Tuesday 31 March – Random Witterings from Home #4

Poor Bertie!
Poor Bertie got SORNed (Statutory Off-Road Notification) today :-(. He’s not going anywhere anytime soon, so I figured we may as well recoup his road tax for however many months he is sitting idle. Moments after I’d done the deed I received an email (unsolicited) from his insurance company confirming that SORNed vehicles are still insured; it seems they’ve had a large spike in calls clarifying that point, so we’re far from alone in taking this action.

Ponderings on Returning Home
One of the repetitive themes of our discussions about whether to come back from Spain a couple of weeks ago was my assertion that I didn’t want to ‘jump too soon’. I didn’t want to get home only to conclude days later that we could have stayed. The tipping point for us came on Saturday 14th March, and we arrived home not only happy that returning was, for us, the right decision at that time, but with the conviction that if we hadn’t left when we did, subsequent developments would have had us on the road by early afternoon on the same day.

Even if we had decided at that point to stay, we would not have found ourselves trapped, even now. Coming home now would have been marginally more difficult, purely in terms of being stopped at the French border, possibly at police check points in both Spain and France, and needing some extra paperwork, but it would still have been straightforward. We were, however, in the lucky position of being within relatively easy reach of home (just 2000km and one short channel of sea to overcome) and in the even luckier/privileged position of having a house to which we could return.

There are lots of people we meet on our travels, as well as those whose blogs/vlogs I follow, whose sole home is their van/motorhome, a proportion of whom are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Those who have returned to the UK now have the problem of finding somewhere to stay, in an environment where many campsites (if they can afford such luxury) have closed, motorhome service points are almost non-existent and the UK press and social media has vilified those parking up in vans, without consideration as to their circumstances.

Then there are those who have found themselves stranded not within easy reach of home. Of the YouTube vloggers I follow, two this week have had to abandon their vans (Eamon & Bec at an airport in Morocco to fly home to Canada; Trent & Allie in a storage facility in Argentina to fly home to the USA). Neither know when or whether (risk of theft) they will see their homes again.

Doing
I didn’t mention yesterday the other main activity in which Mick is currently engaged, along with digitalising his flight log books. He’s also taken it upon himself to send a daily educational(ish) paper, with quiz to the youngest three grandchildren. Today’s topic was Geography(ish) based on our Land’s End to John o’Groats walk. Tomorrow it’s History, concentrating on major events in years ending in ‘66’. It’s not only giving the grandchildren something to do, but putting them together is keeping Mick out of mischief.

Meanwhile, I’ve achieved eight ticks on the task list sheet today, including filling in a bit of my woeful lack of knowledge about Charles I and the English Civil War – a curiosity piqued by the audiobook that is currently keeping me company whilst I go about my gardening and cleaning tasks (and sometimes when I’m knitting too).

In a continuing effort to use up leftover yarn from blankets I’ve made, I’ve just finished making another brioche hat. I love brioche knitting! Mick kindly consented to join me in the ensuing modelling session, wearing the same-hat-different-colour that I made in January.

Exercise
Something happened on this morning’s jogette that has never happened before: someone hailed me by name. The oddest thing about it was that I was at that moment listening to an episode of a podcast featuring an interview with that very person. Spooky!

The only photo I took during this morning’s jogette was of a big cow pat in the middle of a pavement.

Nettles as a Substitute for Spinach
If I hadn’t known that it was nettles I’d put into tonight’s curry, then I don’t think I would have noticed that it wasn’t spinach. The texture wasn’t quite the same, but they worked out just fine. I’ll have to see if there are any more tender leaves worthy of harvesting.

Fish, veg and nettle curry

Monday 30 March – Random Witterings from Home #3

Shopping
Fresh supplies were running low and I* needed to visit a supermarket. I expected a lengthy expedition involving queuing outside due to restricted entry. The reality was that I drove into a car park that was quieter than normal, went straight into the shop, got everything on my list bar those items that Lidl doesn’t sell (I even got bread flour and oats; had we needed some I could even have got pasta), I walked straight up to one of the three open tills and was back out in the car park, with enough groceries to see us through a week, in record time. After such a positive experience, I thought I’d nip into one of the big supermarkets on the way home, to pick up the items not sold by Lidl. I didn’t even enter the car park, as I could see from the main road the queue of people snaking around the car park waiting for entry and decided we could manage without those items.

