Tag Archives: motorway services

Going up the Country [apologies to Canned Heat]

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We’ve had a lengthy period at home since our French trip. This has been due in part to my incarceration from a nasty IBD flare. For the uninitiated, IBD can be revealed by googling. It is neither glamorous nor pleasant, this bout being by far the worst I’ve ever experienced. It also revealed what a parlous state the NHS seems to have got into, as the lengthy duration and virulence was, in part, due to my being unable to obtain my usual meds or access the specialist team.

During this prolonged spell of confinement to home, we’ve had a late spring/early summer heatwave and the garden had been a source of great solace, as while I wasn’t able to actually do much, lolling about outside was soothing. I was relieved, however, that I’d done a lot of work before the current flare set in!

At last, however, though not out of the woods, I felt able to cope with a van trip- one that had been planned for a long time and that I’d been very reluctant to cancel or postpone. We are off to see an older sibling of mine.

I must confess we’ve not been wonderful at contact over the years, since he moved further and further northwards and I further south. We’ve done plenty of worldwide travel between us, but not in the direction of each others’ homes. It’s time to put this right.

Preparing the van for travel can be hard work at the best of times, but it all gets done and we set off on the first leg of the journey up country, using motorways, principally and stopping at services en route.

Motorway services are a bugbear of mine, each visit an experience of such low quality as to be endured rather than enjoyed. Once the service stations had sold out to the likes of MacDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, KFC, Starbucks and the like, all semblance of a pleasant, restful break was dashed on the rocks of fast food and disposable garbage. There are a couple of exceptions- one notable one being Gloucester Services, a farm enterprise built in an eco=friendly structure and selling home-cooked meals as well as providing a shopping experience of delectable, local foodstuffs and other items. There is a landscaped outside area with a beautiful pond hosting ducks and other wildlife, too. But I digress…

We make a stop at the inappropriately named ‘Leicester Forest’ services- where you would be hard pressed to spot a tree- a dire, hideous place.

A later, lunch stop at least provides a Cornish pasty, which is some comfort. We’re lucky in having the van and able to park by a patch of green to have lunch.

Then we’re off to our overnight spot- a site near Sheffield, over the Rother valley. It’s high up, a modern site, huge, landscaped and sparsely filled with tourers. I’d guess it’s popular at weekends with those from large, northern towns.

We check in. There’s a cafe/bar of sorts, although when we walk up after dinner to see if Husband can get a beer it is, of course, closed.

The heatwave continues, we deploy our two fans and I get the best night’s sleep I’ve had for several weeks, which is a result!

We head off again in the morning- onwards and northwards…

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

A Leap with a Leaf

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On the whole, vehicles are one of my non-interests, along with football and cricket, talent shows, fast food, misery memoirs and a few other tedious topics.

In a discussion on cars I’m interested in reliability first, followed by comfort and economy in equal measure. In a blatant betrayal of gender stereotyping I have opinions on colour, preferring black over any other but accepting of anything except pink, orange, red or lurid.

My first car, like many first cars, was a humble, ancient, faded turquoise Austin A40 with steering wheel so huge that steering around a corner was akin to half an hour’s workout on a rowing machine. Subsequent vehicles became newer, though never new. My least old car was also the worst, an indigo VW Polo that exhibited some kind of electrical fault and let me down with irritating frequency-most famously by giving up at traffic lights at a busy roundabout whilst I was wearing nothing but a bikini and flimsy sarong. Let this be a lesson, readers. This was also before the days of mobile phones.

Now, however it is time for my trusty, comfortable, economical, black Peugeot to find a new owner. It is also time for Husband and me to put our money where our mouths have been for so long and leap into the unknown with an eco-friendly, electric vehicle. They are cheap to run, cost nothing to tax and, most crucially do not belch noxious fumes into the environment. What can go wrong? We’ve adhered to our rule regarding no new cars and have purchased a two year old Nissan Leaf, an alien road ghost with a mysterious array of buttons and beeps.

We’ve begun to learn the ways of this enigmatic machine. We’ve learned that it drives as an automatic, that your left foot must never stray unbidden on to the ‘hand-brake’, which nestles on the floor under your left foot in a sly, provocative challenge as the result is a screeching kind of emergency stop. We know that it will refuse point-blank to cooperate unless your right foot is on the foot-brake [a more benevolent pedal].

We’ve begun to unravel the secrets of the ‘rapid’ charger at motorway services, having spent a frustrating half an hour unravelling the cryptic instructions for insertion, another half an hour in the dispiriting cafeteria [where you are at the mercy of the provision and the prices] and a further half an hour of mild panic discovering how to remove the charging nozzle.

We now know that the extravagant claims of 100 miles per charge are somewhat exaggerated, that a degree of planning must go into any journey of length and that the prices at motorway cafés render the price of the ‘rapid’ charge a little less economical.

We don’t expect to use the car for long journeys and we no longer have regular commutes to make us dependent. The change is a leap of faith in a time when leaps of faith may seem foolish or imprudent. It isn’t possible to make radical changes in the volatile climate of this unstable world but perhaps taking a deep breath and helping to clean some air is a miniscule step towards improving our immediate environment. Who knows?