Tag Archives: hotel

Flight from Gloom

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It’s a return to travel tales in this week’s post…

The UK autumn descended into gloom with the clock hands depriving of us light and the weather becoming unsettled.

At the end of October, we got the go-ahead to collect Jazzer, the campervan from its enforced incarceration in a French garage, where it had finally been repaired. Husband went off to collect it, retracing the steps we’d taken as foot passengers a couple of months before when we’d had to abort our late summer trip and come home.

Once the van was back, we could reclaim all the things we’d missed, plus a lot of things we’d forgotten about. Items of clothing, items of kitchenware- even a few food items were still in date and edible!

Having had weeks of waiting and telephoning, writing emails and stressing, now we were ready for some kind of holiday. I’d been Googling ‘warmest place in Europe today’ for weeks. Now we could go. The warmest places, I’d learned, were not Majorca or the Canary Islands- no- the warmest place was Seville, Spain.

We’d been to Seville many years ago, with our first van, a little, white VW with a pop-up roof- a thing of beauty and gorgeousness- but no longer suitable for our needs. At that time, we were still constrained by school holidays and been restricted to the hottest, summer months, so It was mega-hot in inland Spain. We’d found a site somewhere near the airport and although we’d planned to visit the city, we spent the stifling daytime in the site’s swimming pool. We’d managed a trip into town later in the day but sightseeing was impossible due to searing heat.

Similarly, Seville has languished this last summer in temperatures of C40+, brutal conditions for everyday life. No wonder that we are greeted on our first morning’s reccy by the sight of locals wrapped up in woollies and puffa jackets in the moderate 20+ temperature.! Meanwhile we’re attired in shorts and T-shirts, which must look bizarre to them.

We got picked up from the airport [eventually] and dropped at our hotel a little later than expected, due to a flight delay. The hotel- which is a massive structure, has a ground floor cafe serving a range of light meals, drinks etc and is open until midnight. Having checked in, we descend the nine floors from our room and get perfectly acceptable meals. So far so good.

The next morning, we set off [in our shorts and T-shirts] in search of brunch, having first bought a phone charger due to not packing one, from a store at the end of our street. There’s a breakfast cafe just around the corner which looks promising, although the menu is beyond my rusty Spanish skills [which were never great to start with] and the staff seem unwilling to engage in a ‘Spanglais’ garbled conversation. Plates of toasted baguettes with delicious toppings keep emerging, which we decide would be perfect for us- but what are they?

We sit at a table. A nearby diner indicates that we need to queue at the counter first and order. Husband, who considers that I must take responsibility for linguistics, prods me in the direction of said counter. I put on what I hope is a winning smile and attempt to engage with the harassed woman on the other side. ‘Er…tostado?’ I splutter, at which she looks baffled. She calls a man from the other end of the bar. He speaks English, at which I am both relieved and feel a failure. At last we are seated and get a delicious brunch and luscious, freshly squeezed orange juice. There is no shortage of oranges in Seville in November. The pavements are lined with orange trees and ripe fruit covers the ground beneath each tree.

The day begins to heat up and it feels like some relaxation might be in order. The hotel has a third floor swimming pool and sun deck- minus a bar at this time of year, but with comfortable loungers and sofas with cushions. We can explore a bit once we’ve acclimatised and it isn’t so hot. For now- we take books to the sun deck and take in the views over the city- phew!

Novels by Jane Deans [Grace]: The Year of Familiar Strangers and The Conways at Earthsend. Visit my website: janedeans.com

The Almost Not Return

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This post contains images of van life in happier times…

So the cheeky quirks of fate were not yet done with us.

We’d booked a ferry crossing from Cherbourg back to Poole as foot passengers, since the van was still immobile and stuck in the car park of a garage [who did not wish to repair it] in the unlovely commercial zone of Lecousse, near Fougeres.

Now it was Wednesday and we were due to sail on an overnight boat. Initially it seemed there were no cabins, although we could get couchettes; then later a cabin became available, which was a rare piece of good luck in a whole chapter of misfortune. The ferry would leave at 9.30pm, meaning that we’d need to be there at the terminal by around 8.45pm. I had rung the assistance number and informed them we’d need a hire car to get to the port and been told that the French AA were working on it.

It was 9.00am. We packed and left our hotel room, taking our luggage down to the lobby to wait for a taxi to collect us and take us to the hire car depot,

We waited. And waited,

I got a text from the French AA to say they were ‘doing their best for us’. Really?