In lieu of frozen spinach, later in the day I harvested baby stinging nettles from the garden. For the moment they are cooked and in the freezer. I may report back in due course on how that substitution worked out.

Doing
On the basis that there’s a danger (as mentioned in my last post) that we will spend an unreasonable proportion of our time sitting doing nothing during this period of restricted movement, I put together a list of activities at the weekend. They are roughly grouped into categories (Exercise, Fun, Education, Cleaning, Maintenance and Garden) and this week’s objective is to tick off at least four activities each per day, preferably in separate categories.

I’ve put minimum times (or other appropriate measures) against each activity, set at levels so that the thought of ‘Oh, I just can’t be bothered with doing that’ can be counteracted by ‘It’s just for ten minutes out of an otherwise empty day!’. I know from long experience that once I’ve convinced myself to do something just for ten minutes, it’s likely I’ll carry on for much longer and that the hardest part of many an activity is getting started**.  These are odd times, though, and in some cases the minimum time limit is also the strict maximum. Our garden, for example, is small and doesn’t contain much so if we spend more than 20 minutes per day working in it, we’ll have run out of things to do by the end of the week. Similar limits have been put on abnormal housework tasks.

Back of the garden just after we got started with taming it

Three work sessions later

One activity Mick has on his list is digitalising his RAF Flight Log Books. He’s only two days into this activity and has already made it into 1979 (the books span 1977 to 1993, after which he had a ground tour before retiring). He assures me it’s okay to dedicate so much time to the task due to the data analysis he’ll be entertaining himself with once he finishes the initial data input.

Exercising
It occurred to me during the second week in March that if this month went to plan it would, by some margin, be my highest running-mileage month on record. When we got home my intended schedule went out of the window, as there were no longer any events to train for. I may have been covering fewer miles, but I’ve been out on more days and as a result I’m going to finish the month having run over 125 miles. Not too shoddy, all things considered, I reckon.

I took the opportunity yesterday morning (on the basis that Sunday morning + clocks changing (people being an hour behind themselves) + lockdown = almost no-one out and about at 0830) to run along a pavementless main road that I would usually avoid. I was on that road for around 2 miles, during which time three cars passed me. Sod’s Law dictated that two of those cars passed me at the same time, in opposite directions. I opted to be the one to give way, stopping and hopping up onto the high verge.

What a fantastic run of sunny running days we’ve had! Not quite the same as being in Spain, particularly as I seem to either under- or over-dress most days.

I can also report that our makeshift gym is getting a reasonable amount of use.

^{(*We usually shop together, but at the moment there's no point in doubling the household exposure to infection and as I'm in the lower risk category out of the two of us, I've nominated myself as the shopper.
**I’ve long been an advocate of the ‘just do it for 10 minutes’ method of motivation. I clearly recall a day when I was 16 and couldn’t be bothered going out for my scheduled run but talked myself into it on the basis that ten minutes was better than nothing and ten minutes would be over before I knew it. Off I set, first telling my mother roughly where I was going and how soon I would be back. Of course, once I got going I found that I was enjoying myself and I kept tacking a bit extra on before I turned homewards. It was the first time I ever ran for more than an hour, and as I approached home I could hear my mother’s voice shouting my name from the nearby fields in a complete panic that, being so horribly overdue, I had been injured or worse.)}

   

Wednesday 25 March – Random Witterings from Home

Away in Bertie, we are always more active than we are at home – a combination of the confined internal space urging us outside and the interest of new places to explore. Last summer, for example (between mid-April and mid-September) I averaged just shy of 17000 steps per day, which equates to around 7.25 miles if they are all walked and further if there was some running involved. I tend far more to laziness when at home, such that there are many days when I have to make a conscious effort to hit 5000 steps (a number I have only missed two or three times in the last five years). In general, I do go for at least one walk per day when at home, even on a running day, and now that movement restrictions only permit us to go out once per day for exercise, I am already (on Day 2!) missing those turns around the block (using the term ‘block’ to mean any combination of streets nearby; I have many mud-season on-road routes that I walk locally).

