So, a short resumé of the bit in-between. We've done a lot, but most of it didn't involve the motorhome.
1. Bilbao, Biscay, Hackney Wick and Dulwich
We've sailed from Bilbao a number of times and promised ourselves that next time we'd arrive a day early and visit the city. This is still the case, as we neared the city our enthusiasm vanished and we we headed straight to the parking by the ferry terminal.
Sometimes your head arrives home before the rest of you, 'endishness" as Gill calls it, sets in. Biscay was lumpy but we felt ok. The latest generation of Brittany Ferries are well stabilised, which is a good thing given the propensity for squally Atlantic lows to barrel across the big bay.
We headed back to London rather than straight back home. We had missed Nico's first birthday party by a day due to the vagaries of the Brittany Ferries timetable in late March. They swap from the winter to the summer schedule and for one week there are fewer sailings. Luckily our kids seem to regard birthdays as a festive season, like Christmas, rather than an event, so I don't think our late arrival mattered too much.
First we visited Matthew and Cristyna in the apartment they've just bought in Dulwich
Jesse is seven months now, much more alert and active than when we last saw him at Christmas.
Next day we managed a belated birthday lunch with Sarah and Nico at the Breakfast Club in Hackney Wick. Again, so different in a matter of months.
Derbyshire!!!
It was good to get home. This winter's trip did have delightful moments, but it was unusually chilly and wet in Iberia so it won't count as one of our most memorable.
The only surprise when we got back was the state of the woodlands behind our garden. Ash die-back has affected a lot of the Peak District's woodlands, including those around Wyehead which we overlook. Work to remove the affected trees had commenced before we left, but we were unprepared for just how radical the intervention would be.
Perhaps it won't look so bad when the trees come into leaf, we wondered. It seemed a vain hope at the time... but two months later -
The power of nature to bounce back is breathtaking. We may be the the cleverest species on the planet, but we are not the most powerful, as we plunge headlong into the future we are the hares, but trees are intractable tortoises.
When we booked our flights to Japan a few months ago 25 days between arriving back in the UK from Spain before heading for the Far East seemed like plenty of time. It flashed by, especially as we spent a week of it Ralfi minding while Sarah, Rob and Nico were in Lisbon.
.They flew from Manchester so were able to spend a few days with us before and after their trip.
It's good for us, we get to go out and about with them in Buxton, to be reminded why it is such a popular place with day-trippers from Manchester - a lovely park with great play equipment, family friendly cafés, lots of events in Pavillion gardens and a nationally renowned summer opera and arts festival.
When we bump into Brits on our travels the question 'where are you from' often arises'. When we tell them 'we live in Buxton' most people know it and are positive about the place. The local tourist office's claim that Buxton is England's primary spa town is somewhat overblown, the residents of Cheltenham, Harrogate or Leamington Spa might beg to differ. It's true though, aside from the Pennine climate, Buxton does have its charms as a place to visit.
However, is it a great place to live? Maybe the answer to that question is a little more ambivalent. Most tourists don't experience the endless grey winter days, months of damp and gloom. To be fair, we don't either because we run away! Moreover, there's more to the place than the breezy assertions of the tourist board website -
Home of Buxton Water, this special thermal spa town is nestled in the centre of the beautiful Peak District and surrounded by the UK’s oldest National Park. Stunning ornamental gardens and world-famous Georgian and Victorian architecture provide an impressive backdrop to a rich and vibrant range of music, theatre and festivals.
None of this is untrue, but the town's marketing department skirts around the reason why the town may be in the centre of the Peak District but merely 'surrounded' by the national park.
The reason for this anomaly?
As well as spring water, iconic Victorian gardens and an opera house, the enormous quarries that surround Buxton supply most of the UK's cement. The town is a rare example in the UK of a place where heavy industry is thrives.