We waited.

We read. We got coffees.

By late morning we were anxious. The weather had become squally, deluges of rain lashing the hotel windows. I rang the AA, to be told they were looking for a car ‘equivalent to the car the client drives’. ‘We drive a campervan’ I told her. ‘We can’t get one of those’ was the reply! I said we’d take ANY car. We needed to get going.

We waited.

At about 2pm I received a text to say a taxi was coming at 3.00pm. We could still get to the ferry if we didn’t hang about too much.

At three, when we were almost climbing the walls of hotel lobby, a taxi came. We climbed in and set off on a ride that seemed ridiculously long, taking precious time off our Cherbourg drive and far from Fougeres, where we’d discovered the nearest ‘Europcar’ hire depot was.

The driver took us to the environs of Rennes, which was a mystery, and dropped us at a car hire office. We took our luggage and entered, giving our details to the woman at the counter. The taxi left. The woman searched her computer.

‘No,’ she said. ‘There is no booking under that name.’ My stomach, [which had churned far too much for an organ affected by IBD] lurched with nausea yet again. The woman searched neighbouring offices and yes, we were at the wrong car hire office. Did I have the number for the French AA? No. I rang the British number and she spoke to them. I looked at my watch. It seemed likely that we would, now, miss the ferry. Then…

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will get you a car.’

I feel that beatification is not good enough for this woman-

We did the paperwork, went out to the back, got into a car. Husband would drive. We set off. The car was without a SATNAV and we were in some unidentifiable area of Rennes. I got navigation on my phone and we got out of Rennes, on to the ring road and away.

We made good time, even managing a stop for a coffee and a snack- I’d been unable to eat anything all day. When we reached Cherbourg, we followed instructions from the car hire woman, dropping the car in the station car park. We were still a distance from the ferry terminal but a bus took us there.

Inside the foot passenger building there were 5 of us waiting, in hard, plastic chairs with nothing resembling a cafe, only a dysfunctional coffee machine. At last, we got into a shuttle bus which took us on to the ferry. I have never been so glad to get on to the Barfleur. We found our cabin, dumped bags and went to the bar, sinking into seats, exhausted.

We are home, of course, sans van. As of now, there is no sign of repair, no news that it can be collected. Not only does it have our bikes, locked on to the back, it also contains many of our clothes, shoes and belongings. So we wait…again…

Novels by Jane Deans [Grace]: The Year of Familiar Strangers and The Conways at Earthsend. Visit my website: janedeans.com

A Taste of Tavira

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The neurotic ex-pat woman I’m squeezed in next to on this budget flight to Faro leans forward and closes her eyes in an ecclesiastical manner as we touch down on the runway. While the plane rolls towards the terminal she tells me it’s 35 degrees outside. 35 degrees? When we’d looked at the forecast for Portugal, pre- booking, we’d been informed that the temperature would be a very pleasant 25ish! And it’s gone 8pm, too!

Still- we’re here and stumbling off towards arrivals, hot or not. And it is very warm standing in the queue to have passports scrutinised- warm enough to induce a nasty fit in one of the waiting visitors, who falls to the floor, convulsing. The Portuguese airport staff spring into action, running in with first aid packs and all is restored.

We’re transported to our hotel by a rotund taxi driver. It’s a 40 minute journey, though not unpleasant- even though the driver’s musical tastes do not exactly match our own.

I don’t recognise or recall the outskirts of Tavira, which we visited over 20 years ago. Our hotel is in a commanding, elevated position on top of a hill and quite central, but we are to discover that the steep climb back to it is taxing in high temperatures.

We stumble into the cool of the air-conditioned reception area and are offfered a welcome drink of…wine. ‘White or Red?’ I make a tentative request for a beer, which is turned down. So much for that then-

Having checked in, we go up to find our room, which is at the end of a long, long corridor- it’s a little unnerving due to the decor, fake panelling concealing all the rooms’ doors and illuminated by floor lights- all very strange. But the room is fine, has a balcony and overlooks the hotel pool.

We’ve arrived late, having not eaten but the hotel’s restaurant is still open, although we are in almost solitary splendour, with only one other couple dining there. An enormous array of starters is arranged around an oval buffet – just about anything and everything, and it’s tempting to try a bit of everything- except that we’ve a main course to get through, too. I’ve found, these days that multiple courses are way too much. I could happily have done with starter only.

