Seviliasation

This is our fourth visit to Seville. No need to rush about siteseeing we agreed beforehand. The plan was to arrive, take it easy, then the following day wander up to the Barranco Market and have a leisurely Sunday lunch. The thing is, so far as the inveterate planner is concerned some kind of variant of Murphy's law seems to prevail, that the more careful you plan something the less likely it is to happen. We arrived in Seville a bit earlier than anticipated, the sky was very blue, the temperature notching towards the low twenties, we had travelled for five days on the trot to get here, what possible sense did it make to relax and take things easy? 

So we parked up and headed immediately to Plaza España, about a 20 minute walk from where we were staying. We know the route well, the first part is very unlovely indeed, taking you through the half abandoned fringes of Seville's docks up an avenue of unkempt eucalyptus trees. I think some attempt had been made to clean the area up, it looked slightly less litter strewn than when we were here two years ago. Sadly, there is still an encampment of broken down shacks and ancient caravans beside some old railway sidings, home to a group of desperately poor people clearly living on the margins. A sad sight.

We crossed the river using the nearby Puente de las Delicias. From here it's a short distance to the beautiful Parque de María Luisa. Created in the early twentieth century from a former royal park, this 100 acre green space had to be one of the finest urban parks in Europe. With Seville's southern Mediterranean climate and a plentiful water supply, exotic plants from Spain's former colonies grow in abundance. 

On this warm January day, for us, fugitives from drearier northern climes, in scintillating light, with spiky succulents and lush subtropical foliage, overlooked by swaying palms full of squabbling parakeets, the place felt so exotic it was almost overwhelming.

Most of the northwestern section of the park was redeveloped during the second decade of the twentieth century to become the focal point of Spain's Ibero-American Exposition of 1929. 

The huge semi circular main pavillion is a monster of a building. Using an eclectic mix of styles, neo everything - Mudejar, Baroque, Gothic, Imperialist - utterly anachronistic even before one stone was laid. Grandiose and overblown, but people love the Plaza de España, and so do we. 

Yes, of course the exhibition itself was a celebration of the Hispanic culture of the Americas that entirely whitewashed its imperialist origins and genocidal consequences. Equally the ceramic panels that decorate the facade to this day, each of them celebrating Spain's major municipalities, depict a country profoundly Catholic, deeply aristocrat and royalist, and proud of how it swept Islamic culture from the peninsula. In other words a depiction of the past wholly unrepresentative of everything admirable about modern Spain.

However, it would be churlish to want to 'cancel' the monument, because whatever its dubious origins and associations these are unimportant to the way people use Plaza España today. It is a gathering place, a social hub and you would have to very miserable indeed not to be swept away by the theatricality of it; maybe it's not so anachronistic after all if we consider it contemporaneous with Busby Berkeley rather than Walter Gropius.

Strikingly, in one respect Plaza España differed from our previous visits. It was quieter, not thronged with American and Chinese tour groups. Indeed, apart from us, there were few tourists indeed. Still, even for locals it is a place to be and be seen; how this is enacted has certainly changed since we were here two years ago. 

Back then the selfie stick still reigned supreme, wielded with weaponised efficiency mainly by Asian young women. Since then the quest for the ultimate instagrammable shot has been superseded amongst twenty-somethings by the urge to be the next TikTok sensation. No longer 'look where I am!' now, 'look at meee!' It requires a change of kit, more forward planning and is a team rather than a solo effort.  

I used to teach film and video production to A level Media Studies students so I am fascinated by the way technology becomes ever more democratised; what was once the preserve of specialists now open to all. Every TikToker (is that a word?) hereabouts seemed to be a young woman bent on producing click-bait content around a singular theme - look at me, I am fabulous! It has to be said most them were; these were not amateurish attempts, there was considerable forethought to their process. 

The more seriously minded had swapped their smart phones for a compact camera made for the job. I Googled them. For about £700 you can buy a compact that features web connectivity, 4G video capability, professional audio quality and a host of built-in gizmos and effects essential to becoming a TikTok sensation. The problem here, compared with using a smart phone, you need a willing companion behind the camera. One wannabe seemed to have recruited her entire family as the production team, Mum, Dad, siblings all in a gaggle around the tripod as their starlet, wrapped in a loose dusty pink shawl posed dramatically in front of the main fountain. Even on a still day, because of its proximity to the river, an intermittent breeze tends to waft around Plaza España. As the camera rolled Ms. TikTok pulled the shawl over her head to form a pink hood framing her face, there was a gust of wind and the folds of her silky fabric cloak rippled like water. Nice shot, I thought to myself; it's great to see people being creative.

As well as the impromptu photo shoots popping up everywhere the plaintive sound of flamenco drifted across from the central arcade . We have seen some memorable performances here over the years. Today was no exception. Maybe the dancer was not technically the best we have seen, but she was certainly the most intense and dramatic. 

