnel Terminal when we catch the 13.15 crossing tomorrow.

Driving day after day does strange things to your sense of time. Somehow it failed to register that the hypermarket would be packed with weekend shoppers. There was a traffic jam at the intersection, the car parks were almost full and the store itself so busy social distancing was impossible. 

Even though everyone was wearing masks the place did not feel safe at all, partly due to a French habit of positioning the thing so their noses protrude. If we do catch the virus in all likelihood it will be here. 

Still, we managed to stock up on coffee, wine and beer as well as making a stab at buying enough provisions for the next ten days until our on-line order from Tesco's is delivered.

This will be the last time we can do this, Brexit, deal or no deal, will bring an end to the end of trip retail fest. Gill posed for a final 'goodbye to all this, thank you EU photo, taken appropriately in the wine aisle. 

Afterwards I posted the picture on Facebook with the following reflections:

Sadly one way or another this trip will be last one where we have enjoyed any of the advantages is being EU citizens. Next time we will need a visa, two different types of international driving licenses, a green card issued by our motor insurers, and additional health insurance due to the demise of Ehic cards. Our trips will need to be planned on a annual basis in order to stay within the 180/90 day limit. We will return to measly duty free limits at Channel ports, something not seen for thirty years or more. So, for the last time, we hit the aisles of Boulogne Auchun in search of sustenance to see us through the dark days of a Pennine winter.

A few on-line pals commented. I reflected that whereas for us Brexit is an inconvenient annoyance for people like Jackie, Chat and Yvonne who have settled in the EU with family ties and businesses in Europe, then the implications are more challenging. They had no say in the decision and their situation has been ignored. 

I mentioned that technically, because I had an Irish grandparent, I could seek citizenship there. I mused it was unlikely I'd go for it because Gill would not benefit. Kathy chipped in to point me in the direction of the 2004/38/EC directive. It seems I am mistaken, the benefits of EU membership can extend to close family members of people with passports from member countries. It would cost a few hundred pounds for me to do it. It's not purely a financial matter, questions of identity come into it too. I am tempted, perhaps next May when I get a bit of a windfall as my state pension kicks in...

Hibernation day -  Wissant to Buxton.

We decided to change our plans. We were going to catch the shuttle at 13.15, then drive to New Dover Road parking in Canterbury, sleep there and head home the next day. However, having stated on the passenger locator form' we were arriving on the 25th. Sleeping over in Canterbury is not really sticking to the rules. Instead we decided to head to the terminal two hours earlier hoping to catch an a late morning crossing, then driving straight home. It does mean bending the rules the following day when we have to put the van back into storage. Since it's located on a hill farm it's only a couple of dozen sheep that are actually at risk, this is hardly in the same league as a clandestine trip to Barnard Castle.

We did manage to catch the earlier shuttle and figured with luck we would get home before dark, even though we had lost two hours of daylight because the clocks had changed adding to the usual time difference between the UK and the near continent. Sadly it was not our lucky day, the 11.50 departure suffered a technical hitch and we sat stock still, parked in the carriage at Calais for three-quarters of an hour while they fixed the problem. 

We had plenty of time to discuss whether we should revert to plan A, Canterbury stopover, or carry on with plan B, drive home. Whichever, we were beginning to suspect the whole passenger locator form' business was meaningless, the affable chap in the British passport kiosk asked if we had completed them, but had no interest at all in seeing the evidence. At the Folkestone terminal it was business as usual, off the train and onto the M20. We decided to head straight home 

A 280 mile trip up the motorway does not endear you to England. We struggled to find a parking place in any service area - we needed a lunch stop. HGV vehicles took up all the spaces, in the lorry park, caravan and the coach area - trucks parked all over the place. Finally at Thurrock we managed to squeeze in. It was grim, a group of teenagers messed about, being loud and stupid, perhaps they were drunk or drugged up next to a row of trucks from Eastern Europe, one with rear doors flung open sheltering a group of men from the rain. They were crouched around a gas stove cooking a meal. Were they drivers or migrants? All of this felt a bit odd, not threatening or sinister, but a tad unseemly. We had seen nothing quite so tawdry on our trip. It's difficult to escape the sense that in all kinds of areas within the public realm we are falling behind our European neighbours and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Despite ignoring my usual habit of trundling along with the trucks in the slow lane instead a hurried up, having fun pretending I was driving a giant four ton SUV.

