'You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone'

We are in Cheddar. An appropriate destination maybe, as after three months  of sporadic and somewhat dysfunctional attention from the NHS I am definitely feeling a tad extra mature.

At some point in the next couple of weeks, after a slew of telephone consultations, various scans, an invasive and somewhat medieval procedure, the local hospital urology department is due to come up with a diagnosis prompted by an abnormal PSA count found in a routine blood test in early July. It might signal a significant problem or nothing to worry about, there's nothing I can do about the outcome, but t I certainly could do without the uncertainty.

In fact it's not this pending diagnosis that is impacting on our wandering life. A couple of months ago a 'nurse practitioner', during a rare face to face encounter at the local health centre, spotted I had a developed a hernia, something that chatting to a GP on the phone is never going to do. Sometimes you do need to see a medic, or more accurately the medic needs to see you. I was instructed not to lift anything heavy. So my plan to rebuild the deck at the far end of the garden over the summer months has been put on hold. More annoyingly, I can't lift our ebikes onto either the car or the van's rear bike rack. As Joni Mitchell said in Big Yellow Taxi 'you don't know what you've got till it's gone'. Gill's dodgy knee makes it problematic walking over uneven ground, so when we are at home the best way for us to get out and about the countryside is to use cycle trails. Luckily three of the best are situated on our doorstep in the Peak District.

When we tour in Europe ebikes are our secondary mode of transport, taking us to nearby supermarkets or the historic centres of towns and cities where driving the moho is a pain.  If the pending diagnosis from the hospital does not require immediate treatment then we hope to head for the Costa Brava for a month or so. I still feel sad that the trip we had been planning Sardinia is going to have to be postponed and the we are not going to be able to use our bikes wherever we go. Still, Cala Montgro at the southern end of the bay of Roses and the site at Cala Levada a few kms. west of Tossa de Mar can be drop dead gorgeous in the autumn. Fingers crossed that we can head south in mid September.

One of the joys of being together for four and a half decades is that the pair of us tend to end up thinking/doing/planning/liking similar stuff by some kind of unspoken, mysterious osmosis. Occasionally this does have a downside. Gill also has succumbed to a sundry medical misfortune. A few weeks ago, out of the blue, certain ingredients - onions, garlic, coffee - suddenly tasted disgusting to her.  The condition is called parosmia and is a common post viral reaction. COVID has sparked a spike in this once rare condition. We now wonder if the virus we caught at the end of our trip to Spain in April was in fact COVID, though Gill took a test and it came out negative.

So overall this year has been plagued by health niggles. I'm hoping it's a glitch and does not portend the onset of age related chronic conditions that curtail our wandering life.

Meteorologically it's been a summer of two halves. We missed 'flaming June'. As the UK baked in the warmest on record the weather while we were in Brittany was cooler and showery. As we headed back to catch the ferry from Dieppe we encountered occasional thundery showers. Still it was not without its highlights. In particular the Camping Municipal at Pont Farcy on the banks of the Vire exuded an old fashioned Gallic charm, quiet, green and peaceful despite being only a couple of kilometres from the A84 motorway.

Next to the site a Via Verde follows the valley of the Vire and connects to a regional cycle route using country lanes terminating at the coast near  Mont St. Michel. 

Unsurprisingly the campsite is popular with cycle tourists undertaking some sort of 'pilgrimage en velo'. A couple of the cycle tourists were using ebikes, they must be heavy to manoeuvre once you add the weight of the batteries and the camping gear. Nevertheless the set-up should make it much less hard going in hilly country. Thinking back to our cycle touring days in Normandy and Brittany in the early 80s, I  recall many moments of pushing our laden bikes up long steep hills in scorching heat. Gill's Claude Butler and my Harry Hall were beautifully manufactured lightweight tourers, but I am not such a purist as to regard them as superior to today's pedelec assisted chunkier machines.

We liked the site at Pont Farcy, it was simple but well maintained and the sanitary facilities were sanitary which is not always the case in France's more rustic spots. 

