“Are We Nearly There Yet ?”

So here we are, in week ten of the Coronavirus lockdown and although our Prime Minister, or 3 B’s as I now refer to him (Blundering, Bumbling, Boris), eased lockdown here in England on the 13th May, allowing anyone to roam freely, as far as they wanted to travel, within the confines of the English borders that is, we have elected to remain within the relatively safe sanctuary of our ‘free camping’ location on Shazza’s mums drive, well back yard really but it has become home. We watch as some of our immediate neighbours just carry on as if they are somehow totally immune from Covid 19, albeit there have been 695 confirmed cases and 172 deaths in the immediate local area, we see visitors to their houses with lots of coming and going on a daily basis, even a NHS Nurse with a young baby who is currently on Maternity Leave, she makes a mockery out of us standing outside our van and clapping our Essential workers every Thursday night ? There are BBQ’s and late night parties in neighbouring gardens, with lots of people who we know are not from within the same households and we hear and see a whole host of motor vehicles up and down the streets on a regular basis, the one vehicle that is actually missing on a regular basis is that belonging to the local Police, but as there job and lack of enforcement options has been negated by 3 B’s, wasting essential money on the cost of fuel for patrol cars has become pointless.

Shazza goes out in the car just once a week, to do the essential weekly shop, still donning her face mask and gloves, she is one of the very few to still be doing this, and apart from my one brief journey to fill up with LPG a coupe of weeks ago, we have not gone outside our gates. We have started to question ourselves though, is it just us ? Have we become far too paranoid about this ? We  watch both the National and Local News broadcasts on a daily basis and see literally thousands of people, all over our Country, on beaches, definately not two metres apart and not wearing face masks, the same applies to the Town Green areas, parks and rivers and the hoards out walking and picnicing in many of our nations popular tourist locations. Now of course, 3 B’s has sanctioned this behaviour so, technically, by being in the great outdoors which, according to ‘Scientific Advice’, is the safest place to be, they are doing nothing wrong, apart from not maintaining the social distancing measures that is. However, there is still a lot of opposition to re-opening some of the schools, parents claiming that it is not safe for their ‘little darlings’ to go into a controlled environment with much reduced classroom numbers with safe distancing measures implemented, it does make me wonder how many of these parents were on the beaches, or in the parks, or walking in the Countryside, quite freely and happily without a care in the world, with their ‘little darlings’, amongst dozens, indeed hundreds, of complete strangers who are literaly within inches of them on the crowded beaches and not wearing any face masks ? Well perhaps it really is just us taking all of this far too seriously, a case of us still applying too much caution, and to the detriment of our own physical and mental health, we could, quite legitimately, be out, amongst all the thousands of revellers having fun, breathing in the fresh air, and potentially the droplets of Covid19, from those that don’t yet realise that they have it and are Carriers of the disease, not displaying any of the symptoms but are what is considered to be ‘Asymptomatic’ ? So rightly or wrongly, depending on your own personal view of the situation, we have taken the decision to let the freedom campaigners and warriors against the restriction of their Human Rights freedom, to let them have their fun, we are happy to keep ourselves safe for just a little while longer.

But apart from the continuous doom and gloom every evening, as we sit and listen to the Government’s propoganda exercise, the daily coronavirus briefing, and watch as they emphatically declare with statistical data on graphs, which they change as necessary to reflect the data they want, in an effort to try and convince us of what a good job they have been doing, and how well they have done in implementing measures to control this virus and thereby protecting all of our lives, apart from the 40,000 that have now died that is, and the thousands of new daily infections and hundreds of people still dying on a daily basis, and us having the worst infection and death toll in Europe, if not the World, if you calculate it on actual population figures. They appear to actually believe they have achieved some kind of victory over this silent and deadly assassin ?