In the end what you experience in the flesh is always going to have an immediacy and power that online content can never match.

 

It would be interesting to ask the people shooting on-line content - what motivates them most, the performance aspect of the creative process or the 'likes' of their followers? The latter I suspect, whereas I think the flamenco group would be drawn to perform with or without an audience. You felt it was sung and danced from some deeply felt inner need. The word 'soulful' is overused, but flamenco, authentically done, certainly is. 

By now it was late afternoon. We tried to take a more direct route back to the van but the road was fenced off in both directions. "What's happening?" Gill asked one of the guys bolting the sections together. The Seville half marathon tomorrow, we learned. That might stymie our plan to go to the Mercado Lonja del Barranco for lunch tomorrow, I conjectured, ever one seize upon the problematic in any situation I face.

In the end, as usual, it all worked out fine. Next morning we were woken at 8am on the dot by a loud buzz of feedback then straffed immediately by a long burst of high-speed Castillian. All public events in Spain, aside from the spookily silent Semana Santa, are high decibel occasions and the Seville half marathon was no exception. All morning we were entertained by a mixture of upbeat, motivational Europop mixed with interludes of over-excited, but incomprehensible commentary. We felt under no compunction to get out there and join in the fun, it had been a long drive over the past three days, it felt very snug under the quilt, 'no rushing about' we concluded by some mysterious osmotic, unspoken process. 

It was a few minutes past noon when we made our way back across Puente de las Delicias. The race appeared to have ended. Proudly displaying their 'finishers medal', draped in tin foil cloaks, lycra clad figures walked past us gingerly. Most were accompanied by their support teams - parents, friends, partners, children- who had come to cheer them on. 

Our concern that the Mercado Lonja del Barranco would be rammed because of the half marathon proved unfounded, it was busy as you might expect on a Sunday lunchtime, but there were spare tables here and there . How to get food was a bit confusing, there seems to be table service of some sort, but no-one seemed to want to take our order.

In the end Gill ordered 'pick 'n mix style' directly from the various food stalls, as we have done in all of the old municipal produce markets recently reinvented as gastronomic shrines we have visited- in Lisbon, Granada, Cordoba Manhattan, Bologna, Singapore and most recently, two weeks ago - Altrincham!

For all their variety, what they all have in common is a commitment to freshly cooked food, a pop-up, street food vibe, engaging informality and a buzzy atmosphere. 

There's a lot to like about them; oddly enough , when we mulled it over, although we could not recall any occasion when we were disappointed by their fare, we struggled to identify a single dish that had been exceptional. It was the place and the ambience that was memorable rather than the food. Apart from the Northern Pie Company's beef steak pie with mash and gravy we had last month in Altrincham food market, I mused, surely that was exceptional. Perhaps it was, or maybe I was simply in a pastry orientated mindset having just learned the difference between an Argentinian and Galician empanada (the former closed like a pasty, the latter open at the sides,  both very rich and beefy). 

They were delicious, though not quite as exceptional as the Altrincham pie. Whatever their merits, one thing was certain, indigestion beckoned, my six decade old stomach can't deal with rich, fatty food, sadly it does not stop me eating it. 

We decided to walk back along the west bank of the river, it was a more direct route to where we were staying but less attractive than taking the path through Parque de María Luisa. Nevertheless, Triana, the bario on this side of the river is interesting, and you get a great view of the skyline of Seville's ancient centre from there. 

As you approach the Puente de las Delicias the river view disappears behind the high walls of the Seville Yacht Club. As well as being the hub for water sports on the river, the place seems to have lots of other facilities - all weather pitches and all kinds of racquet sports courts, as well as a big social club with a riverside terrace. As we passed its bar a huge cheer went up. It sounds like Nadal's just won the Australian Open, I commented half jokingly. A minute later both our phones pinged with pictures of exactly that.  I felt really smug. Pathetic really.

So, Seville, one of those places that simply being in makes you happier. Six days from Buxton, around eighty one before we are due back, it's a nice prospect. We are still in the can't believe we're here stage, but we are and it feels great.

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Road trip territory

Get Google maps to plot a route from Santander to Seville and it suggests the one we use. Not that we are total Google-bots, we used this route even before we became enslaved by big data. However it's  unsurprising that both algorithm and human opt for the same route - from the Cantabrian coast, across the mountains, south towards Vallidolid,  past Salamanca and Palencia, then onwards using the Autovia Ruta de Plata through Extramadura; it is the fastest, most direct route for anybody heading for the Costa del Sol or the Algarve.

Goggle may calculate purely for practicality, but people choose the road for other reasons too ; quite simply it's one of the finest road trips you can take Western Europe.

