Four slow days

We were scheduled to arrive in Olbia at 6.30pm. However we'd departed late and our progress south  felt distincty unhurried. By our appointed arrival time we were within sight of Olbia but barely moving, making our  wa slowly down the narrow, islet strewn inlet which protected the port for centuries from marauding Barbary pirates, but these days presents multiple hazards for a big ferry packed with marauding motorhomers. 

This mattered, sunset was at 7.10 pm. Arriving at 6.30 pm. would have enabled us to reach the sosta we had booked at Porto San Paolo before nightfall. It was dusk by the time we disembarked and completely dark when we edged slowly along the traffic choked Olbia ring road. Luckily the route to Porto San Paolo was well signposted as was the sosta and the number plate recognition system at its barrier worked perfectly. 

We had one minor glitch. I tend to avoid driving the motorhome at night - particularly on minor roads in Italy. The road from Olbia to Port San Paolo is winding. However, when I switched to full beam weirdly the indicators flashed as well. The lights and indicators are all on the same stick, clearly the switch is malfunctioning. It's only a problem on full beam, but it means we are going to have to avoid driving after dark. Luckily the lights and indicators are working fine on dipped, so its still ok in heavy rain and foggy conditions. Do motorhomes ever work faultlessly? Well ours doesn't!

Last year our trip was to Italy was cut short when torrential rain sent us scurrying off to France and the Costa Brava in search of sunshine. It's three years since we spent a month or more in Italy, and we are noticing one positive change. Increasingly in paid for sostas you are are able to pre-book and pay on-line. This is a game-changer, particularly out of season. On our first autumn trip to Italy and Greece a decade ago finding places to stay was difficult. We were reliant on books like 'All the Aires', or rudimentary, user driven websites like Park for Night. What was asserted on-line rarely corresponded with reality when you arrived. On a number of occasions on our drive south to Brindisi we turned up at sostas which claimed to be open all year to find the gates padlocked and a welcoming committee of deranged alsatians. So online booking is a welcome development.

Next day we drove about 8kms south and booked into Tavolara Camping Village for the next four nights. We both needed to relax and sit still for a few days, which is exactly what we did.

So much so that it's difficult to recall exactly what we did do, apart from three loads of laundry in an elderly washing machine which when it finally creaked into its spin cycle sounded like the TARDIS. Thankfully it didn't de-materialise leaving future archeologists to ponder how Sardinian Nuraghic tribes people were able to acquire Marks and Spencer underwear.

The local beach was about 500m down a minor road. The view towards the spectacular pyramidal peak of Isola Tavolara was absorbing, the way cloud shadows floated across its pale rock face. "Is it limestone?" I asked... Granite apparently. 

I had a short swim each day. It's ages since I have had a deliberate swim. Since I acquired a paddleboard two years ago my dips have tended to be short and unplanned. Stamina proved challenging, I needed to take a breather every 100m or so, but it was great.

I am still suffering from post viral symptoms from the dose of COVID I picked up a couple of months ago. Stress and tiredness triggers them, and the drive south was both stressful and tiring. It's a random thing, sometimes I feel just about ok, sometimes really lousy. It gaslights me, because I never know from one day to the next how I will be. Exercise does help, swimming cleared my symptoms immediately, as if somehow it reset my immune system. Afterwards I almost felt well. It would be great to be able to discuss this with a medical professional, but if you try, you sense you are being humoured, placed into 'the slighty deluded septgenarian box'. What to do? Swim more!

There is a big lagoon behind the beach with herons, egrets and flamingos. Sadly we couldn't raise the energy to circumnavigate it on the boardwalk. Instead we just lay on the beach and watched the world go by. Italians are very watchable. I messed about taking photos of Gill from funny angles.

She  reciprocated by taking distant shots of me bobbing about in the sea, then WhatsApped them to the kids in some kind aquatic 'Where's Wally' competition.

The last four days - basically we've done bugger all - it's been great.

Not grim and mouldy at all these days . .

I am a big fan of the Direct Ferries app. It allows you to book a ferry more or less anywhere in the world. Just looking at it cheers me up. I use it all the time when planning our trips. You can happen upon some remarkable deals. Using a 'seniors discount' we managed to find a a sailing from Livorno to Olbia - a nine hour crossing - for just £82, far less than the  Dover/Calais route. Today Irish Ferries offered a short Channel crossing for a motorhome for £127. How can the fare for a journey of 190 miles across the Tyrrhenian Sea be 30% cheaper than one for 22 miles over 'La Manche'?