A gate at the far end of the site connected with the cycle track. We decided not to unload the bikes but walked up the trail for a couple of kilometres. It followed the meandering course of the river along a  beautiful wooded valley.

I was particularly taken by a magnificent specimen oak tree. It's rare to find such  venerable examples at home as most of the ancient ones were felled long ago to supply the navy with ships up until the latter part of the nineteenth century when iron clad dreadnoughts became the norm.

Onwards. We spent our last night at the Aire de camping car at Neufchatel. The forecast thunderstorms which had failed to materialize for past few days finally caught up with us. The evening light went ochre- grey, there was a rumble or two then the sky to the south shimmered silver as  the main event exploded just over the horizon somewhere in the Seine valley. We did catch the attendant deluge. The rain came down in sheets until the small hours, drumming on the van roof  incessantly, half a metre above our unsleeping heads.

Next day we drove to Dieppe and  parked beside harbour. The ferry port used to be right next to the old quayside, but I guess it became impractical as vessels became ever larger. Even now, though the newer terminal is a few hundred meters beyond the historic harbour the ferries still tower above the old sea walls as they come and go. It's an impressive sight.

Last night's stormy weather had moved north, we had a calm and clear crossing. The chain of white cliffs stretching from Beachy Head to Brighton looked magnificent in the golden evening light as we approached Newhaven. While we were in Brittany the UK had sweltered in near tropical heat. June 2023 turned out to be the hottest on record. 

Sadly sunset over the white cliffs turned out to be the UK summer's swansong. July proved to be the wettest ever, coinciding exactly with our homecoming. 

The first couple of weeks also coincided with looking after Ralfi while his owners headed for the Ile de Ré. Rainy days and Dachshunds don't mix. Unlike most other breeds who gleefully will retrieve a stick from a river or bound through puddles, most sausage dogs are water averse. Ralfi is even tetchy about walking on slightly damp grass and at the first hint of drizzle the only way to get him to go outdoors is to carry him bodily. Luckily he is very small.

As one rain soaked day merged into another I took to checking the Met office rain radar every couple of hours in an attempt to find  brief dry interludes when we could bundle the reluctant pooch into the car and take him for a short stroll  along the old  railway track overlooking Erwood Reservoir. 

In-between dog minding and juggling a clutch of medical appointments the months of July and August simply slipped away. Our home life  always seems more tedious than our itinerant one, and with travel plans put on hold until Stepping Hill Hospital's urology dept concluded their  investigation into what exactly is wrong with me, we were in no position to book a ferry. Having the next one booked is an important prop to my sanity.

Nevertheless there have been highlights, it's not been all gloom and doom. We attended two big festivals, Glastonbury virtually and Blue Dot for real. When we arrived back home from Brittany our daughter Sarah, partner Rob and Ralfi were already in our house. They had managed to get hold of tickets for Glastonbury and needed us to dog sit. They embraced the spirit of the moment and were attempting to craft a large flag. 

Swathes of fabric covered the dining room as they attempted to stitch the effigy of a 'white chalk down horse' onto a big square of green. Gill lent a hand by showing Sarah and Rob how to use her sewing machine which speeded things up. Nevertheless it was after midnight before the thing was finished 

The inspirational giant horse ....

Reimagined in fabric ...

Fluttering in front of the pyramid stage two days later ..

We always make a point of watching Glastonbury. I think it is one of Britain's cultural highlights celebrating the energy and creativity of our youth. It is progressive, left leaning, celebratory and asserts that although as country we may in decline we still produce shit hot bands and know how to party. 

I am happy to participate vicariously via iPlayer as I don't like  crowded places. However having Sarah and Rob there Whatapping their experience in real time gave us extra skin in the game. We felt 'half there'.

Elton John's final concert ever in the UK wrapped up this year's festival. Gill's a bigger fan of his music than me, but I do appreciate he is one of the greats. Part way through Rocket Man, as the sun set behind the Pyramid stage, the camera switched to a birds eye view, panning slowly over the huge crowd. 