So what are the prerequisites for a satisfying road trip? Length of course, though in Europe we struggle with this, and have to adjust our expectations downwards; we can't compete with the empty, sparsely populated American West or Australian outback. Nevertheless this route across Spain is magnificent, taking you from a place with green mountains and deciduous forests, though prairie sized vineyards, across rolling hills dotted with olive trees, ending in a land of tall palm trees where city streets are lined with orange trees full of chattering lime green parakeets. 

The entire route is punctuated by a series of small cities each with a beautiful ancient centre, stately Salamanca with its glorious central square, medieval fortifications at Caceres and significant Roman remains at Merida. 

This time we sped past them all opting to stay close to the autovia, keen to make quick progress towards a warmer climate. We camped under an olive tree on a site on the edge of the Sierra de San Bernavé, near Plasencia.

Sometimes you come across small villages that have taken the trouble to provide a fully serviced area autocaravanas provided for free. Alujucén is a tiny place just off the A66, but everything about it was delightful.

The landscape of the Guadiana valley in winter is unexpectedly green and fertile, however orange trees abound, gradually the south asserts itself, the light and colour magical to escapees from the north.

Even in a motorhome you make rapid progress, it's dual carriageway all the way, mostly motorway. Often you have the road to yourself. With not another vehicle in sight on goes the cruise control. The driver can relax and appreciate the landscape; big vistas across empty plains, blue Sierras ringing the horizon, above us birds of prey circling, kites, buzzards and occasionally an eagle or vulture. 

Southwards we go, plotting our progress by the major rivers we cross, the Duero at Tortisillas,  Rio de Tajo as you approach Caceres, the Guadiana at Merida, then finally, settling down for a couple of nights in the area autocaravanas next to Seville's river port, the Guadalquivir. Simply repeating their names in my head like a mantra feels uplifting. 

What is the opposite of lockdown? Escape? Release? Liberation? For the compulsive traveller is it hyperbolic to suggest that being able to wander as you wish is some kind of quietly understated apotheosis?  

Ferried by post-modernism towards the frozen south

I have a plan, all 87 days of our trip listed on a spreadsheet, where we will stay, the cost, distances, GPS co-ordinates... (yes, I probably am somewhere on the spectrum). A mere thirty six hours into our trip and we had deviated from it (we always do, but usually it takes over a week to scrap it). So why do I persist with the habit? Occupational therapy probably, something to give me hope during the interminably  dull, dreary Pennine winter days. However, even when things go to plan they are rarely entirely without incident or interest. Thankfully the journey down to Portsmouth was pleasingly incident free. We accidentally managed to avoid the usual hold-ups around Birmingham and Oxford by being so tardy with the packing it was almost mid afternoon by the time we set off. 

Over recent months arriving at Portsmouth docks has been made more exciting by the City council. As you reach the city centre at the end of the M275 there is a roundabout with four exits. Three of them take you straight into the new low emission zone, one of them avoids it and leads to the ferry terminal. If you have a van with a Euro 5 rated diesel engine and classed as a 'private HGV', weighing in at over 3500kg then it's very important you take the correct route. So far as I tell from information on-line the slightest incursion into the LEZ will result in a £50 charge. Normally, even with guidance from both Gill and the sat-nav, given four exits at a roundabout I have a greater than 50/50 chance of taking the wrong one. Maybe the added frisson of a potential penalty helped focus the mind, we arrived at the docks at my first attempt. 

Three lines of motorhomes and caravans were drawn-up at the booths. Last time we made this crossing in January 2020 there was a late evening ferry to Caen, and we had to wait until it embarked before we could form a queue and settle down for the night.  However tonight 'Santander' was displayed on the signs above the gates. I pulled over to one side and hopped out to see if I could find out what was going on. The guy who had driven in just behind us caught up with me and off we toddled together like Laurel and Hardy looking a bit perplexed. Unable to find anybody official we decided to ask one of the other motorhomers. I caught the eye of a chap sitting by his campervan lounge window. "Are you waiting for tomorrow morning's boat to Santander?" I enquired politely. His reply, "No, I'm waiting for the one next Friday, I just thought I would get here early."

Sigh...  British blokishness in full flow, a bit superior, sarcasm masquerading as humour, clearly I'd stumbled across a pillock who fancied himself as a bit of a card. He did relent almost immediately, admitting that he was in fact awaiting the morning ferry, but the damage was done, he'd self identified as a complete plonker and there was no way I was going to adjust my initial impression. I suppose it is futile to wish we were more straightforward with each other, ambiguity, along with quiet desperation is 'the English way'. 

Our exchange had brought others out for a chat, the topic changed to speculatIon about when check-in opened in the morning. One woman claimed that she had it on good authority that the gates opened at 6am. I was somewhat sceptical about this, how could it take three hours to load a car ferry? If that was the case for every ferry leaving  Dover then eventually the queue would tailback half way to Scunthorpe. As the small gaggle of motorhomers eased seamlessly into chitchat mode I headed inside. I can't do chitchat, I am congenitally unsociable. We set the alarm for 6.30am.