I had one nagging doubt, our bargain crossing was booked with Grimaldi Ferries, which specialises in routes crossing the central Mediterranean and the Adriatic. Our past experience with Grimaldi is well documented in the blog. Our first journey with the company from Brindisi to Patras in 2015 was so bad it resulted in us nicknaming them 'Grim-mouldy Ferries'. 

Our sailing tomorrow is at 10am, but we are required to be at the port two hours earlier. There is a sosta at Livorno docks but it's next to the Moby Line terminal in a different area of the port. Some online reviews claimed that the facility is reserved for people booked with Moby. So we opted to use a sosta about 20km north of Livorno at the Marina di Pisa situated at the mouth  of the Arno, though this required  waking up early at 6am.

The marina at Marina di Pisa was full of swanky looking yachts, but the town itself looks somewhat god-forsaken. There are exceptions of course, but quite a lot of Italy's seaside is a bit naff. 

Still, the view across the broad river mouth towards the Tuscan hills was spectacular, illuminated by a numinous thundery light.

Without the assistance of Google Map's perky P A. it might well have proven tricky to find the Grimaldi terminal, the road network around the port area is very confusing and at 7.30am an un-nerving mix of speeding containers trucks and locals late for work. 

We arrived to find the usual  scrum at the dock entrance. It looks like complete chaos, but sequestered within the melee there is a system, albeit an arcane Italian one. By some hidden osmotic process vehicles are mysteriously absorbed aboard. Maybe it would take the local priest to explain how it's done, to a godless Northerner it seemed miraculous.

Italian ferries never leave or arrive on time, timetables are approximate. Livorno was wreathed in morning mist as we departed - only 20 minutes late. By the time we'd found the café and breakfasted the sun had broken through and by midday we were sailing across a glassy sea in the crystalline light of a classic 'blue Med day'.

We should not have worried about opting for a Grimaldi crossing at a bargain basement price. There was nothing whatsoever grim and mouldy about this Grimaldi ferry, it was modern, stylish, with a choice of comfortable lounge areas. The self service cafeteria offered classic pasta dishes cooked in small batches to ensure freshness. 

The Italian staff were friendly and welcoming. Even the deckhands charged with speedily loading and unloading scores of nervous motorhomers who usually adopt a surly demeanour, barking orders in high octane Italian at the hapless drivers just doing their best, today seemed unusually amiable.

The voyage from Livorno to Olbia traverses the entire length of theTuscan archipelago, passing in turn Elba, Capraia then Montecristo. All the while the jagged cliffs and cloud wreathed mountains of Corsica slide by on the starboard side. 

It takes almost four hours to sail the length of Corsica, from Cap Corse in the north to the sheer cliffs by Bonifacio near the island's southeastern tip until Gallura Sardinia's most northerly region, appears in the misty distance.

Hereabouts is my happy place. In 1998 we spent a whole month camping with the kids in a big Cabanon frame tent, mainly in Corsica, but briefly for few days in northern Sardinia,  Matthew our eldest was almost 12, Sarah, a very sassy ten years old, and Laura who had just turned three, - the perfect age to grub around in the bushes and fearlessly paddle about in the sea.  Corsica and Sardinia's wild, scrubby landscape, white sand beaches and rocky coves captured my imagination. I fell in love with the Mediterranean.

Every so often we wandered about on deck , time slowed. I watched the wake spread out behind us like a vanishing point in reverse. It struck me just how much I have written over the years reflects our Mediterranean travels. I have internalised the place, it has become an abiding preoccupation. Intrigued by this I spent the rest of the journey collecting together these bits and pieces , written occasionally over almost quarter of a century.

I realise my predeliction is fanciful, but I also know that in an hour or two, when I drive gingerly down the ramp and the crockery and cutlery go clank in the back and the suspension bounces slightly when we bump onto the quayside I will be struck by a pang of recognition though it's absurd that you can have a sense of homecoming in a place you've never visited before.

Olbia is a small Mediterranean port, we've arrived at quite a few in our time. In every single one I have had a sense of it being familiar, a nagging deja vue -mysteriously I feel at home. Maybe its akin to Derrida's notion of hauntology, that as well as having a nostalgic longing for an idealised past, we can be haunted by a future that never quite materialised, or in my case be appropriated by a culture that I am unconnected to, akin to false memory, assailed by an imagined belonging.