Photo unrelated to text. After the arid surroundings of southern Spain, these are a happy sight, visible from our kitchen window at home.

What to do instead? We’ve set up as much of a gym as we have available to us in the dining room and the bits of kit that haven’t been used for a while (rowing machine and a cube* for ‘step-ups’) are now feeling appreciated again.

Makeshift gym. Possibly the worst rowing machine in the world, but better than nothing.

Needing other things to keep me from sitting in a chair for the next few weeks or months, I decided that this week’s task would be to empty and clean one or two kitchen cupboards per day. It’s a long overdue task and something that I could happily have ignored for another few years, so I think we can count that as a glimpse of a silver lining of the current movement restrictions.

Another photo that’s not remotely related to the text. Looks like we could have a decent crop of blackcurrants.

I started yesterday with a food cupboard and the adjacent crockery cupboard, predictably, discovering a few things lurking that had been long forgotten. I’m not one for wasting food, I know the difference between ‘Best Before’ and ‘Use by’ and am happy to eat things well beyond their (alleged!) best. Thus for my lunch yesterday I ate a can of Bombay Potatoes (bought in bulk in 2013 because they were 4p per can, stored in so many places that two of them got lost at the back of the crockery cupboard) that went out of date in November 2015, into that I mixed half a can of sweetcorn (not because I thought it was an appropriate combination!) that should have been used by February 2016. For tea last night I served up a Massaman curry that involved a curry paste (part of some food hamper/kit given to Mick as a Christmas present one year) that was best before October 2015 and some fish sauce that was a whopping 14 years beyond its best. It all tasted fine and we’re both still well.  

Today, in a high corner well out of my reach, I turned up the dregs of a packet of rice that must have been out of date when it went into the cupboard when we moved here 8 years ago. I will soon find out whether rice adopts a stale taste or degrades in texture over the course of 10 years. I confess that the end result may be that one gets binned.

Perhaps, given how gloriously sunny the weather has been for the last week, my time would have been better spent digging the garden. Maybe I’ll slot that into tomorrow’s agenda.

In other news:

1)      Our hills walks in Spain involved the wearing of shorts and a landscape of pokey scrubby bushes (lots of rosemary – lovely and aromatic as we pushed through it). The resultant scratches and cuts on my legs from the walk at La Azohia had just about healed when we went for a walk at La Vall d’Uixo. I inspected my legs this morning and concluded that bar a couple of light scars which will fade, all evidence of the latter walk has now left my body.

2)      Even though I have no idea when we’ll next be able to go to Spain, for the moment I’m continuing to learn some Spanish via the Duolingo App. Having sailed through the first eight subjects with relative ease, I hit a stumbling block this last week. For anyone not familiar with the App, each subject is taught via various exercises across five progressively more difficult levels, with each level having three lessons, with a lesson taking just a few minutes to complete. If you make a mistake on any question (bar minor typos) you lose one of your five daily ‘hearts’. Lose all five hearts and you can’t do more until the hearts have been replenished. For over seven weeks, not once did I lose all of my hearts … then I got to the subject of ‘Greetings’ and losing my hearts became a daily occurrence. Today I finally made it through the final lesson on that subject. Let’s hope I never have cause to ask anyone what their name is, as that seems to have been the (seemingly simple!) question that has confounded me the most!

^{(*which isn’t a bit of exercise equipment at all. It’s usually used for property maintenance purposes, but I know from the amount that I’ve ached after a day of stepping up and down onto it, painting ceilings and the like, that it can provide an effective form of exercise.)}

 

Sunday 22 March – Random Notes from Home

Our unpacking, when we arrived home last week, broke all records. Not that we keep records, but I’m pretty sure that we’ve never had Bertie completely unpacked within 15 minutes of arrival before. Six days later some (most?) of the stuff has also been put away from its original dumping places.