However, we have now gleaned the happy news from our victorious Government that our parole date is getting much nearer, as Campsites may be allowed to re-open on the 4th July, subject to the infection rate continuing to decline that is, meaning that we may now get to our site in Devon by mid-June to get it prepared for opening. But even better news than that, as we were unable to locate the ‘safe’ place that we had secreted our hair clippers within the van, after completely emptying it at least three times, we ordered a new set from good old ‘Amazon’ and they arrived promptly. Shazza, who had previously become quite an expert hair cutter when we were on the road and travelling in the van, again set to work on my unruly head of hair, which had last seen a proper barbers chair a week before we departed Spain at the end of February !! Although, when I awoke the following morning I was very concerned, I thought that I was suffering with a symptom of the virus as I felt quite lightheaded, but then realised it was just a consequence of not having the weight of excess hair on my head, I thought she had made a very nice job of it at the back as well, the words ‘Two Metres Please’ carved as a reminder to anyone who may have crept up behind me without me noticing, although with my new hat which has six rear view mirrors attached to it, I somehow doubt that possibility, although I am worried that people who may just manage to get past my defence mechanism, may be tempted to get too close in order that they could properly read her artistry ? She has tried to assure me that it would have grown out by the time the virus becomes a distant memory, alternatively I could just wear a roll of silk cloth and claim to be a Budhist monk !!

The next bit of good news was that Spain would be opening its borders to International Tourism on the 1st July, without the requirement for any fourteen day quarantine period, it prompted us to take the leap of faith and book our ferry to Spain at the beginning of October, for when we finish our rather shorter than usual summer seasons duties. Being the overly cautious pair that we are, we have booked it on a Flexi-Ticket, just in case we have to change our travel dates ? Now of course, their are alarm bells going off in certain quarters already, pre-warning of a second wave of infections arriving during the Autumn and whilst I am sure that nobody wants that to happen, if it does, all we ask is that can it be after we get to the sanctuary of our ‘Bolt Hole’, I would certainly feel a lot safer, and much more comfortable. Not that our little home on wheels has not been comfortable, after having got used to the much more compact living space over the last four years of owning our downsized six-metre long van, it has provided everything we need and as we have already recently tested living in it ‘on the road’ during our recent Winter Spanish Tour, we are looking forward to getting back to living the actual initial dream as soon as we possibly can. However, in a lockdown scenario, even for those living in more conventional residences, it has been very boring. Our ‘bolt hole’ at least provides us with a nice balcony where we could sit, safely protected and shielded from anyone else, in the warmth of the Spanish sunshine, with views over the Mediterranean Sea and across to the mountains on the Northern Coast of Africa, let alone the additional space that would be at our disposal, a full size kitchen, enabling Shazza to conjure up ore of her culinary ‘Plant based’ delicacies and continue to experiment with other vegatable, fruits and legumes products and recipe’s, a nice big lounge area and two separate bedrooms and bathrooms, oh yes, if we have to face another lockdown, please let it be in Spain next time around.

On the Social Media front, from keeping up to date with our Marine and Land based adventurers who publish regularly on ‘You Tube’, we note that a lot of places around the Globe are easing their movement restrictions, so they too are beginning to get a change of scenery, albeit not full freedom as before, not just yet. It kind of reminds me of when I was a child, taken out on a journey in the car with my parents and asking the question “Are We Nearly There Yet”, the answer was always, “Not quite, but nearly”.

So, on that note, wherever you may be in the world right now, please continue to stay safe.

The Great Escape

After now spending seven weeks in our van in Shazza’s mums back yard I guess you could say that we have made ourselves well and truly at home. When her mum had first been discharged from the hospital we confined ourselves strictly to the van, although Shazza was acting as her carer and therefore had to enter the house to help her out with cleaning, laundry and cooking her meals, but she always wore a face mask and surgical style gloves and, wherever possible, she maintained a safe distance. We had two concerns, although we were confident that we had been very disciplined with our own self-distancing measures, even before we had arrived here, we still wanted to ensure that however unlikely, their was minimal risk of her mum potentially catching the infection from ourselves, but we were also concerned that she could potentially pass the infection to us having been in hospital where the Coronavirus was rife. I was a little concerned at one point when I developed a dry persistant cough, it would be there one day but not the next, then after a couple of days it would come back again, but I had none of the other symptoms so we eventually just put it down to the dry heat coming from our small electric fan heater that we were using in the van when it got a bit chilly.