 

 

Instant Italy

It's about 40kms from Area Sosta Tamara to the Italian frontier at Chiasso, normally an unchallenging  journey, but not today. We have traversed Switzerland dozens of times over the past three decades, there always seems to be some stretch of the country's motorway system undergoing major repair. Around Lucerne, over the years, we have witnessed the moment in the mid-nineties when the urban motorway through the city was re-routed through a series of tunnels, then fifteen years later chaos ensuing from the refurbishment of the tunnels, and more recently upgrades to the refurbishment. Whatever the lacrustine delights that Lucerne may offer in our minds it's associated with a massive 'Verkehrsstau'. 

Yesterday we swept through Lucerne unimpeded. However, the Swiss being famously canny, having invested heavily in road mending Tonka toys, are not going to simply allow all this expensive kit to lie about unused. It seems most of it had been transferred to the motorway around the southern end of Lake Como, in other words exactly where we heading.

Traffic was relatively light, so there were no hold-ups. This was a pity,  because edging carefully through the roadworks would have been preferable to bombing through them at speed. There are three challenges when you drive a British vehicle through roadworks on a Swiss motorway. Firstly, the temporary lanes seem narrower than you find in the UK. In a righhand drive motorhome this requires pinpoint positioning to ensure the person in the passenger seat is not traumatised  traffic passing close by on the left. This is compounded by the Swiss habit of placing temporary crash barriers snuggled up to the kerb. Usually tl separated from the inside lane by a thin strip of asphalt which acts as narrow hard shoulder. This vanished when the two skimpy lanes were squeezed into the space normally take up by a single carriageway. At times the wing mirrors seemed mere centimetres from the bright orange markers protruding from the temporary crash barriers.

Yesterday's thundery downpours returned. In the rain the red lines marking temporary lanes disappeared. As the border neared it seemed that the Italian truck drivers, recently trapped in uncivilised northern climes where it rained incessantly and the food was terrible, were making a dash for it, ignoring entirely the temporary 70kph speed limit. Home, sweet face Bambinos and a doting nonna's cooking awaited. Truck after truck bombed past buffeting us alarmingly. For the first time ever the Milan tangentale came as a relief. At least its chaos seemed predictable.

We had given ourselves eight days to get from Dieppe to the ferry port at Livorno. Our plan had been to spend a couple of days somewhere in Alsace to break the journey. However there seemed little point sitting in a campsite watching the rain come down. So we pressed on, and now had a day in hand. When planning our trip I had found a nice looking sosta just off the autostrada north of Palma. It was situated on the edge of the small town of Fontanellatto, reviews were positive and Google maps highlighted the castle in the town centre as worth a look.

In the event Fontanellatto proved to be  much lovelier than we expected. 'Instant Italy' we agreed when we reached the old centre. It seemed curiously overlooked, no 'centro storico' signs, no mention by Lonely Planet apart from a nod to a nearby bamboo labyrinth - 'Labirinto della Masone' - dubbed Emilia Romana's quirkiest visitor attraction. The more modern part of the town consisted of a grid of neat apartmemt blocks, the place seemed to be thriving, probably serving as a slightly upscale commuter town for the nearby city of Parma. However, the ancient centre, beyond the somewhat bland suburbs proved truly delightful. Rectilinear arcaded streets, stuccoed in ochres and burnt umber led to a central square.

Dominating the space is a sizeable moated medieval fortress, adapted in later centuries into a palatial ducal residence. 

It stayed that way until 1948 when the last aristocratic owner sold his hereditary pile to the municipality.

 

It now houses a small museum boasting an early work by the Mannerist master Parmigianino. I was tempted to visit, but it involved a guided tour. I don't like guided tours, pointless in a language you don't understand. So we gave it a miss 

We found a different masterpeice of Italian culture more to our liking In the corner of the square, a really excellent gelateria. We managed two visits to the place in the 36 hours we were there.

Fontanellatto means 'place with a small spring' It still has one featuring two Gorgon's heads - it's situated right outside the gelateria - really use for sticky fingers

We also had our first Italian lunch out here at the Trattoria del Teatro. 

We both opted for tagliatelle ai porcini - what can you say? Simply delicious maybe, but a lot of knowhow and skill goes into producing something so good. 

Discovery of the day - baked parmesan rind as an appetiser- now we 're feeling bad about the hundreds of rinds we've thrown away.

The sosta itself is well designed and very eco, most of the pitches are placed beneath an enormous array of solar panels. The place is big, but there were only a few vans using it. 