It was pitch dark when I was rudely awoken by voices and the sound of half a dozen diesels coughing into life like a chain smokers' convention. I reached for my phone, 5.45am, bollocks! I was wrong, the woman right, embarkation did commence at six. Quickly we threw on enough clothes to appear half decent when we presented ourselves at check-in. All the while a stream of motorhomes and caravaners squeezed past us to get ahead in the queue.

It did take a minute or two longer than usual to process our paperwork, not just passports to check, but our NHS vaccination certificate and the QL code on the Spanish on-line health declaration form we  struggled with yesterday while parked in Cherwell Valley services. The Galicia, Brittany Ferries new ship for its Spanish routes, is enormous. I guess that explains how a little  longer for each vehicle's check-in due to Covid regulations ends up with it taking three hours to load-up. Still, we did depart on the dot at 9am. as scheduled.

'Swanky for a car ferry,' I agreed on planet Zog with my cyberpal Susan. The Galicia is well appointed, spacious and the cabins comfortable.

However, it is French; what this guarantees is rampant over-design. The vibe is hispanic, but about as authentic as Carmen, in other words a vision of Spain dreamed-up in Paris.  For example, one of a series of large decorative panels in the 'tapas restaurant' includes a female figure in silhouette.

The oversized plywood carnation stuck on the side of her head may signal 'flamenco', however the svelte outline with a swan-like neck resembles a classic Gallic feminine stereotype with connotations of the teenage Brigitte Bardot with her hair up.

Even something as apparently straightforward as a celebration of traditional Spanish costume assumes a French iconography, reduced to a slightly ridiculous pictorial synecdoche where a series of single legs represent entire categories, the matador, flamenco dancer and so on.  

All of this pales into insignificance in comparison with the Las Meninas installation, a multi-media exploration of Picasso's reinterpretation of Velasquez ' monumental  portrait of the Spanish Infanta.

 

As well as the scary giant figurine, passengers are invited to explore the Galicia further to find smaller effigies dotted around here and there. Let's face it, you are never going find a similar opportunity for cultural enrichment en route to Dunkirk with P&O.

We have travelled regularly in France for almost half a century, observing how design has changed over that time, not in galleries or in window displays on Parisian boulevards but in more workaday places -  provincial towns, shopping malls, advertising hoardings, chain restaurants and budget motorway hotels. On our first trip in 1975, in rural areas an older France predominated -  faded sun bleached shutters, dusty streets with smelly drains, wrought iron pissoirs and Deux Chevaux the colour of faded denim. Back then modern France was cool, new buildings reflecting the austere, unadorned white concrete of the international style or Brutalist grungy monumentalism.  In advertising and on the streets the new wave aesthetic of Godard, Gainsbourg, and Deneuve still prevailed. 

From the late 80s onwards we observed an aesthetic change. I suppose it's unsurprising that the post-modern was embraced so enthusiastically in France as arguably it was their thinkers - Barthes, Foucault, Baudrilliard - who best articulated it. Whereas post-war French design had espoused the chic - it was cool and understated, and rarely got jazzier than polka-dot, suddenly, as the millennium approached you were confronted by a nouveau garish. Soft furnishings and cafeteria deco exploded with tangerine, lime green and puce. On advertising hoardings out went the the quietly chic and the sultry pout, in came the quirky, the droll and knowingly cute. 

I remember twenty odd years ago, on one of our Easter trips to Provence, being startled in a hypermarket veg aisle by an enormous technicolour image afloat above the new season produce. The poster must have have been well over two metres in length, larger than life, and depicted an attractive young woman with more or less nothing on. Public decency was just about preserved by the fact the model placed her arms across her chest in an X shape and the designer, using some primitive version of Photoshop, had re-purposed an image of a curly leaf lettuce as a ra-ra skirt. This was around the time when in the UK Tesco's had added three quarters of a million shoppers to its customer base by adopting the strap line 'Every little helps'. Maybe Carrefour , Leclerc, or whoever was trying to make the same point by purely pictorial means.

Anyway, judging by the styling of the Galicia, French designers appear to have retained their enthusiasm for a vibe that embraces an amalgam of the chic, the droll and kitch. Personally, I think it's old hat and never really appealed to British tastes anyway, it comes over to us as naff rather than droll. Moreover, it's a style about to go out of fashion as sustainability and an increased appreciation of the natural world perhaps is poised to eclipse four decades of culture-centric thinking. 

Our conclusion,The Galicia is comfortable but the interior styling is simply off-kilter. We are sitting right now in the bar. It is a tall, two-storied  space with faux wrought iron work and a big glass roof. I think it is meant to be reminiscent of a municipal market hall but it reminded us of the central space of a Victorian panopticon style prison. At least the ferry decor gave us plenty to talk about - food for thought. 