That was the unpacking, but how did we do on the packing for this trip? I already mentioned in earlier blog posts that we forgot the salad spinner and our swimming costumes (both of which are now on our ever-growing packing checklist). We managed without the former (which serves a double purpose as a mixing/serving bowl), and bought replacements for the latter. The swimmers only got used once, but the main reason we wanted them was for the final stage of the trip, when we due to have a large family gathering (involving a hotel with a feature swimming pool) at Disneyland Paris by way of a belated birthday celebration for Mick. Clearly that gathering will now not be happening. It remains to be seen whether we are able to get refunds or claim on insurance.

Assessing the state of Bertie’s pantry (a storage box in his garage) when we got home, I see that I managed to pack an appropriate amount of chutney for this trip, and I think Mick’s marmalade supply would also have lasted until mid-April. However, I under-packed on jam and was down to my last fifth of a jar when we came home. Obviously, we could have bought any of these items in Spain, but it would have been annoying when I’ve got a cupboard full of home-made preserves at home. Must do better next time!

We also under-packed on crosswords. Every day we do a cryptic on our tablet, working a month in arrears so that we don’t have to find wifi to download newspapers too often. We also usually have with us a crossword book and this trip was no exception. However, we packed a book that only had something like 50 empty puzzles in a book of 100, for a trip that was just shy of 90 days long. Rationing (unnecessary as things turned out) had begun only about a month into the trip.

As for being home unexpectedly early, I confess we have indulged ourselves. On the first day (over eight weeks after we last had a wash using a mains water supply) I had both a bath *and* a shower. Then we went to bed without doing the dishes (something that *never* happens in Bertie). We also called out for a takeaway delivery (something I don’t think we have ever done before). I would say that normality will soon resume, but I have no idea what ‘normal’ looks like now, nor what it will look like tomorrow and next week!

Whilst we received no advice or mandate to isolate ourselves once home, given we had come from the fourth most infected country in Europe (albeit the region we were in had, at the time we left, very few diagnosed cases), it seemed a sensible precaution to keep ourselves to ourselves for fourteen days, for fear of being unwitting carriers. My one exception to staying at home is that I consider that running alone on ‘from home’ routes* is acceptable and safe (for others; my main concerns are of transmission not contraction). What has been noticeable this last week is the number of people using one of our local lanes for exercise – I reckon that I saw more people on foot on that lane on Friday (when I passed along it twice) than I’ve seen cumulatively along there before. The lane is wide enough for two cars to pass, so it’s easy for pedestrians to give each other a wide berth, but it seems that an unfortunate side effect of the current state of worry and uncertainty is that people are behaving as if eye contact, nodding or uttering a greeting are also dangerous activities. We live in a friendly place where people do usually acknowledge each other on the streets, so I do hope this is not a lasting effect.    

I’ve nowt else of relevance to report, except that I finally finished these socks that were started in Spain a few weeks ago.

The toes don’t match as it turns out that 100g of WYS 4-ply isn’t quite enough for two pairs of matching trainer socks in Mick’s size.

<sup>(*I’m avoiding the canal for the time being. If I head south then it’s guaranteed that I’ll meet dog walkers and the path isn’t wide enough to pass at a safe distance. To the north it’s rare that I’ve ever met anyone, but it’s likely to be a hideous mud-fest at the moment.

General note: Reading back through what I’ve written I realise I’ve not actually referred to Covid-19 (Corona Virus Disease – identified in 2019) and surely anyone who may read this at any time in the next few years will know what situation I’m talking about, but just in case when I’m in my dotage and my memory is fading even more than it is just now and I can’t remember what it was that occurred in 2020, I’ll just pop this little note here.)</sup>

Tuesday 17 March - Home

Weather: A frost overnight and a fair morning.

Just before 8 o’clock this morning, we pulled off the Autoroute onto the approach road to the Eurotunnel Terminal, fully expecting there to be queues and delays. The reality was surprisingly different.

Driving straight up to a check-in machine we were offered a place on the 0819 crossing. It was only as we pulled away, towards French border control, that I realised quite how soon 0819 was.