We discover that the top floor of the hotel houses an open air bar and it’s marginally cooler up there, with views over the top of tavira, a pleasant enough way to end our first evening.

Next morning the dining room is vastly changed and is teeming with diners. A pianist at a grand piano accompanies the activity with a selection of easy-listening musak. I’m not a breakfaster at home, but here where it’s included I’m happy with some fruit, eggs and toast.

We decide, on this first day, to chillax, preparing, then making our way down to the pool. There’s a hiatus when we are baffled as to the route but it’s via a large balcony on the ground floor then down some steps. Again, the weather is extremely hot and not condusive to sitting in the sun, though by the looks of the sunbeds this opinion is not shared by everyone, as most residents are roasting themselves to a scarlet crisp in the sweltering rays.

In the hotel lifts, stern instructions about not bagging sunbeds in advance are posted up. Even so, we must hunt for them and when we do locate two, we haul them across to the shade, where we stay, reading and dozing.

While it’s still hot, in the evening we brave the oven-like temperature and stroll down to the little town square, which has plenty of bars and cafes. It’s pretty and characterful- just the place for an evening beer and a meal al fresco…

For fiction by me, Jane Deans, search for novels: The Conways at Earthsend [an eco-thriller] and The Year of Familiar Strangers [mystery drama]. Visit my website: janedeans.com

Highs and Woes in Cape Verde

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The first few days after arriving to a new destination are all about discovery and exploration. After our breakfast on the first full day on Sal, Cape Verde we divide our time into relaxation and walking, since walking is one of the best ways to get around. There is very little traffic around our area and what vehicles there are tend to be taxis or other tourist transport. Some are pickups in which tourists are required to sit at the back in the open air and we are not tempted by them since a] the winds are brisk and cool and b] there is nothing resembling any kind of seat belt.

I’ve woken with a sniffly, runny nose since our arrival. A child in the queue at the airport was stricken with a streaming cold, which has, presumably affected most of the passengers on the Lisbon plane.

Nevertheless we wander to Santa Maria, our nearby town and then further still, to beyond the town and along a decked walkway to a much more upmarket area of chain hotels- Radisson, Hilton etc. The beaches are vast and unsullied by sunbathers [it’s not warm enough!] but attended by windsurfers and kite surfers. There are many companies doing a roaring trade in board and sail hire, also tuition. There is an abundance of cafes and restaurants- as well as the ubiquitous ‘Irish pub’.

Along the walkway we spot horses, tattoo parlours [not too busy!], gift shops and hawkers of small items spread on sheets and we are waylaid countless times by sellers hoping to catch our attention. Many of the items for sale are made of recycled/upcycled materials and a huge amount of it is from shells. In fact I’m struck by the plethora of recycled and repurposed items around; planters from halved containers, beach shelters from tyres, bar furniture from old pallets and so on.

We’ve dined in the hotel on our first evening, which happened to be Valentines’ Day, an acceptable though not stupendous meal, accompanied by a lacklustre guitarist/singer warbling out ballads from the likes of Ed Sheeran. Now we’re up for a more adventurous evening and we opt for a busy restaurant on the way into town, Porto Antiguo, where there’s a jollier guitarist and a lively atmosphere. It is to become one of our preferred restaurants for its friendly service, good food and fun atmosphere.

Husband succumbs to the cold and has a much worse experience, streaming and sneezing for the next few days.

The hotel manager comes to the room to tell us ‘Your room is ready’, which is mystifying. Later, her colleague comes to explain that this is not our room and we must move, that the enormous room we’ve been occupying is a ‘suite’, that our booked room is a modest, balcony-free room somewhere else and that the night receptionist should have informed us upon check-in. Hm…

We move. We’re not too unhappy. We’ve a kettle and a better fridge and the shower is nicer. We still have an ocean view and can use the poolside loungers- except that the weather continues to be rampantly windy in between bouts of sun.

Husband’s cold gets better. I begin a UC flare [for more recent readers, here’s the link: https://gracelessageing.com/2014/12/07/journey-to-the-centre-of-the-colon-a-gastric-odyssey-with-apologies-to-jules-verne/] I’m well prepared with meds, although it sheds a blight over activities, dining and enjoying an occasional beer. Bleurgh!

