I am writing this actually whilst we are travelling.
We are trying the camper van for the very first time, having a day trip to Whitehaven for the children’s Krav Maga lesson.
We are really, really on the road, and just to add to the immediacy of the experience, the picture at the top is one I took just a few seconds ago. This is where we are and what we are doing right this very minute, how could life possibly be more exciting than that?
xxx
LATER
We set the alarm for seven, and almost got up, except we didn’t. We lay muffled in our pillows, groaning. If it hadn’t been for the radio inexplicably being tuned to the dreadful irritating local radio station instead of the mellow tones of John Humphrys we might have still been there.
In the end we made it to the farm and staggered around blearily. We loaded tools and filled the water tanks in the pouring rain, slipping and splashing in the mud until we had the things packed that we thought we might need: and we could go.
We called home to warn the children to get up, and by the time we had found somewhere to park they were up and dressed and excited in a sleepy sort of way.
As we set off the clouds began to part, and by the time we reached Keswick it was turning into a beautifully promising sort of day. By the time we reached Whitehaven the world was clear and bright and dry, with a little sea breeze gently puffing in from the coast.
We stopped at Tesco, exhilarated with the achievement. All that distance and we had made it, really made it, in a van built by us out of things we found in skips and donated by the builders across the road, and haggled out of reluctant purveyors of historic engines. We had made it, we were really, truly almost on holiday. The taps worked and didn’t leak, we filled Mark’s LPG tank-from-the-scrapyard, and that didn’t leak either.
We took the children to the Krav Maga man for their lesson. He is truly lovely, warm and gentle and quiet in the way only people who have had disturbing military experiences can be. He is kindly and friendly and brilliant with the children, teaching them how to gouge eyes and elbow noses and generally not ever be frightened to walk in the dark. The Krav Maga technique seems to start with the most effective way of explaining to scary people that they had better go away, and I am quite convinced that this would be enough for me. If the courteous softly-spoken instructor wished me to leave then you would not see me for dust, or exhaust fumes in my case.
Once we were free of children we drove to the beach, the lovely beach at St. Bees, and rushed down on to the sands. The tide was in.
Roger Poopy has never visited the sea before, and he was beside himself with the muddy excitement of it all. He charged about hurtling through little waves and spattering sand in his wake and barking with frantic happiness, and we laughed with the joy of seeing him so thrilled with the world.
We had planned to spend the afternoon doing little jobs to the camper van that desperately needed doing, but actually we didn’t. We lay down on our new bunk and went to sleep, with the top half of the new door wide open so we could hear the waves and the seagulls and smell the salt on the wind. Occasionally people came up to the van and said friendly things about it, which was lovely, but after a very few minutes I was so soundly asleep I didn’t even hear that any more.
I don’t think I have often been so very happy. Our own little travelling nest, and it is going again, after all this time.
We broke down again on the way home, but it didn’t matter, Mark fixed it.
We are going to do it again tomorrow, because they have got another lesson.
Life is brilliant.