Still it became clear somewhere in South Leicestershire that we were not going to make it home before nightfall. I don't particularly like driving the moho in the dark on the A515 between Ashbourne and Buxton, the route is narrow, bendy and full of hidden dips. 

When we reached the A50 south of Derby there was a spectacular sunset over the Trent valley. It silhouetted the line of pylons that marched across the flat landscape. The cooling towers of the Burton-upon-Trent power station acquired a momentary grandeur. It all felt very English, I was pleased to be nearing home.

The A5I5 was busy, lots of cars pouring out of the Peak District as we headed into it. I made a conscious effort to stay alert, the dry stone walls which line the narrow road give no room for error and after six days of driving, almost 300 miles today, I was a bit jaded; that's when you make mistakes. We got home without incident, cleared some essentials out of the van, leaving the bulk of unpacking until the morning. Great to sit on a sofa with a beer, and marvel at all the space - and the TV, and the bathroom with a self emptying toilet - such luxury!

We knew that any trip in these peculiar times was not going to feel normal, it has been interesting rather than enjoyable. Perhaps we made an error in deciding to head for Elba rather than Sardinia. We did not figure on the Tuscan coast being so crowded. Sardinia is a bigger island and if we had headed towards the far southwest corner maybe we would have escaped the stormy weather and picked up some late summer warmth. 

Covid cases are rising across the continent, more lockdowns loom. I cannot see us travelling again until next spring. Hibernation is going to be a challenge, at least when you are on the road you don't have to make an effort to occupy yourself. Two weeks of self isolation...then what? 

Bella Italia

Today we start our journey home. We have planned a route that will get us back to Buxton in six days, using mainly motorways and aires, avoiding human contact as much as possible. Covid is increasing exponentially everywhere, especially so in France. Even so, though we avoided France to get here, that was more to do with it being an invalid destination so far as our health insurance cover was concerned rather than the prevalence of the virus. Given that Italy was removed as an approved destination last week and Germany could be the next to go, then getting home by the most direct route, through France, seems the best bet, especially as no matter which route we take we are going to have to quarantine for two weeks when we get back.

It has been a strange trip, but given we are in the midst of a resurgent global pandemic it was never going to be anything else. I can't be doing with attempts to rebadge our peculiar existence as a 'new normal'. There is nothing normal about humans attempting to live a socially distanced life. Solitude may be a welcome break when the world becomes 'too much with us', but when enforced,  spending weeks and months in isolation  is a form of low level torture for most people that soon depresses the spirits and eventually damages mental health.

One thing is certain about travel and part of its charm is its unpredictability. So even though we knew in advance that our trip was going to be odd, it turned out to be odd in a way that we had not forseen. Our planned route was the outcome of a series of compromises. It was obvious that our original idea of driving to Greece through Croatia, Montenegro and Albania was impracticable this year. We booked the ferry to Santander. Brittany Ferries cancelled the sailing when it mothballed some of its fleet. In fact, that seemed like a blessing in disguise as Covid reasserted itself in September in Spain. Italy! we decided, dusting off an old plan to go to Sardinia, then scaling it back to Elba on the basis it was simpler to make a dash back home from there if new travel restrictions were suddenly imposed.

We expected Italy to be quieter than usual. Italians were, Italy wasn't. Mask wearing was the norm outside, certainly on streets if not on beaches, when we arrived. Then as Covid cases began to increase the PM made it mandatory everywhere. It's fair to say that Italians are not the quietest humans on the planet. The more excited they become, usually the louder and more animated they tend to get. You would think that having to wear a mask would result in them speaking louder and gesticulating even more. In fact it resulted in a more subdued social atmosphere. Quiet italians, it's not right!

However, our assumption that Italian campsites would be half empty and quiet proved completely wrong. They were full of Germans. Between mid September and the end of October the regions of Germany, in a well ordered rota, take a two week autumn school break, as do the German Swiss cantons. So on the rare occasion that one of our fellow campers decided to be affable we were greeted by a staccato Morgen! and not a singsong Buongiorno! I suppose the reason why we had not come across Germitaly previously on our trip in October 2014 was that we reached the coast much further south, near the Gargagno, well beyond an easy two day drive from Germany, whereas Tuscany and Veneto provide Bavaria and Baden Württemberg's handiest Mediterranean beaches.