But we’re aware we haven’t seen much of the island and will need to book a tour, which we do, with the hotel. It’s to be a ‘private’ tour in a 4X4 rather than a pickup and will also need to be an afternoon jaunt, owing to the flare [always worse in the mornings]. We settle on a day nearer to the end of our stay to allow some degree of recovery for both of us…

Grace is the alter ego of novelist and short story writer, Jane Deans. To date I have two published novels to my name: The Conways at Earthsend [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Conways-at-Earthsend-Jane-Deans-ebook/dp/B08VNQT5YC/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2ZHXO7687MYXE&keywords=the+conways+at+earthsend&qid=1673350649&sprefix=the+conways+at+earthsend%2Caps%2C79&sr=8-1 and The Year of Familiar Strangers [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Year-Familiar-Strangers-Jane-Deans-ebook/dp/B00EWNXIFA/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2EQHJGCF8DSSL&keywords=The+year+of+familiar+strangers&qid=1673350789&sprefix=the+year+of+familiar+strangers%2Caps%2C82&sr=8-1 Visit my writer Facebook page [https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=jane%20deans%2C%20novellist%2C%20short%20fiction%20and%20blog or my website: https://www.janedeans.com/

Iceland: The One Day Out…

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Husband was finally free of our hotel room after 3 days isolation. With only one day left, we were set to make the best of it…

It was our last day in Iceland. And at last we could go down to the restaurant and have breakfast together, instead of me dining alone and parcelling up breakfast items for him. I wondered what our fellow diners would think of my appearance with a man- Had I picked him up somewhere during my lone travel escapade? Bonded on a bus or in a bar and shacked up together in the hotel room?

We’d one more task to complete for the return to the UK and I was determined to get it over and done with before our day out. We’d to fill out a ‘passenger locator form’ for each of us. I sat down with my laptop and found the form. To begin with it seemed simple and I began to congratulate myself [always a bad idea]. I got almost to the end, to the request for the serial numbers of our return-to-UK, lateral flow test kits, which were resting on a cupboard top in our house, ready for our return. Horrors! Who knew? I tried various numbers on forms, to no avail, gnashing my teeth and groaning. Then I had a brainwave. I could ring our neighbour to go in and look at the boxes in our house. Hooray! I rang her, and she, kind soul that she is, dropped everything and went upstairs in the house to look at the kits. She talked me through her search, a number here, a number there…I tried all the numbers. None of them was correct.

The time ticked away. Soon we’d need to be in the lobby to await our bus for the tour. In desperation, I turned to Monsieur Google for help and got an answer. The numbers would have been on the invoice email. I looked at my inbox, which yielded no correspondence from the company, Randox. I looked in the trash. There! There it was- an email with some serial numbers! I keyed them in and pressed submit, holding my breath. And it went. Phew. We had to do it all again, of course, for Husband, but then we were done.

We began donning layers for our day out. The outside temperature was set to drop to -9. I was glad of my thermal tops and fleecy walking trousers. We were ferrried to the bus station as I’d been the previous day and went to the counter to pay for the day’s tour. At this point things went in our favour. The fact that I’d already taken the tour alone and Husband had missed it was known to the ticket clark. She looked at me. ‘There’s no charge’ she said. ‘Forget it’. After all the trouble I felt tearful when faced with her kindness.

We boarded the bus- together this time- . Our tour guide was not the world-weary Johanna of the previous day but Albert, a mature, jovial character who began with his -clearly much practised] jokes as we swung out of the bus park. The day was bitterly cold but the sky was a sparkling blue and not a cloud in it. And we were out together…

Grace is also known as the novelist, Jane Deans. Her new novel, The Conways at Earthsend is now out and available from Amazon, Waterstones, Goodreads, W H Smith, Pegasus Publishing and many more sites. Visit my website: janedeans.com or my author page on Facebook: (1) Jane Deans, Novellist, Short Fiction and Blog | Facebook.

How Reykjavik was Wrecked [Part 1]

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Regular readers of Anecdotage will be familiar with my travel posts. They are, in the main, a devoted homage to travel in general- to seeing new places, meeting new people, sampling novel cuisines and experiencing different cultures. You could not fail to understand, in reading my posts, that Husband and I love to see parts of the world that are not our own.

I’ve described how we’ve kept travel within our own shores these last two years, and while a holiday rarely goes without a hitch, I can only think of a few in my life that can be said to be a total debacle. This one, though, this first foray into a foreign country since the Plague started, this trip is a complete fiasco.