After the fourth week, with my cough gone as mysteriously as it had arrived, with none of us displaying any other symptoms we felt confident enough to start using the bathtoom in the house for showers etc. However, whilst we could now have moved back into the house full time so to speak, after all it is where we have stayed on numerous occasions when we were back in the UK, but we decided that we would continue to live and sleep in the van as normal. Well it is our home after all, we know where all of our stuff is, our clothes, our gadgets, cutlery, crockery and of course food, and as Shazza’s mum is no way going to share in our delicious ‘Plant Food Diet’ anyway, we have everything we need in the van and it just feels like it would if we were on the road and staying in ‘free camping’ locations, although not for this length of time !! It also means that we can both enjoy our own respective bits of space and during the past couple of weeks of really good weather we were all able to sit outside in the garden, so it is a really good arrangement and suits us all. Whilst Shazza goes out once a week to do the shopping, I had remained within the safety and relative security of Shazza’s mums back yard, although I had, as you would have read on a previous post, tentatively ventured outside on one occasion to get some exercise, but that was not a good experience with so many people just seemingly oblivious to the real dangers of this killer virus, or in denial, or couldn’t care less, or just as thick as pig shit, so I put myself back into a sort of solitary confinement behind the safety of the padlocked gates.

We have been following a lot of our ‘favourite’ vanlife channels on ‘You Tube’ and of course that means seeing how other’s are coping during this extended lockdown period, many are still in Europe and are either fortunate to be on campsites with facilities, others are on car parks within the local communities and it has been nice to hear that they have all been made to feel welcome and not treated with any animosity. Since the easing of some restrictions it was lovely to hear stories about some of the locals coming to check that they were all okay, bringing bread and home-made cakes and asking if they needed anything. There are of course a lot, who like us, found themselves back in the UK but, with not owning properties here, having to find places to stay, some are on the drives of friends or family, some on Campsites but so far everyone appears to be safe and well and managing to cope with the inevitable periods of cabin fever.

We also follow a lot of fulltime liveaboards who are in different parts of the world in an assortment of sailing craft, mono hulls, catamarans, sail powered and motorised and of varying shapes and sizes. Some were not even aware of the Pandemic until they hit land where they were either turned away or, thankfully for the majority, permitted to drop anchor but remain on their vessels with supplies being ferried out to them as and when required. It makes you realise, and feel a bit more fortunate, that at least those of us in lockdown on land still have the ability to actually leave our confinement areas, if only for limited periods, to go out and do some shopping or go for a walk and do some exercise, those confined on their vessels are not quite as fortunate, but I guess they are used to spending long periods away from land within the limited space of their boats.

 

Our current ‘Free Camping’ location but not one that you will find listed on the Park4Night App 

Nice little set up and a reasonably spacious hard standing pitch, security gates, EHU, Grey Water drainage, Cassette Loo emptying facility, WiFi, Good TV and Mobile Phone signals and no fear of the Police moving us on !! In fact it feels quite surreal with the Police now directing us to ‘Stay where we are’ 😄

Enough space to get to the side locker, cassette loo access and door to one side of the rear garage. Our ‘Silver Screen’ with Privacy meshing, we can see out but other’s cannot see in, although there are not a lot of ‘others’ to be seen in our quiet cul-de-sac location 

240v Electric Hook Up connection

Drinking Water

Shade from the heat of the sunshine and so that we do not start to pine too much from missing working on our site, some groundwork to maintain, three separate areas of lawn and some planting areas, just to occupy our long days, no ride on mower required here though 👍

Now, after seven long weeks completed, some of us have actually coped quite well with this extended period of enforced confinement whilst other’s, much closer to home, appear to not be doing so well ? Now I have read about the dangers of the dreaded ‘Cabin Fever’, where some people, normally very rational and level-headed, just seem to be unable to cope with this sort of isolation and end up doing things that are totally out of character, sometimes adopting very aggressive and dangerous behaviours, even murderous one’s 😳 Whilst I have to confess that there have been occasions, on some of our ‘road trips’, where I have noticed that scary motionless icy cold glare in Shazza’s eyes, prompting me to hide away all sharp objects, it has never actually resulted in anything more than a long period of silence, which, upon reflection was probably not a bad thing !! However, in the end I usually discovered that the cause was not being due to desperate isolation but more a case of “Its not what you said but how you said it” sort of things.