The lack of time was no problem. We were waved through French border control without our passports being checked. The next control is customs which is usually the longest hold-up as they get a number of vehicles in a queue before doing swab tests on all of them, but today all of the officials were indoors so we drove straight through.  Next up was UK border control, where they did take and scan our passports, but didn’t ask the usual suite of questions (or, indeed, any questions). Within minutes we were heading off to the queue for the Shuttle. Incredibly, just twelve minutes after leaving the Autoroute we were on the train. An hour before we were even due to leave France, we were in the UK.

Our departure from France was just a few hours ahead of the new restrictions on movement and border closure, announced at 8pm yesterday and effective from noon today. They put France into a similar ‘lock down’ position as Spain, except that in France anybody leaving home is required to have in their possession a written declaration as to which of the limited permissible reasons to be outside applies to their movement. Neither the new rules nor the closure of the border would have prevented us from leaving even if we hadn’t brought our return to the UK forward by a day and a half, as they are still allowing EU citizens* to transit through the country to return home, but to leave this morning gave greater ease and certainty. Moreover, who knows what may happen to Tunnel and ferry crossings over the next few days?

Usually by the time we arrive home from a trip we already have plans for the next one. Unsurprisingly, that’s not the case this time…

(*Until the end of this year we still qualify for rights as EU citizens even though we no longer have that standing.)

Monday 16 March - Montreuil-sur-Mer

Where's Bertie? He's at the Aire in Montreuil-sur-Mer. He made a quick visit here on 21 March last year, but we didn't stay the night on that occasion. Exact location: 50.45903, 1.76003.
Weather: Rain before dawn, then gradually clearing this morning until we got sunshine late this afternoon. The change in weather may have been more to do with our movement than that of the weather front.

The church at Villedômer, snapped last night when it was so quiet that we walked down the middle of the streets.

This morning, for the first time since 26 January, we heard the patter of rain on Bertie's roof. Unfortunately it started at twenty past five and, unaccustomed to the sound, it woke us up. We did manage to doze (Mick) and listen to an audiobook (me) for an hour before getting up to put the kettle on.

By half past seven we were rolling out of the Aire*. Aside from having breakfasted, I'd filled our travel mugs (as I usually do for long journeys) and also a flask, determined to save time during the day, such that we would arrive at our destination at an earlier hour than the last couple of days.

It worked out well. Our elevenses stop was less than twenty minutes, giving enough time for me to brew coffee, have a quick snack, wash our travel mugs and decant that coffee into them. My mug has held lemon and ginger tea for the last two days and even after washing it the taint still remained. Accordingly, it was a novel flavour of coffee I had today.

The short elevenses break meant that with a judicious use of a small section of toll road at the end of the day, we arrived here before 1330, and thus didn't need to stop for lunch en-route**. That was a far better length of driving day; we had a whole afternoon at our disposal to fritter away, which is the way I like it.

So, after lunch we took a walk around the ramparts that form a 1.4-mile circuit around the town. That served as a successful recce for a run an hour later, when I did another three circuits.

No safety rails here to protect careless people from that drop!

It was notable, when we walked around, that everyone we passed gave us an abnormally wide berth, all of them stepping off the path even though we had formed into single file and there was room on the path. Some people positively flinched as they passed and looked very much like they were holding their breath. I assume this was general coronavirus-caution, rather than anything specifically related to our appearance. I'm working on the basis (having read up somewhat on the subject) that the chances of transmission are negligible in such a fresh-air, in-passing context, which is why I was happy to go out for a walk and a run even though we will be keeping ourselves to ourselves for the next couple of weeks, as a precaution due to having been in Spain (which is why we didn't stop at a boulangerie or supermarket today, even though we've negligently run out of cake and bread).

I'll finish with a few words on the situation in Spain: if we hadn't decided to leave on Saturday morning it is now clear that we would have decided to do so just a few hours later. Reports are that many motorhome Aires have been closed, including access to the service points, and even where campsites are not ejecting their residents, they're not letting new ones in. Thus, it would have been difficult to find anywhere to park that would have been acceptable to both us and the authorities, and accessing toilet emptying and water points may have become a serious issue. Moreover, the restrictions on movement are so strict (enforceable by some harsh penalties) that staying put would have meant being confined to Bertie's interior for at least the next two weeks. We would have been allowed out to visit the supermarket and that would have been it (although if we could have obtained a dog at short notice, walking it would also have given us just cause to be outside). The UK may well find itself in the same position soon (and bear in mind the situation in most of Spain went from normal to emergency in the space of 3 days), but at least at home we have more space, more to entertain ourselves, services on tap and (provided there are any groceries available to be bought once we get home!) more storage space for fresh and frozen food.