Here then, not for the faint-hearted traveller, is the first chapter of a cautionary tale:

We prepared, as I’ve described in the last two posts. Thus armed and ready [or so we thought], we left our airport hotel and trundled through the airport procedures, including showing our barcodes, displayed on our phones, from Iceland Covid security, which denoted our vaccine status and that we were ‘fit-to-fly’. So far so good. It seemed remarkably easy and we went through security into departure, on to the gate and in due time, boarded the plane. From the tiny, porthole window a double rainbow was visible, perhaps signifying ‘good luck’ or ‘bon voyage’, I thought. Hooray! We were on our way. In spite of it being Easyjet, the flight was fine, a comfortable three and a half hours during which the clear weather turned cloudy and we descended down into a snowy Kevlavik Airport, where we disembarked into the building, had our passports stamped, picked up our suitcase and strode towards the exit.

Here, then was one last desk before the exit to the transfer buses. We’d need to show our barcodes again. The man and woman behind the counter looked at us. Could they see our PCR ‘fit-to-fly’ test result certificates? We’d been unable to upload these before leaving home but had the print-outs, which we showed them. They studied the certificates. ‘These are no good’ they said. ‘You’ll need to do a test here and follow covid rules while you wait for your results’. When we asked how long this would take we were told ‘up to 24 hours’. ‘But it could be sooner’ the man reassured us. ‘You might get your results by this evening’. 24 hours. 24 hours of missed time out of a 4 day trip. I asked what we could do about our Northern Lights tour, which was booked for that evening. He shrugged, ‘you may get the results before then’ was all he would say. We were told we could walk around outside, but were not to enter any crowded places such as shops, malls, restaurants or bars. Outside the building a raging blizzard was blowing across the tarmac.

With no options, we went to a small side booth, where medics in PPE gear waited with swab sticks in hand. We got swabbed. The euphoria from arrival had begun to ebb away as the realisation of our situation seeped in. I found our bus. I was not about to ask how we’d get to our hotel, 50 minutes away in the capital so we sat down and made the journey to the bus station, transferred to a minibus and onwards to the Grandi by Center.

We checked in, advising the hotel staff of our situation. We could get room service, they told us. At this point we weren’t too pessimistic. The Northern Lights tour had been cancelled due to bad weather conditions [the blizzard], so we’d be able to go the next night, after receiving our results. We’d have to eat dinner in our room and would not get to visit anywhere until the following day, but we could go for a walk around the vicinity and get our bearings, which we did. The Grandi was in a great area, with many lovely venues. In the fading twilight we strolled the pavements, taking great care as in many places they were pure, unadulterated sheet ice and lethal in their slipperiness.

Having perused the meagre and eye-wateringly priced meals available on the hotel’s room service I got online and found meal delivery services, resulting in our eating Domino’s pizzas; adequate, less pricy but not the sampling of local cuisines we’d hoped for. Also we were able to get BBC channels on the room TV. We’d cope tonight and be free to roam next day…or not…

Travel Travails Continued-

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Last week I described the tangled web of bureaucracy involved in preparations for travel in these plague-ridden times. I’d ploughed through the covid vaccination pass instructions, overcome the troubling and confusing business of ordering tests and ascertained the whereabouts of the mysterious ‘drop boxes’. I’d purchased our tests for return. I’d written a timetable for us to ensure we do the correct things in the right order on the appropriate days leading up to departure and on our return. I was not feeling confident or smug, but I was feeling I’d done as much as I was able to get us prepared.

The plague feels like it’s lasted a long time, now. Does anyone elase out there long for the days when, if we wished to step beyond the confines of our own, squidgy little island we could just bag a passport and go? It’s bad enough for Husband and me, that we also have to be mindful of carting along the correct medications and in the right quantities [as contingency, you understand] as we get older and more decrepit.

This is all before we even begin to think about packing anything. Normally, at this time of year we’d be jetting off somewhere hot, for winter sun, a chance to loll about on a lounger sipping something cool and delicious. It’s always tricky packing for an extreme temperature change and we’ve come adrift before on our return, freezing to death on a frosty station, waiting for a train to come. This time, because we’re travelling to a notoriously cold place we’ll be all prepared, or at least I do hope so!

News today [Tuesday] has it that the return-from-abroad tests are being dropped. I begin to feel incensed that I’ve bought them, until I see they’re to be dropped from the day we return. We’ll still need to do pre-flight PCR tests and find out about the pre-return ‘passenger locator forms’.