However, on this occasion it was not Shazza that was the cause of my concern, but my Mother-in-Law !! Having now, thankfully, virtually fully recovered from her bowel cancer operation and, what I thought was being back to her old self, she came outside on a rather pleasant, very sunny, very warm day and sat opposite us. She was wearing her tinted glasses, which is probably why I had not seen the scary, motionless icy cold glare in her eyes, I hadn’t even noticed the green lighter concealed in her hand until it was too late. She leaned forward and without any warning she set light to a thick wooden stump that had been sitting quite innocently, for weeks, in a small square brick built garden planter, doing nobody any harm. With the weeks of dry weather, the scorched earth and tinder dry root went up in flames in seconds sending flames and thick smoke swirling into the air, wafted by the breeze the embers floated in several directions, and far too close to my van awning for comfort !! “What the bloody hell are you doing Sonia ?” I asked, trying to remain calm so as not to risk her lurching forward towards my clothes and me becoming the next victim of this now dangerous ‘Arsonist’, she rocked back and forth in her chair, cackled with laughter before shielding her mouth and nose from the thickening smoke that had begun to envelop us. Fortunately, on two corners of the brick planter there were bird baths containing water, which I quickly used to douse the blaze, she stopped cackling, “Why are you stopping my fun ?” She asked. As the men in white coats took her away, we promised we would visit as often as we could, once lockdown was over that is…………….

This is what happens when the elderly, in enforced confinement, start to get Cabin Fever, they learn new skills on social media channels, her current on-line skills course being how to become an ‘Arsonist’ 😳 She isn’t covering her face from the smoke, it is so that when this blog post goes Global that the Authorities cannot identify her !! 

Like the rest of the UK, we sat on Sunday evening in front of the TV, waiting in anticipation for our Prime Minister, known generally now as 3 B’s (Blundering Bumbling Boris), to put detail to the lockdown news that all of the media had been leaking for days, but we were once again to be disappointed, I really do not know why we were surprised. In the past few months of being this Countries global mouthpiece, regurgitating pre-scripted briefs from his puppet masters, which he quite obviously never pre-reads and which he  oftens stumbles through, often incoherently, so it was once again more of the same from good old 3 B’s, bumbling, undetailed, confusing, contradictory and garbled bunch of words. Although back at work after his brief encounter with this virus, we have seen little of our Countries political leader during this period of National and Global crisis, and he was not going to change that behaviour now, in fact, for such an important and much awaited announcement in respect of the easing of the lockdown measures, our illustrious leader was generous enough to give us about 12 minutes of his time leaving us all, as usual, with more questions than answers.

But let us not be ungrateful, after seven long weeks of complying with the ‘Stay At Home’ Instruction, branded more gently as ‘Advice’, which was put in place to prevent us going out and potentially mixing willy nilly with others, thereby spread this deadly virus, and, I have to say, that apart from a small minority of mindless, or just plain selfish, idiots, that, which lets face it are always present in almost all communities around the globe, but the majority of us did just that. So, although the statistics still show an average of between 600-700 daily deaths, and we have just, according to the Scientists, come through the peak of the virus, we are now being rewarded, well those of us in the England bit of the United Kingdom at least, as from Wednesday the 13th May we no longer have to stay at home, we can go out without restriction and mix willy nilly with others, we can drive our cars with no restriction on how far we go, I reckon it is not a coincidence that we have just celebrated VE day or that they showed that great inspirational war movie with Steve McQueen and his legendary motorcyle stunt, yes England, as from Wednesday we can now have our own mass ‘Great Escape’.

I am not sure that I want to accept this most gracious gift, not just yet at least, I think I will adopt an alternative approach to the Governments proposed ‘Track and Trace’ approach, mine is called the ‘Watch and Wait’ method, I am already watching what is happening in other Countries in Europe, you know, the ones that actually actively ‘stringently’ enforced their lockdown procedures, the ones whose daily death tolls before easing the restrictions were down to below 200 and the ones who have been more cautionary and restrictive in their easing of lockdown measures. I believe, considering that we have continuously been told that we are 2-3 weeks behind such Countries in our pandemic, that it would have been more prudent to have just waited for another couple of weeks to see what happens in these Countries, given that this virus has a 14 day incubation period. But for now I can ‘Watch and Wait’ to see what happens very much closer to home, I mean what’s another two weeks of staying safe in the grand scheme of things ?