This was good, because getting actual food proved a bit problematic. This is our third attempt to sail on the Galicia to Spain, the previous two having been postponed due to the pandemic. When I changed the date to late January back in September Brittany Ferries must have been desperate to increase their bookings, we benefited from a price drop of £60 and the offer is a free breakfast and dinner in the restaurant.

To maintain social distancing evening meals had been divided into three 'sittings' determined by a letter printed on your cabin door entry  card. Our sitting was 'A' - at 6.15pm. The system would have worked had there been enough staff to manage waiter service for a three course dinner simultaneously in both the main and the 'tapas restaurant' on the floor above.  However, not only was there insufficient staff, quite clearly many were unused to waiting-on and no-one was co-ordinating  clearing the plates from one course to allow the next to be served. We observed chaos unfold in slow motion, with queues of people at the entrance awaiting the next sitting unable to be seated because tardy service ensured insufficient tables were freed. We sat down at six twenty, it was after eight thirty when we left.

For much of the time we were entertained by two singletons sat at the tables adjacent to us whose conversation appeared to have been scripted by Nora Ephraim. I have to admit I am not averse to eavesdropping, but in this case it was almost impossible not to overhear every word. To adhere to the requirements of social distancing the restaurant's tables were placed two metres apart and only set for two. The vast majority of people on the boat were like us, retired couples. People on their own had a table to themselves. A lone middle-aged woman, was sitting to the left of Gill. When she fell into conversation with the man with sitting just behind me it was impossible to ignore them. Their tables were roughly three metres apart so they had to raise their voices a little to communicate. In their enthusiasm to be sociable they remained blissfully unaware of how intrusive it was for us, sat in-between them, just to one side.

The Guardian lifestyle section runs a regular feature called 'Blind Date'. Readers send in a profile and the paper pairs them up and arranges a date. Afterwards each person reports back on the experience answering a set of standard question - first impressions? what they ate? table manners? topics of conversation? I think we could have made a good attempt to complete the questionnaire on behalf of the pair next to us. So far as what they talked about the topics included places they had visited, their experience of the pandemic and the woman talked about her daughter, any mention of a significant other was significant in its absence. The entire entire encounter was executed with that odd mixture of exaggerated affability edged with one-upmanship that you get when strangers meet. 

Eventually we adjusted to their babble and were able to concentrate on our own concerns, consisting mainly of Gill's insightful analysis of the restaurant's lack of any discernable order of service, punctuated occasionally by one of us fulminating over the mediocre quality of the food. Anyway, at some point after 8 o'clock while I awaited to be disappointed the arrival of my much anticipated cheesecake, I noticed a reduced hububb; the pair beside us had gone. 

Had they gone their separate ways or left together? We were destined never to discover the answer to one of the Guardian's more searching questions, the somewhat coyly phrased, 'did you go somewhere afterwards?'  However I am fairly confident about what the outcome would have been to of the final part of the Guardian's version of blind date, the bit where the couples get  to score their experience out of 10. I bet the man's score would have been at least 2 points higher than the woman's. I assert this with confidence for two reasons. Not only because at times I sensed the woman seemed mildly dismissive of what her chance companion had to say, but also this score seems to be the common pattern in the Guardian feature when heterosexual couples are featured. Like this week. I am uncertain if any general conclusion can be drawn from this, is it the case generally that women are more choosy than men?

Even taking into to account the hours I spent de-constructing the boat's decor and the evening diversions in the restaurant, that still left us with ages to while away. Gill was more successful than I was, watching Black Widow on the TV in our cabin then making forays on deck from to time to time. I was just thankful it was flat calm for the entire journey. Nonethless, the soporific rocking motion of the boat prompted complete torpor on my part. I spent most of the crossing snoozing gently, only surfacing briefly to witness a leather clad Scarlett Johansson acrobatically beat some burly bloke senseless or make approving noises about the artful photos Gill had taken of the ferry's impressive funnel.

Finally, with half an hour to go before our scheduled arrival time I joined Gill on deck hoping to see snow clad Cantabrian mountains under a deep blue sky. I got the latter, but we were ahead of schedule and already slowly progressing up the wide expanse of the Bahia de Santander. I had to make do with a prospect of the mud flats of Somo and Santander docks rather than anything more sublime. Still it was an exciting moment.

We disembarked in groups to minimise crowding on the stairs wells. Once on the car deck, while we awaited the doors to, members of the crew wandered about with what looked like small ray guns, zapping everyone to check their temperature. Since there had been a thorough check of our vaccination status before we boarded formalities at the Spanish end were swift. Within quarter of an hour we we out of the city and heading south towards the A67 autovia. Previously we have spent our first night close to Santander, at the area autocaravanas near Somo or the free parking at the entrance to Cabárceno safari park. This trip we decided to attempt to cut one night off our dash for south by driving for a couple of hours through the Cantabrian mountains to the high plains of northern Castille y Leon.