As for France, the roads didn't seem appreciably any less busy than normal, but we did drive through some towns today and with almost all businesses shut, the pavements were pretty well deserted.

A sad sight, the equivalent of which is seen all over France and Spain at the moment. As necessary as it is, you have to feel for these small businesses.

^{(*Apparently we woke our neighbours with our early start. We know that because they arrived here in Montreuil a couple of hours after us this afternoon and told us so. They'd also been in Capbreton the night before. Our itinerary of Aires this weekend must be the obvious stopping points if driving southern Spain to Calais in the space of 3 days!
**Talking of stopping for lunch en-route, with the closure of all bars and restaurants in France and Spain I spared a thought today for the long distance drivers who were already in transit on the weekend when the relevant restrictions came into operation. Suddenly they could no longer buy meals at the roadside, and artic drivers are hardly in a good position to pull into a town to visit a supermarket. We passed one boulangerie alongside a main road that had more than half a dozen lorries parked outside).}

Sunday 15 March - Villedômer

Where's Bertie? He's at the Aire in Villedômer. I think it's his fourth visit here, the most recent being less than 2 months ago, on 23 January.
Weather: Glorious sunshine all day and nice and warm (21 degrees). Shame we weren't outside in it!

I'm pleased to report that nothing of interest has happened today, although we have driven for so many hours as to make it feel like a job. When we left Castellón yesterday morning, we had Villedômer down as our fourth night-stop, yet here we are two days later.

We didn't get an early start, mainly because yesterday was tiring and when my alarm went off at its customary time this morning, I turned it off and immediately went back to sleep. Goodness knows how late we would have slept if it hadn't been for the bread van arriving at 0845, announcing its arrival with the tooting of its horn.

What a lovely day!

After a quick visit to the viewpoint above the beach to watch the surfers for a few minutes, we hit the road at around 1045.
Motorways (as busy as we'd expect them to be on a Sunday) made up most of our day, including an extended stint on a toll road at the end of the day, by which time I was so fed up with being in a moving vehicle that paying €14 to arrive at our destination a little sooner, and without having to concentrate on junctions, roundabouts and endlessly changing speed limits, seemed like reasonable value.

The only other thing that happened today is that I changed our Channel Tunnel booking again, having decided to have a third big day of driving tomorrow (a decision helped by the realisation that the current restrictions on business in France means that the commercial Aire we'd intended to use tomorrow night will be closed). As I dialled the number* yesterday to make the original change, bringing it forward to Wednesday evening, I fully expected to have a long wait in a queue. To my surprise, my call was answered on the first ring. Today I couldn't get through at all first thing, and when I did get into the queue just before lunchtime, I stayed there a while, but with the end result that we are now booked onto a crossing on Tuesday morning. That gives us some uncertainty as to where we're going to stay tomorrow night, as we need to be reasonably close to Calais. The motorhome parking at Cite Europe has been removed, and our other local choice at Wissant is currently being advised against, due to migrant activity (as in trying to enter and stow away in motorhomes during the night).

I'm not known for worrying about tomorrow's night-stop in advance, though, so I'll put some thought into the question as we move north in the morning. For the moment, I need to go and stretch my legs to makeup for having spent the last 9 hours sitting down.