We opted for a pitch in the open, simply because it was easier to reverse into it. It's a definite find, a useful first stop near a motorway junction, equally handy if you are heading south through Tuscany or towards Bologna and the Adriatic. I've said this before, but I'll repeat it anyway - it's really difficult to feel miserable in Italy, it's full of small delights. We live in uncertain times, places that feel hopeful are precious and we must treasure them.

Wet, wetter, wettest...

According to Google maps (the fount of all cartographic knowledge) it's 1300km from Dieppe  ferry terminal to Livorno's Imbarco Grimaldi. We gave ourselves a week to do it, planning a two night stopover somewhere en-route because we needed a laundry stop and the driver needed a break from driving day after day.

At first all went well, if you discount the fact that DFDS managed to serve me the worst plate of food I have had on a ferry, even worse than Grimaldi Ferry's recycled chip omlette served to me at breakfast on the 16th October 2015, that hitherto had taken the star prize for the most indigestible nautical fare (I take careful note of such things). Whereas the Grimaldi second hand chip omelette just looked like a greasy mess and tasted horrible, DFDS managed to serve a paella that surpassed mere inedibility, tasting so peculiar that I began to suspect that it might actually be dangerous. I managed two mouthfuls, it was enough to make me queasy for the next couple of days.

Otherwise things went well.

Day one, we made it to a Campingcar Park a few kilometres east of Soisson situated in Ciry Sasogne's former camping municipal. The sun shone, the wooded site was bathed in a mellow autumn light straight out of Keat's Ode; I took a photo tagged with a comment about the wonders of a 'simple field in France'.

Next day we headed towards a simple campsite on the outskirts of Verdun. Six days from home but a week or more from a campsite in Sardinia where we might settle down for a few days meant we required a laundry. We planned to stay put for two nights so everything could dry. Sadly, the weather had other plans. Rain was forecast for later in the evening and overnight. We did the washing anyway and luckily in was sunny enough to dry most things before it began to drizzle.

So we pressed on the next day, down the autoroute, past Nancy, then through the Vosges via the xxx tunnel. The overnight short sharp showers had morphed into a steady downpour by the time we reached Vogelgrun and the Campingcar park next to some enormous lock gates on the Canal du Rhine. No narrowboats here, just enormous bulk carrier barges big enough to accommodate a small apartment and a medium SUV aboard. 

Onwards, through Basle and the Alps. The A2 through Lucerne and the San Gottardo tunnel is one of Europe's major north south routes. It can get traffic choked resulting in long delays, but we were lucky this time, no hold-ups whatsoever. We've travelled this route many times over the past three decades, occasionally we have had a spectacular, picture perfect alpine view, more often it's cloudy and overcast. Today it went one step further, thundery cloudbursts interspersed with incessant rain was the theme of the day. Luckily the traffic was unusually light so at least we weren't doused in spray much. We may not have had an archetypal snowy mountain view, the clouds were low and ominous, but waterfalls and cascades tumbled through the steep wooded slopes on each side of the road - a spectacular sight. 

Today's destination - Area Sosta Tamara, a conveniently located camper stop just off the motorway near Locarno. We've used it regularly, as well as being convenient the place has a really well designed service point. We needed it as the previous one at Vogelgrun was broken and we were beginning to get a tell- tale pong from the grey water tank. 

The place does have a downside - the price, you get charged by the hour and an overnight stop can easily end up costing over £30. A few days of torrential rain resulted in another issue, 'soft verges'. The place has a mixture of hard standing and grassy pitches. A few of the latter were somewhat 'furrowed' where vans had become bogged down. Ours can grind to a half on wet grass with an imperceptible slope, luckily we arrived mid-afternoon and there were still some places to park on tarmac.

Earlier, as we sped down the hill on the south side of the San Gottardo, Gill had noticed a newly opened camper stop just off the motorway. It looked to be considerably cheaper than Area SostacTamara. Maybe we should give it a go on our return journey, we wondered. 

London call-in.

Our four night stay in London was bookended by two headline grabbing events. On the day before we arrived Whitehall was flooded with 150,000 thuggish right-wing nutjobs led by Tommy Robinson. Mr Musk beamed in from planet Maga to warn that violence was coming for us all, it sounded more like a threat than a warning. 

The day before we left London the 'Orange Maniac' arrived. Trump's visit was arranged to ensure he was well protected from the realities of London life,  staying first in Regent Park's fortress America - Winfield House, the US Ambassador's London residence, then on to a state banquet safely esconced in Windsor Castle. Its medieval walls may have insulated the orange one from the world outside but it did provide a giant screen for Led By Donkeys to project an enormous image of Trump with his best buddy Jeffrey Epstein. 