Their was just one fly in the ointment to my strategy ? The fly, in my particular case, is something called LPG or better known as ‘Autogas’, we tend to need it for cooking, heating of water and for really cold nights, the habitation heating as the small electric fan doesn’t quite cut the mustard when it is really cold. We last filled up nine weeks ago, on the 9th March, and although we have not run out just yet, the cheap gauges fitted on the two 11Kg Gaslow bottles are worse than useless so my calculations are not scientific, more like educated guesswork based on our previous experience, but I was feeling sure that we must be pretty close to needing to refill. I of course could have waited for one more day when I and everyone else would have the freedom to be back out on the roads, but there was my one big fear, so to get out now would mean less risk of potentially having to run the risk of mixing willy nilly with the hoards of other’s enjoying ‘The Great Escape’.

The nearest service station that sold ‘Autogas’ was a little over 5 miles away, I had my mask and my surgical type gloves ready to put on once I arrived at the pumps. My heart skipped a beat when, just about at the half way point to my destination, I saw two Police cars parked on the side of the road, one had its emergency lights flashing, “Was this a vehicle checkpoint’, I wondered, the last day of opportunity for the Police to dish out fines to expand their funds for their Christmas Party Bash ? A Motorhome out on the road during the official lockdown opportunity, surely it would have felt like Christmas had arrived early for them, like a red rag to a bull, ‘bloody motorhomers’ I could hear them thinking, we’ll have him !!

The uniformed occupants of both vehicles gave me a cursory glance as I passed them, I checked my rear view mirrors, nope, their was no smell of burning rubber, no tell tale sign of a puff of smoke from the spinning wheels on tarmac, no sirens wailing and soon they were a speck in the distance. I remained alert all the way to the fuel station just in case, sneaky bastards these Police type people !! I was quite happy though as the roads were actually pretty traffic free, apart from HGV’s and me. I pulled up to the Autogas pump, I knew that my cylinders held a total of 44 Litres so watched as the gauge started to slowly click away, 5 Litres, 10 Litres, 15 Litres but I was taken by surprise when the pump started to slow right down and I just managed to encouragenit enough to reach the 30 Litre mark. Wow, I still had 14 Litres left in one of the cylinders, so I was quite pleased, I know that if we were on the road we would have used more as we would not have been able to use the small electric fan to heat the van, we would also have been using gas to power the fridge/freezer whereas, at the moment, we were using electric, but still we are currently only using half a litre a day so we could have got by on what we had left for another four weeks. I think it’s about time that I finally bit the bullet and bought a device I have seen, it costs around £150 but it can give an accurate reading up to 1% of how much gas is in the cylinders, it is wireless and the gauges can be mounted somewhere convenient within the van. In the grand scheme of things, the Autogas only cost £0.64 per litre but on the road, on a monthly budget, not needing to fill up can make a difference, the equivalent of two ‘Menu del Dias’, a night on an ACSI Campsite, this is how you have to think when you are on the road, unless of course, money is no object.

I was soon back in the safety and security of our current ‘free camping’ pitch but I have to admit that in that brief moment of freedom, I had enjoyed being back behind the wheel, having different views and being able to give the van a good run. At least now I know that I should not need to refill my gas cylinders for at least another 13 weeks, although if I look on the positive side, I may just top them up on the way to my site in Devon, towards the end of June, ready to open my campsite gates to my guests on 4th July, funny old thing, isn’t that classed as ‘Independence Day’ for some 🤔

“Then I Awoke To The Four Grey Walls That Surround Me”

So, as I look back over the last six weeks of our adventures here in the UK, I have to wonder why it is that I have been so busy that I have not had enough time to sit and write about all of our recent travels in the ‘Little Fokker’, and include the usual glut of photographs…….