In the lower left of the screen a minuscule image of a white horse fluttered momentarily. It was an oddly touching moment.

 

July presented me with the opportunity to confront directly my fear of crowds. Sarah and Rob bought us all tickets to the 'Blue Dot' festival for my birthday. It's one of the summer season's smaller specialist festivals. Cropedy celebrates folk music, Womad  world music. Blue Dot combines a science festival with music, all set against the spectacular backdrop of the Lovell Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire. I imagine Cropedy to be inhabited by Sarah Brown era vegetarians, Womad packed full of Extinction Rebellion activists; Blue Dot provides a gathering place for an even smaller niche demographic - hopeful rationalists!

Aside from the music, science talks and exhibitions the real star of the show is the telescope itself, sixty plus years old, still functional and tuned-in to the cosmos. It's an inspirational place, our era's Stonehenge. We are so lucky, because when we drive west out of Buxton over the Cat and Fiddle, as we drop down towards the Cheshire plain the West Midlands stretches out before us, the hills of Wales and Shropshire on the horizon; in the foreground Jodrell Bank, it's big white dish glinting in sunlight. It's a truly inspirational sight.

We often visited the place when the kids were small because, as well as the telescope itself,  Jodrell Bank has a planetarium. We haven't been back for two decades or more. I'd forgotten just how magnificent it is up-close. Huge.

We had one day tickets for Thursday, though the festival continued until Sunday. This turned out to be fortuitous, there were a couple of light showers on Thursday evening, but for  the following two days it poured incessantly and conditions became so difficult the resulting washout became national news.

The main stage was situated to the right of the big dish; it was used after dark as a gigantic screen for a light show during the concert.

The main event was a performance by Max Richter and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Part one featured his reworking of Vivaldi's Four Seasons followed by 'Voices,' a haunting minimalist piece which is interspersed with readings from the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. When the performance reached the section concerning refugees and the need to provide asylum for oppressed people the audience burst into spontaneous applause.

It was a powerful moment. Often it is difficult to resist being swept away by the tsunami of toxic media that assails us. Nevertheless there are still a few progressive, rational voices out there arguing that collectively we can solve big problems and create a better world. It's rare though that such people are able to gather together; but they did beneath Jodrell Bank's kaleidoscopic light show. It's unusual for me to feel entirely comfortable in a crowd, but in that moment of solidarity the crowd became more than an audience and morphed an ephemeral congregation of humanists, a momentary contradiction in terms, a gathering of like-minded individualists. Magic. 

I think that moment will prove to be the standout one of the summer. August wasn't quite so wet as July but remained cloudy and cool - 'changeable' - as we British tend  to call conditions that in more sunnier climes would be deemed dismal. The month was also punctuated by a series of medical interventions which became increasingly invasive and unpleasant. Feeling somewhat traumatised following a biopsy I asked the nurse if we should postpone our trip to Cornwall planned for the following week. She reckoned if I rested for a few days it would be ok, but cautioned that of I felt unwell I should seek immediate advice as in rare cases post-operative infections could escalate quickly into a medical emergency.

So here we are, two nights in Cheddar on the way to Cornwall. It's not the most alluring place, a real tourist trap full of crappy gift shops...

and dreadful cafés and cheesemongers selling 'genuine' cheddar at eye watering prices... 

We bought some, in all honesty I prefer bog standard supermarket extra mature. I reckon 'Cathedral City' brand is tastier than the 'artisan cheese' we bought in the shop at the foot of the gorge

The site is impressive, the highest limestone gorge in England. However its magnificence is somewhat sullied by the fact that the road that winds up past the towering cliffs is lined with car parks. 

Perhaps how I am feeling coloured my impression of the place. I don't think I am fully recovered from last week's 'procedure'. It was only a couple of kilometres from the campsite to the gorge but I kept having to stop for rests and felt a bit of a wreck by the time we got back to the van. Given the nurse's warning about post operative complications fingers crossed that this doesn't develop into something more serious.