Motorhomers on Facebook had been reporting since Christmas that Spain was having an unusually harsh winter. As we approached Reinoso the mountains to the west were very snowy indeed. It was stunningly bright however, the clarity of light breathtaking after months of grey mist at home. Everything seemed great as we settled into the area autocaravanas in Aguilar de Campoo. 

It shared the  space with the local  infant school. Wednesday at 5pm appeared to be football training,  one moment we had the place to ourselves, the next kids kitted out in quilted training gear arrived by the dozen. They must be a tough breed hereabouts  because as the sun set the temperature plummeted below zero. It did not deter Aguilar de Campoo Juniors, they stayed hard at it until 7pm when a traffic jam formed around us as parents arrived to collect their frozen off-spring.

We turned in early leaving the heating on the lowest setting. At some god forsaken hour just before dawn I woke feeling very chilly and needing to visit the loo. I discovered the heating had failed, the lights weren't working and the toilet wouldn't flush. The temperature in the van was -5.6C.

I pulled on a sweatshirt and climbed back into bed. Some hours later over a very grumpy breakfast, we attempted to understand what was going on. We had plenty LPG, the leisure battery meter registered well over half capacity, but every time we switched the heating on the 12 volt supply cut out. We ditched our plan to us area caravanas on the way to Seville.  With sub-zero overnight temperatures we needed electrical hook-up to run the heating or we would keep ditching our water. We found a campsite near Plasencia that was open all year. If we can reach there today perhaps we can get as far as Seville tomorrow, we speculated. Double digit temperatures were forecast with afternoon highs in the low twenties. This is what we needed, the one thing we had not anticipated was an escape to the frozen south.

2001 - a van odyssey

Ever since we began our motorhome 'odyssey' back in 2013 I have kept a tally of miles travelled and days on the road. For the past seven years on New Year's day along with making some  resolution or other that I had no intention of keeping, I  meticulously update a spreadsheet then post a screenshot of it to the blog.

As you might expect the 'metrics' for 2021 are distinctly underwhelming, a mere 30 days in Europe and a paltry 2731 miles travelled. However, purely through happenstance, this year the numbers notched-up a significant milestone - exactly 1000 days of wandering about since 2013. Further investigation turned up other random numbers, a total of 54,176 motorhome miles travelled, prompting according to the Blogger dashboard - 734 posts. I estimate that must be at least three quarters of a million words! So, the van averages 30mpg, the driver 75wpm; no I am not talking about typing speed, I mean words per mile.

Day 1001, a sleepover on Portmouth Docks... Santander here we come!

To begin at the beginning, blog post number one from July 2013 records the moment we picked up our first van. The fact I was able to do that shows that 'Heels for Dust' predates the moment we actually became motorhome owners. First a blog then the van, which is a bit arse about face when you think about it. In fact, I seem to remember creating the blog  as soon as we put the deposit down on Maisy, I did the the design, Gill came up with the name.  This was hardly the most obvious reaction to such a long anticipated event, perhaps cracking open a bottle of fizzy or joining a motorhome owners forum might have been a more normal response. 

What it reflects is just how important reading other people's blogs were during our transition from a settled life to a travelling one. Gill is an avid reader and as we drifted towards the end of our working  lives she added  motorhome blogs and self published 'van life' ebooks to the usual pile of novels she had on the go.

We learned two things from this blog fest. Firstly, although we aspired to buy a motorhome when we retired we had no clear plan of how we would use it, I suppose we imagined we would simply have more and longer holidays in sunny places. Blogs like 'Our Tour', 'Our Bumble' and Maggie Bevis' account of her travels through Greece made us realise that for many people motorhoming was not simply a pastime, it was more a way of life. They travelled freely for months at a time. It  gradually dawned on us that this was what we wanted too.

We gleaned practical information from the blogs as well. Buying your first motorhome is a daunting prospect, especially as for most of us it is the biggest purchase we will ever make apart from a house. The choice is bewildering, campervan or motorhome, A Class or coach-built; also to the first time buyer there seems to be an apparently infinite variety of ways to arrange a dining table, kitchen, bathroom and bed inside a van. What would suit us? The layout others chose to travel  long term helped us make the decision about what would be best for us - big enough not to feel claustrophobic if stuck inside due to bad weather, fixed rear double bed, big storage garage beneath -   both vans we have owned are 7m coach builds in this style. We got the decision right thanks to reading others' blogs.

