We were sorry to find the people in the camper van opposite had already decamped when we woke up this morning.
We had had a rather splendid evening listening to their stories of their very different life on a troublesome housing estate in Salford, where a drug dealer shot an eight year old boy last week, as revenge for something his father had done.
The thing was, we thought, they were just like us.
They had fought and struggled to educate their children, who had gone on to university and one was doing a Masters degree.
He was tired from the shifts at his driving job, and they planted a garden which turned out to be just too much work sometimes and got overgrown, and they had hired their camper van but their dream was to build their own.
We were sorry that they had gone, because we had liked them very much, but of course they wanted to get to the festival before a huge queue built up, and we had nothing to rush for.
In consequence, we didn’t rush at all. We took the dogs for a stroll across a grassy field and looked at some people setting up for a pottery exhibition, and then eventually we set off for Northumberland.
Northumberland is a long way away.
It was so warm that we did not want to shut the windows, mostly because the camper van heater does not turn off properly, and after a while you start to feel like boil-in-the-bag rice. This meant that we could not listen to the story discs that we usually have, and also that my hair got blown about all over the place. I do not have much hair, but it is enough to look like an astonished hedgehog when you add wind. This is not a problem that Mark ever has.
It was a good journey. We had not been that way before, and without the story to distract us we looked with interest at the exciting new landscape. There were stunning mountaintop views and tidily kept stone churches with roses scrambling all over the lychgates, there were cottages and bridges, woodlands and farmyards, and we stared at it all.
I took some photographs. I will put them on here some nights when I have forgotten to take any.
We were almost there when somebody pulled up beside us, waving madly and shouting, and it was Oliver’s friend’s mother, who had recognised the camper van.
We explained that we had not come to get Oliver, but to have some sea air and camping and grown-up tranquillity. Obviously we had come to get Oliver as well, but that was a future projection rather than something we actually seriously intended to do, like the government with high speed trains to the Lake District.
We followed her back to their castle for a cup of tea anyway, and I can tell you now that it was a beautiful castle. There was a gorgeous stone gateway and rambling wild woodland, and a beautiful lawn with flowers, and a tennis court.
Inside was lovely as well, friendly and cluttered and homely and cheerful, and Oliver charged out to greet us with great excitement.
He had been having an ace time.
We looked at the photographs. They have been doing something called Coasteering. I do not know exactly what this involves, but Oliver said that part of it was jumping off a thirty foot cliff into the sea. He said that he had had to hold his nose, and that when you hit the water you went down a long way but then you bobbed back up again quickly, so that was all right.
Better drowned than duffers.
It sounded fantastic.
They have been sleeping in the woods and picnicking on the beaches.
His friend’s mum is a complete hero. Her husband is in Afghanistan for a year and so she is keeping her chin up and the home fires burning. Not only that but she is entertaining all her son’s friends whilst all the time hoping that her husband does not step on an IED or get eaten by a camel spider.
She made us a cup of tea. We asked for Earl Grey, and she told us that the actual Earl Grey had lived in the castle next door and invented the tea to suit the local water.
We admired the tea, although secretly it tasted much like Earl Grey at home, so perhaps Asda have adapted the recipe a bit to suit everybody else’s water as well.
We left Oliver with them and went off to have some adventures of our own.
We parked by the beach and walked.
We paddled a bit. We had not brought our swimming costumes but this was a good thing because the water was icy and it meant that we did not have to be brave. We ventured up to knee height and then pretended we did not want to get our clothes wet. The heatwave might have blown up from Africa but the sea certainly hadn’t. The sea in Northumberland is a definite import from the Arctic.
The dogs splashed about and barked, and we climbed over rocks and examined rock pools and found some swifts’ nests in the cliffs. We talked about living in a castle and thought that it would be lovely but a jolly lot of work, and that you have got to belong to the castle as much as the castle belongs to you.
We retreated to the camper van for dinner, and then a last stroll along the cliff tops. Some photographs of the boys’ adventures arrived on my phone. They were having a campfire on the beach in the dark, and they had been swimming…swimming, not just paddling.
I expect they had been climbing up the icebergs and jumping in.