Owing to changes to our flights by that highly-rated, luxurious airline, Easyjet, we’ve had to jiggle the dates of our trip. Easyjet saw fit to change our return flights to a different airport from our departure one. I wonder which operative thought this would be a good idea? Fly from Gatwick, London and return to Luton, many miles away…Suppose we’d opted to drive to airport?

Our flights on Monday morning are indecently early, at 8.00am, meaning Sunday trains, a hotel stay and a rude awakening, which provokes a frisson of anxiety. The time window for the PCR fit-to-fly tests is 72 hours, but 48 hours needs to be reserved for the results to come back to us. I’ve worked out that if we do the tests, register them and drop them off at the fabled ‘drop-off’ box nearest to us we should just about get the results before we depart for the airport- provided everything goes as the company, Randox, suggests. Hmmm…

For now, though I’m turning my attention towards all things warn and cosy. My Peruvian hat with flaps has arrived, I have my fleecy lined walking trousers and sufficient thermal layers for the ascent of Everest [no, we’re not going there!]. If we don’t get off the ground, one thing is guaranteed- I’ll be warm enough for the journey home!

Australia 2011: Alice Springs and Adelaide

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We’d arrived to Alice Springs and the end of our exploration of this enormous country’s red heart. True, we’d only scratched the surface, only had time for a brief flavour of the extraordinary landscapes, but we’d still a lot more to see and do. We had time for a peremptory examination of Alice Springs, a town I’d hitherto mainly associated with the Nevil Shute novel, ‘A Town Like Alice’ and film of the same.

Modern Alice is a pleasing place with a hint of wild west about it and enough shops, bars and restaurants to satisfy passing tourists. I still have [and wear] the rust coloured safari shirt patterned with Australian wildlife that I bought there. By now we’d passed a substantial part of the UK autumn in the southern hemisphere- their spring, and Christmas was not too far ahead, would be upon us once we got back home. But there was little in Alice to herald the event, and it was hot, although by this time we were well acclimatised.

We had a domestic flight arranged for Adelaide, where we were to spend a couple of nights before picking up the next [and final] van for our trip along the south coast. Our hotel in central Adelaide was swanky indeed, the room uber modern with one of those glass bathrooms in the centre that leaves you exposed to your room-mate whatever activity you may be engaged in. Hmmm…

Unlike Alice, Adelaide had moved into full Christmas mode, our hotel foyer bedecked with decorations and Christmas trees and across the street, a department store entrance bore a sleigh complete with reindeer and Santa Claus. And all of this in sweltering heat, the tinsel glinting in sunshine as the air wobbled above the pavements. I suppose anyone who has grown up in what to us is a topsy-turvy climate is accustomed to snowy scenes in stifling temperatures, but it felt incongruous to me.

Adelaide itself I considered to be an elegant, beautifully laid out town with attractive parks and wide avenues. It also seemed to be a bit of a party central, the restaurants and bars not short of revellers of various kinds.

All too soon it was time to leave and to collect our third van of the trip, which was to take us along the famous South Coast Highway and a spectacular coastline, if the guide books were to be believed. There were to be more sights and experiences before our arrival to Melbourne, but best of all, if all went well I’d get to meet up with someone I hadn’t seen since childhood!

Grace is also known as the novelist, Jane Deans. Her new novel, The Conways at Earthsend is now out and available from Amazon, Waterstones, Goodreads, W H Smith, Pegasus Publishing and many more sites. Visit my website: janedeans.com or my author page on Facebook: (1) Jane Deans, Novellist, Short Fiction and Blog | Facebook.

Best Trip to Date…

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The words ‘holiday of a lifetime’ are strange and dispiriting, I feel, implying that future excursions are off the cards. How are we to know that a trip is a ‘holiday of a lifetime’? It is something you cannot say until the possibility of travel is no longer there for some reason. For the majority of us, this reason is only going to be extinction, or such catastrophic incapacity as to make travel impossible.

There are places and explorations, however that render all other trips insignificant, that if asked where are favourite holiday or travel experience was we would answer without hestitation. For me, that trip is our tour of New Zealand in 2011. And I will endeavour to write and show all the reasons why this experience tops everything else to date.

For a start, the idea was hatched [by Husband] as a grand retirement jaunt, both of us having turned in the towel on teaching that year. Then it happened to be New Zealand’s turn to host the rugby world cup, which was an obvious lure for Husband. Myself, I’m not as averse to rugby as I am to other sports and the watching of international games was to provide an extra frisson and reason to love these very special islands.