The protesters were arrested and charged with malicious communication, an irony given the world's foremost malicious communicator was safely ensconced inside feasting with King Charles. Sadiq Khan, London's Mayor was not invited to the banquet. The on-line spat between the orange maniac and the mayor of London goes back a decade. It's complicated, Chatgpt kindly reduced the long running feud to a one page pdf. 

It's a clash of opposites, big/small, white/brown, monoculture/diversity, authoritarianism/democracy, irrationality/reason. Trump's ire, fuelled by white supremacist fantasies and Islamaphobic ramblings asserted at the UN that Sadiq Khan was a 'terrible terrible mayor planning to introduce Sharia law into the capital.

Spend a few days in London and it soon becomes clear just how deranged Trumps ramblings are, the place is a miracle of diversity, a multi-ethnic city that functions well, people generally are helpful and friendly. The place isn't the most beautiful city by any means, it's a hotchpotch of characterful neighborhoods, some stylish, others a bit scruffy and 'over used' looking.

We spent two days in Greenwich and one in Hackney Wick and around Stratford. We are familiar with both places, the former because our youngest, Laura, went to university there, the latter because our Sarah, our middle daughter and her partner Rob have lived in the 'Hackney bubble' for some years. This time however our experience of both places was somewhat different, as well as the adults we also joined by the newest members of the family.

Nico (aged five months)

and Jesse (aged two weeks) when we met with Matthew and Krystina in her apartment in Greenwich.

We ate out at lunchtime in both places. What was impressive was the warm welcome we received everywhere. People fussed over the babies, the staff in the cafés went out of their way to accommodate us all and people generally were chatty and friendly. 

In Hackney we had lunch out at The Breakfast Club. It's a place we've been to before down by the canal which specialises in all day American style breakfasts. It's quite spacious and informal so easy to accommodate Nico's pram next to our table, though most of the time he was awake and had fun being the centre of attention.

We had two shots at having lunch out with Matthew, Krystina and Jesse. We were aiming to go to a place in Greenwich centre that specialised in traditional London fare - bangers and mash. We didn't make it on the first day because it became increasingly squally - instead we headed to a cafe nearby that specialises in eastern Mediterranean dishes. Having just been fed Jesse slept through the whole thing.

On our second visit to Greenwich the weather was better, we managed to make it as far as the sausage and mash place.

I can understand Matthew and Krystina's enthusiasm for the place, the sausages were exceptional and the mash positively unctuous. British food can be great, but sadly it's the exception rather than the rule.

We finished off with a coffee from a food stall in Greenwich market.

To outsiders the idea of living in London seems overwhelming. What we've learned from all three of our children who have lived in the city at one time or another is that Londoners don't really live in London, they inhabit a neighbourhood within one of its boroughs. 

Greenwich feels like a separate town, with pleasing Eighteenth century architecture, one of the most important scientific sites in the world - the Observetory - and a tangle of older streets by the river with a distinctly nautical vibe, dominated by the Cutty Sark, truly a 'tall ship'.

I can see how living in Greenwich feels like living in a town rather than a city. It's not quite the same in Hackney Wick, it's more of a hip neighbourhood with a bohemian edge, like an area in Brooklyn maybe. 

We walked there from Stratford through East Village, a chequerboard of mid-rise apartment blocks that now surround Queen Elizabeth Park, the site of the London Olympics.

The area has a continental feel, we've seen similar urban redevelopments in other European cities - Copenhagen and Pamplona for example. 

Unless you were a born and bred Londoner I think it would be difficult to call the city 'home', but as an incomer I can see how you might become attached to a particular neighbourhood. Maybe what best encapsulates this is the Kink's ' 'Waterloo Sunset', the 'dirty old city's' archetypal anthem.

We stayed in the Caravan and Motorhome Club's London site  situated in Abbey Wood in southeast  London

It's a pleasant wooded site, peaceful, apart from the dawn chorus provided by the place's large colony of parakeets. We used the place some years ago when Laura was living in Plumstead, easy enough to get to, just a couple of stops from Abbey wood Station. Visiting Sarah and Rob in Hackney back then was trickier, involving line hopping on the underground. Now it's much easier as Abbey Wood is most  easterly station on the Elizabeth Line, both Greenwich and Hackney are easily accessible. 

People on the tube were nice too, readily offering us seats when it was standing room only. Sometimes they were chatty and always affable. In truth generally speaking, in shops, cafés and supermarkets London felt more more open and welcoming than our home town, it surprised us. 

