Thursday 28 May 2020

Days of future passed


Post from John



I know that the current inability of motorhomers to travel scores pretty low on the Richter scale of Mankind’s problems. It is, however, ironic that this was the year when, with the house renovations coming to an end, we were most organised and had lots of things planned.

By the beginning of January we had the outward shuttle and return ferry booked for a long trip to Northern Spain and Portugal in September. By mid-February we had booked the sites for a Cornish trip in June. We had also decided to combine our hobbies of photography and motorhoming, and had joined the Photographic Group of the Camping and Caravanning Club. Their first rally was at the Conkers C&CC club site near the National Memorial Arboretum, which was an area we wanted to visit, so we booked that as well. Then came lockdown.

We are lucky in that, other than our inability to see family and friends, we have survived (touch wood) this strange and troubling time unscathed. However, I have found it terribly frustrating not to be able to plan trips. It is usually me who does the bulk of the trip planning – researching books and magazine articles, routes and campsite possibilities. Ruth then does the more detailed stuff, sorting out what main things we should aim to do in each area, and then we tweak the plan accordingly. By the way, we don’t necessarily stick rigidly to this plan (that’s one of the joys of motorhoming) but we do like to have a basic framework.

For the rest of this year, we’ll just snatch short breaks when we can, probably not too far from home, and possibly at short notice. We’ve taken the decision to try to rerun 2020 in 2021, with Cornwall again in June, and Spain in September.

As a final twist, in January we decorated the small bedroom we use as a study. We installed a lot of shelving to house all our books, including our travel books, site guides and maps. Now every time I sit at the computer, they stare mockingly down at me….