^{(*I used a Tesco voucher to pay for most of our outward fare on the tunnel. To use a voucher, you have to book by phone. You get sent the same sort of booking reference and on-line password as you do when booking on-line, but when I tried to amend our booking via t'interweb yesterday I was told I could only do so by phone. Assuming that's entirely related to how I paid for the original tickets (because I've certainly amended bookings online before) then my lesson learnt here is that if you only have enough vouchers to pay for part of one of the fares, then book the outbound by phone and the return online. It'll make no difference to the practicalities or the price, but it'll make changing the return leg easier (not that it's difficult to do it by phone, provided half the world isn't trying to do the same at the same time, which I acknowledge is a highly unusual situation.)}

Saturday 14 March - Capbreton (France)

Where's Bertie? After a big day of driving, he's sitting at the Aire at Capbreton at a cost of €10 (including electricity). He's been here before, on 13/14 October 2017.
Weather: I don't think we saw a cloud all day. Would have been a lovely day to be by the Mediterrainean...

The compromise position we reached last night on the stay/go question was to head up the coast to Peñiscola, book into a campsite and stay there, on a night-by-night basis for as long as we wanted or needed. That way we would have access to services, in a place that we're led to believe has merit for a long stay, without worries about moving around.

On that basis, we didn't set an early alarm this morning and I started my day exactly as I would have if the world was still normal: I went for a run.

I got back and had a leisurely breakfast, over which I saw increasing first-hand reports of campsites in nearby towns closing, ejecting all of their residents, and the police going around all motorhomes parked on Aires, car parks or in the streets and telling them to leave. I checked availability on the Channel Tunnel for later this week and a swift decision was made to head home.

When we hit the road sometime after 10am, the rough plan was to repeat our outward journey in reverse, which would have seen us cross the border into France on Monday.

By the time we stopped for lunch we'd decided to roll two days into one and reach Pamplona today. Then we saw that more countries had closed their borders, making more real the risk that France would follow suit. Suddenly it seemed an entirely sensible idea to cross the French border today.

What we didn't know at the time was that countrywide restrictions had been placed on movement in Spain, but it did explain why the motorways were so quiet. Many a motorhome passed us, fleeing north like us, as did some lorries, but cars were relatively few and far between. The southbound carriageway was quieter still.

Our only other pause was for diesel at a motorway service station (which was only 10 cents per litre more than the cheapest we'd seen off-motorway). Even though petrol stations are exempt from the general business closures, we were a little surprised to pull in and find the grilles pulled across the doors and signs taped to the pumps. We couldn't comprehend the signs, but we soon twigged that the station was open, with payment via the 'Night Pay' window.

A few minutes before 6pm we crossed the border into France, where half a dozen border control officers were standing in between lanes, just after the toll booths (we forked out for tolls the whole way today), but as far as we could see, weren't stopping anyone.

Capbreton was not the first night-stop we visited after crossing the border. The first place we went to in Urrugne would have been okay, but no more than okay; Capbreton was only 45 minutes further and we knew it would be nicer, quieter and less sloping (I'd forgotten at that point that you get electricity for your money here as well).

If it wasn't Sunday tomorrow, I'd be happy to stay here for two nights, as we're now so ahead of schedule that we have time to kill before our re-booked Chunnel crossing (although we could potentially move it again). However, Sundays are good for driving, so we will head further north tomorrow. I understand that some virus-related restrictions have now been put in place in France; people seemed to be going about their business as normal as we drove through today. I wonder if we'll notice such a marked difference over the next couple of days, as we've witnessed in Spain over the last couple?

^{(*Is that logical? You shut down all movement in and out of a place for the purposes of disease control, then tell hundreds of people who may have been in that area for weeks or months that they have to leave. They then move on to the next region, where movement has not yet been restricted, potentially risking greater spread of the virus.)}

Friday 13 March - Castellón

Where's Bertie? He's sitting looking at the beach, and the Mediterranean beyond, from a car park outside the airfield at Castellón. Exact location: 39.99806, 0.02829.
Weather: Sunny and warm when out of the breeze.

Yesterday the supermarket shelves were bare and thus our need for fresh fruit and veg remained. The obvious thing to do, it seemed to us, was to hit the supermarket first thing this morning.

It was apparent even from 100m away that we were not the only people to have that thought and the ensuing experience was not like anything I have ever seen before.