It's in the shires and former industrial towns that support for right wing extremism is burgeoning. Online it's easy to think that it's the norm, but some places are not 'left behind'. It's better to be surrounded by younger people because they have energy and hope. Despite the best efforts of Tommy Robinson, Elon Musk and the Orange Maniac, our four days in London felt uplifting - not because of the place but because its young, diverse population welcomed us.

 

 “

Downtime

We arrived home from Spain on the 17th of March. Yesterday I booked the ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe for 6th September; hopefully we will finally realise our long planned but frequently postponed trip to Sardinia. We have been there twice before, but never in a motorhome. I remember Sardinia's white sand beaches and turquoise sea fondly.. This time as well as sunset swims and snorkeling to look forward to the island's pellucid waters demand to be momentarily disturbed by a big splash. Regular practice over the past few weeks has paid off, most of the time I can stand up on my stand-up paddleboard, but not always.

There will be 186 day gap between when we arrived home in March and the moment in mid September when we hop on the ferry to Dieppe. Since we embraced a semi-nomadic lifestyle over a decade ago the only time we spent more than 90 days in the UK was during the Covid restrictions in 2020. Even then time did not drag so as it has done over recent weeks. After lock down restrictions were eased in the late Spring of 2020 our time was taken up with the big extension we had built in June and July, and   we we busied ourselves with redecoration, paving and re-laying the patio. Fortunately none of us succumbed to the first iteration of the virus. We were lucky.

It's difficult to work out why the past few months seemed to have dragged by. It's true that generally speaking I feel morose when at home and more energised and optimistic when travelling.  Over the past few months the in-between time slump as felt worse than usual. Why? It's difficult to say, its not as if nothing has been going on, some significant things have occurred - lovely things like the arrival of Nico, our first grandchild, it's amazing to watch how babies grow from helpless newborns to super-alert learning machines in a matter of a few weeks.

A day old....

Two months old....

Three months....

Matthew and Krystina are about to become parents too, grandchild number two is due to arrive any day soon. Our two elder children both live in east London. When they first moved there three or four years ago East Village and Hackney Wick was a buzzy hub of  late twenty-something millennial couples. It still is, but now the place's stylish millennials are somewhat older and many are trundling buggies about  There definitely seems to be a mid  thirty-something baby boom happening.

Not to be outdone, Laura, our youngest, living the life in Tokyo these days WhatsApped us with the news that she and her partner Brian were about to get married. Aside from obvious romantic considerations it will simplify her residency status an she is on a one year 'young person's' visa but Brian has a work visa and Laura can share that as a spouse. It was a low key affair, but their marriage certificate is very impressive, if somewhat gnomic.

Back in May I had a landmark moment of my own when I turned seventy. I celebrated the moment by continuing my quest for verticality on my paddleboard. I am making progress. 

It seems to me that there is nothing good about turning seventy, apart from the fact that I am still alive and more or less ok I guess. On the positive side I am fitter than I was ten years ago, I've lost 12kg in weight, eat far more healthily and reduced my alcohol consumption considerably. The downside are the chronic 'conditions' the pair of us seem to have acquired. Nothing actually life threatening but definitely a tad limiting. I appreciate the NHS monitoring machine is there for our own good, but the effect of  regular checkups, blood test results, blood pressure readings and intrusive interventions is somewhat de-humanising, 'I am not a number' you think to yourself, inadvertently showing your age by channelling Patrick McGoohan in 'The Prisoner'.

But turning seventy is problematic, annual medical cover for travel becomes more difficult to come by and unaffordable when you do find a company offering it. Keeping the C class light HGV category on my driving licence proved unexpectedly fraught too. I was diagnosed about ten years ago with a mild heart murmur. At the time the cardiologist explained that it was quite common and nothing to be concerned about. No mention was made of the fact that the condition should be reported to DVLA.  So when I reapplied for my licence, the form required a doctor to affirm my medical conditions, prompting the DVLA  to refer me for a cardiogram. It took three months from sending the form back to  DVLA  to receiving my new licence, thankfully retaining the C class categories. I know I have a tendency to catastrophise, but being unable to drive the motorhome would have complicated our travelling life. My sister-in-law, Jackie ended up on the receiving end of one of my rants about the situation. I feel a bit embarrassed about it now,  it wasn't the politest of responses to someone wishing me 'many happy returns...