In order to take in as much of the rugby as possible whilst also seeing most of New Zealand we opted for campervan hire, and given that we were acccustomed to vans and camping this seemed the most suitable way for us to travel.

The expedition did not have a great start, since on arrival to Heathrow we queued up to be told that our Quantas flight to Brisbane was cancelled and we’d have to go next day, spending the night at an airport hotel. This meant that our onward connecting flight to New Zealand would no longer be possible. With no options, we gnashed teeth and went to the hotel, returning next day for a flight to Australia-but to Singapore, which we duly boarded, having been blithely assured we’d be ‘sorted out’ once we got there.

At Singapore it was about 2.00am and we queued up, bleary-eyed, at a Quantas desk, finding ourselves at the very end of a long, snaking line of disgruntled passengers. Much later, at the desk, the staff member seemed to be at a loss to know what to do with us, finally adding us to the next flight to Sidney, which is at least Australia, so we’d be nearer to our destination!

Who knows what time it was when we arrived to Sidney? It was late. Dark. We dragged ourselves to the airport hotel, to wake after what seemed no time at all for another flight-to Christchurch! At check-in I believed I was hallucinating when the woman at the desk asked us to open all our luggage for scrutiny, after which we barely made it on to the plane. By the time we touched down at Christchurch I was beyond calculating how many hours we’d travelled, or how many hours we’d missed or gained.

But arrival to the small, homely airport was like stepping out of a blizzard into a warm bath; the staff friendly, the arrival pain-free. Then we walked out into spring sunshine, to where a taxi driver waited, his door open ready for us to sink into a seat and we were off to see if the hotel that had expected us 24 hours ago still had our room available…

My brand new novel, the eco-thriller, The Conways at Earthsend is now out and available from Amazon, Waterstones, Goodreads, W H Smith, Pegasus Publishing and many more sites. Visit my author page on Facebook: (1) Jane Deans, Novellist, Short Fiction and Blog | Facebook

Tented Travels-1

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Before we got our first van, during our first few years together Husband and I toured European countries using tents. This was in part due to the penurious nature of our lives [we’d come together in similarly, newly-single circumstances] but also knowing that travel was a shared interest. We’d also both gained plenty of experience as campers from both childhood and as adults. I’d already single-handedly hauled four children off camping in my battered Volvo, with mixed results.

One of our very first trips as a couple was to the South of France and on round to the Italian Riviera, then Tuscany; an ambitious holiday to undertake in my ancient car with my parents’ cast-off frame tent. In its heyday, the tent had already been many miles, but still had some usage in it. Nowadays of course, tent technology is much advanced and bendy hoop tents have more or less taken over the camping market.

Husband, ever the map fanatic, is a competent route planner. We travelled down the centre of France. Overnight stops are tedious when using a frame tent, so we planned our sleepovers using Formule 1 hotels. For the uninitiated, these are remarkably cheap, chain hotels dotted all over France on industrial estates. They are clean and comfortable, and usually situated next to a budget chain restaurant, too. The drawback is that the rooms do not include en-suite and employ a colour-coded system for the bathrooms, which is tricky if you need the loo during the night, since the rooms are accessed by numbered code. We used to overcome this by leaving a shoe lodged in the doorway when we dived out at night. Red-doored rooms must use the red-doored lavatories, and so on, which might mean a bit of a trek.

On our odysseys through France we still see Formule 1 hotels, flanked by Buffalo Grills or some similar restaurant, although they’ve largely been superceded by Premier Classe hotels, superior only in that they have a tiny, integrated toilet and shower cubicle in one corner.

I’ve no idea whether, in these early days of tent touring, discount camping cards existed, but if they did we had no knowledge of them, no ACSI or Camping and Caravan Club cards. We simply did a day’s travel, stopped to look for a site and pitched up.

To begin with we had lilos, inflated by foot pump, and sleeping bags which zipped together. After a couple of trips I decided I’d become too old to dive out and across fields for the loo, so Husband recycled an old toilet seat by attaching it to a bucket. This became the precursor of the porta-loo.

Our tented trips were made not only from necessity, but for preference. We’ve always enjoyed the freedom of touring this way, but there is something magical about sleeping in a tent-a magic that I still feel nostalgic about, even though we’ve swapped tents for vans. It’s something about how close you are to the air, warm and cosy with a waft of breeze and a gentle flap of canvas…magic!