For me there was an additional factor that made it  inevitable that I would want to keep a blog too. Gill is a voracious reader, me less so. Whereas Gill reads for pleasure I need to have a purpose to keep me hooked on a book, something that I am interested in or curious about. Consequently I tend to read more non-fiction than novels. However, I do write. From my teenage years onwards I scribbled for my own amusement, then over the past couple of decades as the internet brought together strangers with a shared interest, my writing reached a wider audience. I have never aspired to make a living from writing, but I am serious about it and have been published now and again and won a bit of prize money here and there, before I became disenchanted with the competitions because you end up writing for the the prize rather than just to please yourself.  I realise what I am about to say  sounds pretentious, but I honestly think it is true.  What makes the 'Heels for Dust' different, its USP if you like, is it the work of a writer who happens to travel by motorhome. Most other blogs are written by motorhomers who decide they want to write about it. Consequently, compared to most other motorhome blogs 'Heels for Dust' is of no practical use whatsoever. All the useful things I gleaned from others, about layouts, habitation systems, 'van life hacks', recommended campsites or particular interesting routes, make few appearances in 'Heels for Dust'. I write it purely for my own amusement, it's a personal journal that I choose to share.

At first, as the 'hit counter' notched up into the tens of thousands, I dismissed its tally of readers as  'Russian bots'. Indeed in the early days that did seem to be the case, the blogger dashboard identified Siberia as the major hotspot for avid readers. At some point, 2015 maybe, Google found a way of stemming the flood of spam emanating from Iratusk, a glitch that had be-devilled Blogger for years. As I expected with the bots blocked the hit counter slowed, but it didn't stop altogether, settling down to an average somewhat less than two thousand page reads per month. It felt gratifying to discover that people as well as robots were reading the blog, but I had no inkling of who they were.

By and large I still don't, but over the years a few people have taken the time to leave comments, mostly encouraging and  complimentary. Such as Steve, counting down the months to his retirement, starting 'Heels for Dust' at post one and worked through the entries consecutively to the latest one.This seemed a formidable task, for even back in 2017 the blog had grown longer than 'War and Peace' and lacked any of Tolstoy's  esteemed literary qualities other than seeming interminable. Nevertheless, it was touching to find our journey had inspired others even if it had been written purely as a personal record.

There's a memorable verse in Leonard Cohen's great song 'Famous Blue Raincoat' that goes something like this:

"I hear you are building your little house deep in the desert

You're living for nothing now, I hope you're keeping some kind of record."

I've always loved the song ever since I first heard it in my late teens. Since retirement this particular verse has acquired an added resonance. Compared to a working life retirement can seem like 'living for nothing'. All those external imperatives that filled your middle age, family commitments, work responsibilities, the impossible competing demands on your time, all these things begin to evaporate. Added to that, for both of us our exit from work was messy and in my case a tad humiliating. Redundancy is never going to be a positive experience, the harsh truth of the matter is lodged within the term itself - surplus to requirements. So suddenly it does feel like you are faced with a future filled with nothing - a prospect simultaneously scary and empowering. Our way through it was to fill our lives with travel, and more than anything else this is the real story of Heels for Dust -  our record of living for nothing.

A slightly gnomic phrase appears in the song, "Did you ever go clear?" Cohen asks his fictional antagonist. Many words have been exchanged on-line about quite what this means. I find the most persuasive explanation is it reflects Cohen's brief dalliance with Scientology; to its adherents the phrase signifies a moment of becoming unclouded by the effects of conscious and unconscious trauma and deep seated anxieties. Obviously Scientology is a batshit crazy quasi-cult, but that does not mean absolutely everything about it is worthless. To me the idea of 'going clear' seems analogous to notions of 'non-attachment' found in many faiths, Buddhism' s 'nekkhamma,' or Zen's wú niàn" (無念), which literally means "no thought."  In the West, the Stoics' idea of 'apatheia' has similar connotations. 

What possibly does any of this somewhat esoteric stuff have to do with driving about for months on end in a van? I suppose for me the motorhome is my little house in the desert and I do 'go clear' when I travel. The sense of 'unbelonging' I get from being a stranger in a foreign land clears my mind. Back home, when I re-read some of my posts about our travels I find it difficult to recognise the person who wrote them; he seems full of curiosity, engaged in the moment, but still a detached observer. In short he appears much more sorted and less prone to negative rumination and nagging anxieties than the usual character that squats in my cranium. So as we sit here on Portsmouth docks heading to Santander tomorrow it seems a good moment to be celebrating day 1001 of our odyssey, not a begining nor an end point but a significant milestone on our way.