 

One upside of being grounded for a few months meant we could book-in the moho for some long overdue repairs and refurbishment. The van is will be 12 years old at the end of the year, not exactly elderly, but definitely middle-aged. No major issues, but a bunch of minor annoyances and wear and tear - the strange flicker from the over-hob lights (even when switched off!), malfunctioning blinds in the kitchen and dining area, the loose fly screen on the habitation door, a new hinge on the bathroom door... all minor stuff really.

Since Brexit Burstner parts have been hard to come by. The simplest solution is to take the van back to  Burstner's main UK dealership - Camper UK in Lincoln. They are professional and efficient, but that comes at a cost, three trips to Lincoln and a final bill of £1200. Add onto that  the servicing and minor  repairs required by the MOT (£468), four new tyres (£602),  the cost of replacing the cam belt (£420   a new battery (£175) then repairs and refurbishments over the past six months have cost well over. £3000.  

Expensive yes, but our motorhome is not just some luxury item that we use occasionally, it is, de facto, our second home on wheels, somewhere we inhabit for four or five months of the year. So we console ourselves with the thought that we don't incur the fixed costs of having an actual bricks and mortar 'place in the sun'. Furthermore, browsing around the gleaming new and nearly new models in Camper UK's showroom, we concluded that no matter how much it costs of keeping our current van roadworthy it is a fraction of the outlay required to replace it. I looked into this when losing my c class license seemed like a possibility. 

In Camper UK showroom there was a new Burstner almost identical to the layout of ours - yours for a mere £92,200! We bought ours when it was four years old - I think we paid £44,000 for it. These days it seems a similar spec four year old Burstner costs around £60,000. I did the maths. - a 2014 Burstner Ixeo similar to ours is advertised on Autotrader for £39,000, but with 30,000 miles in the clock it has half the mileage of ours. Knock off  the 20%- 30% mark-up on the forecourt price and I guess we might get £25,000 - £30,000 for ours if we traded it in for a newer model - so buying a replacement might set us back about £30,000. Given that second-hand motorhomes depreciate around 8% per year then in one year a £60,000 motorhome will lose almost £5000 in value. It makes our recent spending on the moho seem quite modest, especially as things like replacing the cam belt, battery and tyres only occur every five years or so. It's just bad luck that they all needed to be fixed at the same time. So given our age and circumstances it makes good sense for us to grow old gracefully along with our elderly moho! With care it will keep going - I noted on the MOT website that our first moho - a 2006 LMC Liberty - is still on the road - well done Maisy! 

Motorhomes only feel like 'dead money' if you don't use them, and this spring and summer we haven't used the van much at all - just for short trips somw coinciding with visits to Camper UK in Lincoln. 

April - Clumber Park, Nottinghamshire

Pleasant site...

with miles of cyclable paths through Sherwood  Forest.

Clumber Park once had a large stately home in the middle of it. The big house was demolished after WW2 and the landscaped grounds were acquired by the National Trust. Various farrms, a model village, a big lake and the largest working Victorian hothouse remain. We liked the glasshouse and walled kitchen garden.

May - Lincoln

Camper UK wanted the moho at 9.00am. It's 72 miles to Lincoln so a day trip to the garage was not really an option. We booked a couple of nights at the municipal run campsite on the outskirts of the city. The site is basic but serviceable and situated in Hartsholm Country Park. Nearby there are woodland walks with lakes and ponds, it's a pleasant spot. 

With the moho booked in for repair we had a whole day to mooch around Lincoln. We've been a few times before and visited Cathedral, castle and museum. This time we mooched around more modern redevelopment by the river. I imagined this was a recent change until I discovered the shopping mall opened in 1992! It seems the previous visits must have been longer ago than we imagined.

There is a sensitive balance between old and new. Maybe Lincoln is the loveliest small city in England, not such a tourist trap as York or Canterbury, though Warwick has its charms too. Though the moho was in the workshop all day not all the repairs could be completed, some parts were still on order. A return visit was required.

July - Lincoln, Louth and Rutland Water

In fact in was a further two months before the bits a pieces arrived - back to Hartsholm Country Park's woodland walks. The Peak District had been very dry and sunny, but Lincolnshire was at the point of the dry spell becoming a drought. Fields were straw coloured - not good news for the supply of veg over the coming months.

This time we headed up the high street. Beyond the Stonebow Gate the area felt a bit grungier  - a mix of vape shops, hipsterish clothes shops and nail bars - characterful we decided.

Rather than drive straight home we decided to take a couple of days to visit the Lincolnshire Wolds and Rutland. We don't know the East Midlands particularly well. It's not a spectacular landscape but pleasing nonetheless. The Searchforsites app marked a motorhome 'aire' in the cattle market in Louth - a very rare occurrence in the UK. It was tricky to find the entrance and the service point was somewhat primitive, but at least it exists, a rare thing in the UK, a town that welcomed motorhomes!