It gives the place a peculiar split personality, Leamington Spa, with a dash of mid-century Ebbw Vale thrown in for good measure. The divide is both sociological and geographical. West and south of the town centre is more 'well-to-do' than the areas to the north and east. Taken together the mix reflects British society more generally. The High Peak constituency is a bellweather, in every general election in the last half century the local result reflected the national outcome.
In other respects, Buxton is somewhat idiosyncratic and I think the town's topography has a lot to do with that. The only other town in the UK located over 1000' is Alston in Cumbria; technically it may qualify as a market town, in reality it is more like a big village; Buxton is over 20 times the size of its Cumbrian competitor. However they do share the dubious accolade as the place with the most miserable winter weather in the country.
Glance at a map and you see immediately that Alston is remote. The same cannot be said of Buxton, the conurbations of Manchester, Sheffield and the Potteries all lie within 20 miles. Nevertheless, it feels remote because most of the roads leading to the town are narrow, winding and hazardous. Two of them, the A537 'Cat and Fiddle' to Macclesfield and the A53 to Leek and the Potteries both managed over recent years to be named as the UK's most deadly trunk road.
Despite being surrounded by large conurbations it's an hour's drive at least to get to the M6 or M1 and the connecting roads are narrow and busy with big trucks heading for Buxton's quarries. So despite being close to three big cities the place hasn't developed as you might expect into a commuter town' It remains in common with its fictional neighbour, 'Royston Vasey', a local town for local people'.
This is probably why if people enquire where we are from, we say we live in Buxton. It would be presumptuous for us to assert that we are from Buxton because we have only lived here for 38 years. To be a proper Buxtonian requires multi-generational occupancy. Even better if your surname is Mycock, Lomas, Blood, Salt or Garlick, if not, then with luck you might have a cousin or an uncle who is a member of one of the clans.
Without such local connections you are doomed to be regarded forever as an incomer and remain so no matter how long you live here. As an outsider the peculiarities of the place can be mystifying. There's no way without being fluent in proper Derbyshire that we could convincingly hail an acquaintance with a terse 'Yallreet' or use the term "duck' phatically. Mid-week on a winter's afternoon in Morrisons the chat feels scripted by Victoria Wood, morphing seamlessly between 'Acorn Antiques' and 'Dinner Ladies' depending on the social mix at the checkout Gill is convinced that the person who cuts her hair is the sister of Victoria Wood's imaginary friend 'Keemberlay'. Ok, the local accent's different, but the schtick is the same.
So if I don'l have a sense of belonging to where I live, where do I feel connected to? To Gill, our kids, their partners and now their offspring - certainly. I love our house and garden too and the patch of ancient woodland at the back of it, Beyond that I don't have a strong sense of belonging, perhaps the opposite is true, I enjoy not belonging, being the outsider looking in, a stranger in the crowd, it probably explains why I am at my happiest when we travel.
However, I don't feel completely disconnected. Having just spent three weeks travelling in Japan, immersed in a culture that is highly sophisticated but profoundly different, the experience gift you an insight into the parameters of your identity. I feel more European than British. If people enquire where we are from then we both tend to say English rather than British. Pressed further we tend to say the town we live in is 'just south of Manchester' which is correct geographically but would horrify a full blooded Buxtonian. What our assertion reveals is we identify as Northerners and have the flattened vowels to prove it! So what does that make me? A northern English European, I suppose.
Later this morning we are going to hop into the van and head for the Czech Republic. It's our first forey into Eastern Europe. Matthew's partner was born in Prague and her mum wants to meet us. We live in a shrinking world. Jesse, our youngest grandchild, will grow up with British and Czech citizenship. Gill's sister too has dual nationality and splits her time now she has retired between Scotland and France. Our youngest, Laura, is married to a Canadian with a Chinese/Vietnamese heritage. They live in Tokyo. Social media makes them all accessible as if they lived down the road. Famously Teresa May asserted "If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere." I profoundly disagree, a common humanity binds us together and whatever the myriad of challenges the future brings as a species we must face them together, our similarities outweigh individual differences, the more we mix the better the future will be.