There is something disconcerting about being in a place where visitors outnumber the locals, it becomes even more odd when one foreign nationality predominates, like Germans here, the British on the Costa Blanca or French in the free aires in the eastern Algarve. It's uncomfortable to sense you are part of an invasive swarm. When you are one of a handful of foreigners it's easier to pretend that you are experiencing foreign climes authentically, you might even fall under the misapprehension that you are a welcome guest. Occasionally, in Greece that even may have been true.

I claimed a few posts ago that we were the only Brits abroad. Clearly, that couldn't be the case, but it felt that way, and almost still does. In the forty odd days since we headed off we have seen one Eddie Stobart Stobart truck near Charlesroi heading for Calais as we sped the other way. As we left the campsite near Vernazza a venerable Talbot camper pulled away in front of us with a GB sticker on the back and three young men squeezed into the front with identical hipster beards. A white Ford Transit van with British plates  parked next to us in the Modena sosta, but left before we got up, and in Lazlse a British family was having a minor crisis because their six year old was about to wet himself and Italy does not do public toilets (been there!). So we occasionally observed ourfellow countrymen, but never actually met any. Indeed, the only conversation with anyone we have had aside from virtual ones with our kids was with a Dutch couple parked next to us in Castiglione della Pescaia. So, though we may need to self isolate for two weeks when we get home, in reality it won't be that different from the past four, apart from the fact the view from the window won't change.

So we arrived in our final destination in Italy with the sense that although we had been in the country for a month we had not really encountered that many Italians. We felt short changed. What it showed was beyond the country's dramatic landscapes, architecturally rich cities and picture postcard villages it is the place's vivacious social life and engaging, demonstrative people that make it so special. The land and people come together in its cooking, simple, delicious and rooted in place and family tradition. Nervous of crowded places such as cities, markets and indoor restaurants we have missed these pleasure, at least up until the last few days when 'Bella Italia' managed to put in a late appearance.

It isn't the case that the site we are on is lacking German tourists, there are lots, but the place is so big, designed for a mass influx in July and August, that it still feels half empty. Similarly, Peschiera di Garda, a twenty minute stroll down the lakeside promenade is a big enough town in itself to absorb visitors and maintain an Italian pizzazz, especially at the weekend when lots of locals from Verona descend on the on it for a day trip out.

Venetian ramparts

Vibrant streets

Though we have missed a lot of Italy's charms due to Covid restrictions we have made one new discovery - gelato!  Because it's a tourist town Peschiera has many gelateria, but we think this one established in 1947 is the best.

We went once a day for four days, working our way through its delights. Little things brighten dark days, a sentiment I think shared by the masked locals who queued dutifully 1.5m apart - a serious business - to share a small pleasure among three generations walking out together, a commonplace civilised ritual you felt blessed to be part of.

We arrived at Garda as a storm raged. It cleared momentarily; we glimpsed the mountains, then they were gone. Ever since a windless autumn mist has descended upon the lake. We lamented the loss of the sublime vista, but an uncanny tranquility haunted the quiet waters which shone, mirror-like, a silky silver blue.

Then at evening, a dusty pink; people gathered to simply stare .

  

For days it was profoundly peaceful. We didn't do much at all. Caught up with laundry, took a stroll into town, had a gelato, came back, chatted about this and that, walked by the lake some more and felt strengthened by it.

On our final day we stirred ourselves, caught a boat to the nearby village of Lazlse then walked a few kilometres north towards Bardolino. 

We got about half way there but decided to return and find somewhere to eat in Lazlse. 

We have a rule of thumb - never eat pizza in a place that sells a 'Hawaiian'. The problem we faced was every pizzeria in the place did. Lake Garda is a mass tourism destination, authenticity gets overshadowed by market demand. 

In the end we chose well, the pizzas other customers were eating looked good and ours also proved to be, my Romana as luscious and salty as the one I had in Travestere. Still, the place was hedging its bets. German tourists pining for Heimat,  could always opt for the Pizza Otto Von Bismarck.

We live in an age of cultural hybridity, perhaps seeking authenticity in itself is a sign of the inauthentic. Perhaps it is time to for me to acknowledge the lure of the post-modern and embrace the delights of the Hawaiian pizza...   or maybe not.