Louth itself is lovely, a great example of an English market town that seems to be thriving, with lots of locally owned shops, traditional butchers and bakers and a busy produce market. There is a downside - the fruit and veg were being sold in pounds and ounces, a surefire sign of right wing leanings. I suspect enthusiasm for the Brexit party has morphed seamlessly into support for Reform UK. I am happy enough to appreciate the beauties of rural England as a visitor, but I couldn't live in a traditional country town, even though I grew up in one. Too conservative and traditional, too many toffs and too much respect for King and country. I can't be doing with it 

However, it's undeniably very beautiful and has an astonishing Perpendicular church with the highest spire of any parish church in England.

After a night in Louth we spent a couple of days camping on the shores of Rutland Water. There are footpaths and cycleways around the reservoir,  it's a gentle, bucolic landscape, profoundly English.

The only place you are allowed to launch a paddleboard on the reservoir is from the watersports centre on the opposite side. We had to unpitch the moho and drive there. It was fun, but at £25 for a day  pass considerably more expensive than most places. It's owned by Anglia Water so I guess they've got to finance the overblown salaries of their executives by monetising everything.

So, only three trips over the past few months. Undoubtedly we should have 'got out more', especially as we've just had the driest spring and  warmest summer on record. So what's our excuse? - partly the great weather we've had. - Buxton is surrounded by the Peak District national park, there are lovely walks and great cycle trails all within a ten minute drive. 

It's been a good year for gardening too, which is rarely the case 1000' up in the Pennines, so we've spent hours just trimming and weeding and generally mooching about outside.

Also, its been fun watching Nico develop from a sleepy newborn into an alert, responsive baby. We visited London twice, and spent more time with our growing family when Sarah, Rob and Nico stayed with us for a week.

Matthew and Krystina arrived a couple of weeks later. When people come to visit we do get out and about more.

Arbor Low stone circle is a few miles south of Buxton. It is part of a network of neolithic monuments covering the uplands near Monyash. 

Next day we all headed for Chatsworth - it is magnificent, again somewhere we tend to overlook just because it's on the doorstep.

So with all ths positive stuff happening why do I feel a bit glum? A mixture of things probably. Generally I am happier when travelling than at home. For both of us this has been exacerbated by the consequences of catching Covid in late July, our symptoms were unpleasant but relatively mild. However its an evil virus which hangs around in your system for months afterwards, haunting its victims with ghostly flue-like symptoms which don't seem to be physically detectable - you feel fatigued and feverish but your temperature is remains on the low side of average. As an ailment its very on trend - a virtual illness.

We also appear to have acquired a Goalhanger pod-cast habit spending most evenings watching Youtube, either The Rest is Classified, The Rest in History, or the Rest is Politics, either Rory and Alistair's version  based in the UK or Katty and the Mooch in the US. The first two podcasts covering Espionage and History are entertaining and presented by engaging, knowledgeable presenters who make the topics really come alive. The latter two more politics podcasts are very good too, but they enlightening rather than entertaining. I am not sure that being presented with insightful analysis about the state of the world on an almost daily basis is actually good for the soul. It is no surprise given the increasingly chaotic state of international relations, the growth of divisive, authoritarian regimes and right wing popularism that parallels are drawn between the 2020s and the 1930s. It is a sobering thought, because we all know what happened at the end of the thirties.

I've written this post in dribs and drabs over a few weeks, it probably shows!. For some reason I can't seem to concentrate on anything right now - maybe that's a post-viral symptom too. Anyway, now our ferry is two weeks hence. Before then we are heading to Abbey Wood Campsite in London so we can visit our Sarah,  Rob and Nico, and Matthew, Krystina. Visiting Laura and Brian in Tokyo is not so simple, but we have plans - to spend a month in Japan next May - the flights are booked!

In fact it's taken so long to write this that the family has actually grown! Matthew and Krystina are no longer expectant - Jesse arrived three days ago - all seems well, which is great. 

At the macro level the world right now may seem  to be channelling the doomsday vibe of Yeats'  'Second Coming', but its microcosm is more nuanced, small is  beautiful, and nothing more so than a newborn. It will be great to see Nico again and make Jesse's acquaintance. Beyond that, I can't wait to be on our travels; taken moment by moment life is full of small pleasures and beautiful things, its only when you connect all the dots that it all becomes scary.