First there was the trip to the Yorkshire Dales, it was such a lovely drive with nobody else on the road, no traffic queues, no delays it really was quite stress free and what a beautiful week of gorgeous sunny weather. We were able to find plenty of available spaces to wildcamp right next to a bustling stream that had such clean and clear sparkling water that we could see all the aquatic life living in it, we were also amazed at the vast number of birds species that seemed to be about, I didn’t realise we had such a wide variety in this country. We went on numerous hikes during our long sun drenched days and were glad that we had remembered to take our own food and drink, as all of the Cafe’s and Public Houses that we came across had their doors firmly closed, but we were able to utilise the wooden bench seating and tables that remained outside, but we were not alone. Where had all these insects come from, the bees, the butterflies, the damsel flies, stag beetles, to name but a few and some that I did not know the name of because I had never seen them before, we only used to ever catch a short glimpse of this side of nature, but now that there were less human invasions of their natural habitats there appeared to be hundreds, even thousands of them and we felt as if we were intruders in their environment. The colours of the grasses, the flowers, the hedgerows and the trees were a mammoth feast for the eyes, it was as if we had stepped into some kind of magical natural kingdom, something we had rarely witnessed in our more usual modern, smog ridden, over populated human world. I just cannot explain why I was not snapping away the camera shutter as usual, I would never normally deprive my readers of this level of sumptuous beauty. At night, as we sat outside the van and stared in wonder at the clear dark sky above us, there were millions upon millions of twinkling stars, some much brighter than other’s and the shooting stars were putting on a totally free spectacular show in the unpolluted sky above our heads.

My head must have still been somewhere up in the clouds because I cannot even remember driving away from that wonderful place. The next thing I remember was the two of us, sat on a blanket on a grass clifftop overlooking the sea, listening to the waves roll in and gently lap up onto the shoreline a hundred feet below us. We could see miles out to sea, I was a little disappointed that I could not fulfill one of my favourite pastimes, that of boat and ship watching, but my disappointment was short lived as we were rewarded by seeing a pod of dolphins swim by, no longer worried about dodging or being caught up in fleets of trawlers fishing nets, they had their playground all back to themselves once again. We caught glimpses of grey seals as they popped their heads above the sparkling blue water and watched as Cormorants and other Gull type sea birds dived below the surface to catch an opportunist meal which they plucked from the large shoals of fish that swam below. The beach below looked so clean, no ice cream wrappers or burger wrappers blowing around, no discarded polystyrene containers or plastic cutlery brought to this idyllic spot by people who would normally visit the area, no tissue paper that had been discarded and blown by the wind and had unceremoniously got stuck on the thorned hedgerows from walkers who had been caught short whilst on their hikes of the coastal footpath, it was nice not having to watch where we put our feet because inconsiderate dog walkers had not picked up after their four legged pets, now we could just spend our time looking out upon the amazing wondrous views and quite literally drink in the clean fresh air. We found a small wooded glade to park up for the night, still close enough to the sea to hear the waves, the gentle sounds which, eventually, sent us both into a deep relaxing sleep. Before that though, we had sat in darkness inside the van with our mugs of hot coffee, all the blinds fully open, giving us a good one hundred and eighty degree view and we sat mesmerised and watched as the nocturnal inhabitants came out, we saw a band of badgers out on their dusky forage for worms, they stopped briefly as they approached our vehicular obstacle in their way, looked up and stared back at us, they did not appear worried and soon got back to their more important and urgent business. A fox and its well fed cubs eyed us warily but did not seem overly perturbed by our presence, their focus on us was distracted by the screech of another ariel night hunter, we looked up into the moonlit night sky, but could only see a dark silhoutte, we thought perhaps it may have been an owl, when we lowered our gaze again the fox family had disappeared, as silently as they had appeared before our eyes.

My eyes opened, I knew it was morning as we had left the small skylight open above the bed, I could see the sky was thick with grey foreboding cloud and I felt a little disorientated, for I was sure that I had heard the sound of a car engine, I opened the blind on the side window and my heart sunk when I realised that we were not out, parked up in amongst nature, but still parked up on the gravel drive in Shazza’s mums back yard, the same place we had been since the 23rd March, the lyrics of the Tom Jones song, ‘Green, Green Grass Of Home’ suddenly came into my head…..Then I awoke to the four grey walls that surround me and realised that I was only dreaming’…….

Maybe one day soon, that dream will turn back into reality ? So, wherever you may be, stay safe folks.