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.