This being the case, as well as reflections about the past,  such moments invite speculation about the future. What are my chances of writing a post titled, '2001 - a van odyssey'? It's not out of the question, we would probably be in our mid 70s by that point. We entertained ourselves last week binge-watching Rick Stein's latest 15 part series about Cornwall. He's still active and switched on even though he is definitely a septuagenarian. Travelling long term does demand a basic level of health and fitness as well as having your wits about you. The older you are the less guaranteed that becomes. Yesterday, when we packed three months supply of prescription medicines for our various age related ailments we noted glumly that the pile seemed to be considerably bigger than last year. There is no point fretting about ageing, it's a classic Rumfeldian 'known unknown'. You know for certain at some point old age will catch-up with you and limit your active life, but you have little control as to when that will happen. 

Hmm, classic Pete negative rumination here!  What I do know is after a few days of wandering about under blue skies in our mobile 'little house' another version of me will begin to occupy my head. As the song says, I will 'go clear' heading inexorably towards day 2001 in expectation rather than merely in hope.

Groundhog year

Another year slips by, time once more to reflect upon our travels over the past twelve months, and as you might expect given the circumstances there is depressingly little to report. Up until midsummer road travel in Europe was impossible, then later in the year family commitments curtailed our wanderings. Consequently over the past year one month has felt identical to the next, indeed it is very easy to mix-up events from 2020 with those this year, hence - groundhog year.

                                 

In fact 30 days abroad is the fewest we have clocked-up in the last four decades, aside from 1995, when Laura's neonatal post-operative care kept us at home during the latter part of that year. I realise that  my spreadsheet records only 21 days travel in 2013, but that is because it relates to our 'moho days'. We did not acquire 'Maisy' until July of that year. I seem to recall we also managed ten days in Pozzuoli at Easter and rented a mobile home in Normandy at Whit. At the time I was out of work and pondering if I was unemployed or had inadvertently retired early. However, with Laura  in sixth form and Gill still at work, taking-off for months on end remained an aspiration rather than an option.

By most people's standards I suppose we should count ourselves as fortunate having been able to travel for 6 - 8 weeks per year throughout most of our working lives. It is one of the upsides of working in the education sector, though it is fair to say as we both acquired more senior roles during the noughties increasingly it took grim determination to clear the decks and manage take off more than a couple of weeks at a time. But we did.

In truth we have spent more than 30 days in the motorhome this year, but for the purposes of the blog I tend to discount our shorter trips in the UK. Add-in our jaunts to Devon, N. Wales, Yorkshire, Cornwall, Suffolk, London and Lincolnshire and the total would almost double. However, a few days or a week here or there cannot count as travel, it's a short holiday. 

My hopes for the New Year are modest - that the effects pf the pandemic gradually wane, that in the spring life has returned to some kind of normality (new or otherwise) and from a personal standpoint - that on January 25th finally, after three postponements, we are heading southwards from Portsmouth towards Santander to swap this view:

for this:

So, in celebration of roads travelled and anticipation of journeys to come - the only poem that I am aware of that celebrates the joy of living for months on end in a seven metre metal box with wheels:

A road through autumn

Autumn stalks us like a jilted lover.
We flee south seeking impossible freedom, a slow drive over Champagne's ochre plains -
russet woods fringing the mirror-still Meuse.

We flee south seeking impossible freedom,

on ancient roads - empty, poplar shadowed,
through russet woods fringing the mirror-still Meuse.
We hardly speak, but watch the wordless light

hush down ancient roads. Empty, plane-tree shadowed,
a crumbling square in some Burgundian town -
we hardly speak, but watch the wordless light -
le crepuscule’ as we sip our 'deux noisettes'.

A crumbling square in some Burgundian town -
it feels like weeks or months ago,
le crepuscule, as we sipped our 'deux noisettes',
uncertain how each day slipped by unnoticed.

It feels like weeks or months ago
we chanced upon a verdant valley
uncertain how each day slipped by unnoticed,
time sauntering south with us in Autumn's shadow.

We chanced upon a verdant valley:
turquoise lake, sunlit pastures, ice streaked peaks,
time sauntering south with us in Autumn's shadow,
a herder prodding clanging cattle homewards.

Turquoise lake, sunlit pastures, ice streaked peaks,
flowery chalets dotting valley fields -
herders prodding clanging cattle homewards
today as for the past four thousand years.

Flowery chalets dot the valley fields,
"Is this our earthly paradise," I ask,
"today, as for the past four thousand years,
to walk in peace within each seasons' pulse?"

No earthly paradise! We wanderers ask,
"What lies beyond this green Arcadian valley?"
Peace may dwell within each seasons' pulse,
but we flee south on sultry Autumn's heels

to seek what lies beyond these verdant valleys:
a slow drive south through Puglia's dusty plains,
ever south on a sultry season's heels,
stalking Autumn like her long lost lover.

 

Journeys south from grey northern winters to a southern ones' scintillating light, the arid hinterland of the Sierra Nevada uncharacteristically green and covered with almond blossom, this too has a poetry of its own. Perhaps when we get back in late April I should try to write a companion piece.