Tag Archives: North

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

January Odyssey 1

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January in the UK is my least favourite month. Gloomy, often cold and wet and with the remnants of Christmas and New Year celebrations clinging like grey cobwebs, it seems to go on too long.
In an unaccustomed surge of January optimism, we’ve heaved ourselves out of the post-Christmas languor to pack up the van, load it with our warmest and most weather-resistant gear and head northwards towards Scotland, a trip we’ve been meaning to do for a few years and only now decided to tackle.
The van, having languished unused for a couple of winter months needed a little de-moulding in its nether regions, otherwise it felt purposeful to be loading up and re-acquainting ourselves with our little holiday-home-on-wheels. There are enough sites open to enable us to travel up [first to Gloucester relatives, giving us a head start] and get around once we arrive. The weather was set to be manageable and Husband assured me that at the first sign of snow we would return, since I was somewhat nervous about getting ‘snowed in’ and unable to return in time for the next [contrasting] excursion in February.
Motorways have conveyed us here and while there were works being carried out almost everywhere the journey was incident-free. Our first, uneventful day took us to ‘Whittingham Club’, a site near Preston and not too far from Blackpool and a perfectly acceptable overnight stop. I assume this is an ex ‘working men’s club’ as it has a club house with a bar, large screen TV, snooker tables and darts plus a bowling green outside. The site facilities are an add-on but serviceable.
Next day we covered the remaining miles to Glasgow by early afternoon, arriving at the holiday park in time for a quick excursion into the city; two stops on a small train from the nearby station.

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Glasgow is just as a city should be; elegant, decadent, grand and squalid. It is busy and vibrant, the architecture both beautiful and innovative, with ugly inserts. The honey and rose sandstone buildings dominate and there is no shortage of galleries, museums and historic sights-too many in fact to see in a single visit. There are areas of development as well as hideous, high rise blocks. The shopping streets are packed with all the usual stores, from up-market fashion to restaurant chains. There is a vast a number of theatres and concert venues as well as lively clubs and pubs.

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Next day we returned in full daylight to take in the award-winning transport museum, the modern art museum, the Necropolis, [a steep hill crowded with mausoleums, obelisks and fancy gravestones] and the cathedral [sadly closed]. From the summit of the Necropolis the tower blocks of outer Glasgow can be seen as well as the grey ribbon of the Clyde. We had no time to tour the art museum, People’s Palace or botanic gardens.
Next day we drove north west towards Lock Lomond, out through suburbs of impressive Georgian sandstone terraces and while I felt it must be a pleasant place to live, I also realised we’d given the more depressed areas such as Paisley a wide berth. It feels good to travel to the outer reaches of the UK and understand that all life does not revolve around the London and the south.

Travel or Holiday? What’s the Difference?

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We are travelling across The Netherlands, meandering slowly northwards with the aim, having negotiated Germany and Denmark of an eventual stay with a Norwegian friend. The Dutch countryside, though flat as a table-top is scenic in a bucolic way and the villages chocolate box pretty with their thatched, angular, barn-style roofs and manicured gardens. [I suppose the analogy of the chocolate box must be becoming obsolete nowadays-as a child I was used to seeing the array of assorted chocolate boxes ranged along the top shelf of the village shop and all bore images of thatched cottages or streets of half-timbered houses. Heaven knows why…]

All this prettiness is, of course very uplifting. But to enjoy travel [or a holiday-whether the two are the same is a matter for debate] every sight need not be picture-book gorgeous, in fact quite the contrary-some of the ugliest views can provide the best travel experiences.

Take docks. We sailed overnight last night from Harwich in Essex [East coast UK] to Hoek von Holland [The ‘Hook’]. Harwich is a tiny port, occupied almost entirely by the two sailings of one ferry company. The enormous ship dwarfs the quay as lorries crawl up the ramp like swarming insects to be swallowed up by the gaping mouth of the vehicle decks. At last it was our turn to be swallowed, trundling across the metal gantry and shuffling into a narrow space between two caravans. We downed a couple of drinks, chatting to some touring Americans to one side and some touring Australians on the other before tumbling into bed in our cabin.

We woke to the view of Rotterdam, a forest of cranes and pylons all engaged in loading or unloading container ships. How many containers can there be in the world? One per head of the population? You could be forgiven for thinking so. The containers look like children’s bricks as they are plucked from the quayside in giant pincers and placed with meticulous accuracy on to the wide, flat deck of a ship, piled to an impossible height until it seems the vessel might topple sideways-and yet there is one on the horizon, disappearing somewhere with its unwieldy cargo.

We ground to a halt in the berth and descended to the depths to rejoin out vehicles and a long wait for our turn to disembark. Then we were away into the Netherlands and Northwards.

I attempt to make sense of the signs. ‘Slag boom’ says one, or ‘sluiz-droomen’, or broodjes slommen’. The Dutch language seems to consist of faintly abusive and insulting words although they are in fact all innocuous terms for everyday objects. We cross ‘dijks’ and wait for ‘brugs’ to open and allow boats to pass on the countless  waterways that make up the country-once passing underneath an aqueduct bearing sailing ships-an astonishing sight. We cross huge barrages like driving across the sea, where on either side cormorants are gathered, spreading their wings to dry before plunging after another fish, or tall grey herons poised motionless along the roadsides.

So to Germany then-ausfahrts, glottlestops and beer-swilling, thigh-slapping efficiency-ah, but only for one night!