By ten past nine (they open at 9) it felt like everyone in the entire town was in that shop (making it by far the riskiest place we've been in terms of virus transmission) and, of course, all those people then needed to pay for their shopping. With top marks to the supermarket, they managed to open all of the tills, but to cope with the volume of shoppers they needed about ten times as many. By the time we (with our paltry trolley of ten items, in amongst a sea of trolleys piled high) made it through the check-outs the queues from every single cash desk stretched the whole way up each aisle to the back of the shop. The state of chaos was accelerating as more and more people tried to work out where the queues started/ended and I would expect that soon afterwards tempers would have started to fray. As I said, I've never seen anything like it ... and I was very glad we weren't even three minutes later arriving and thus were able to get through the checkouts whilst only mild chaos reigned. (An hour later, as I made coffee, I realised we'd forgotten to buy pastries. There was no chance of going back to rectify the omission!)

Having toted our stuff back to Bertie (half a mile away, at the Aire), we were surprised to see that a mass exodus had occurred in our absence. Chatting to a few of those who remained, we all assumed that this was because the French and Dutch (who made up the majority of those who had left) had made a run for the French border amid rumours of a possible closure.

With all of the available space, we wondered if we could stay an extra day, so Mick went to ask permission at the nearby 'Aire Control' office. 'No' came the definitive reply.

Having run past the place where we are now, we had yesterday assessed our chances of getting a space here as somewhere around zero. This morning, with the mass exodus up the road, our optimism soared so this is where we came, and to our surprise found just one empty space. It only later occurred to us that we'd witnessed official-looking people checking number plates at the Aire yesterday afternoon and this morning and maybe the departures were because people had overstayed and been told to leave.

As you might expect, given the current situation with Coronavirus, we've had a few discussions about whether we should stay put or head home and had pretty well come down on the side of 'stay'. The question then became whether we were going to get stuck in Spain, in which case we would head south again, or whether we were going to be able to leave as planned in a few weeks, in which case we would likely stay around this area. Indeed, we could happily stay exactly where we are for a good while, if we weren't limited by our toilet capacity (this is only a car park, so it has no facilities, although there is a water tap across the road and a public toilet (not a nice one!) just up the road).

Then this afternoon the situation in Spain escalated. A state of emergency has been declared, a number of towns to the south have restricted movement (removing our option to return to that area), as have a couple of places to the north of us. Amongst other restrictions, the region we are in has closed all bars and restaurants as of this evening.

So, we can stay, enjoy the climate and hope restrictions don't go so far as to stop us wandering around outdoors at will, and hope that we can get home as planned next month. Or we can cut short and enjoy the certainty of being home, even though we won't enjoy the climate. Decisions, decisions...

(No photos today. I really wanted to take some in the supermarket, but felt it would be impolite, and whilst we did walk a few miles along the coast, I took not a single snap on the basis that it wouldn't be dissimilar to the views I shared over the last couple of day.)

Thursday 12 March - Castellón Grau

Where's Bertie? He's still at the Aire by the beach in Castellón.
Weather: A bit of high cloud started the day, then a bit of sea fog rolled in (although at that point it was sunny a few miles up the coast, which is where I was), finally clearing around lunchtime to give us sunshine for the rest of the day.

After a poor night's sleep (it involved a suspected mosquito) and with an ongoing mild allergic reaction (I assume to the blossom that's around at the moment), I was ready to write off this morning's intended longish run and replace it with a short leg-stretch. Just before we stepped out the door I impulsively grabbed my running vest, some food and water, just in case I got a mile and a half up the road and decided I wanted to carry on. That's exactly what happened. It turns out that whilst the cycle route ends 5.5 miles from here, the promenade continues for 6.6 miles, making it perfect for a half marathon distance.

It was sunny in Benicassim, the next resort north along the coast.

A host of eating and drinking, interspersed with chatting with some neighbours, filled a few hours, then this afternoon we thought we'd take a walk up to the nearest supermarket to grab a couple of items of fruit and veg. There we discovered that panic buying, which we know has been an issue in the UK for a week or so now, has hit Spain too. Yesterday the shelves were perfectly well stocked. This afternoon the shop was quiet and entire aisles had been stripped of their wares. Not a single toilet or kitchen roll remained (we didn't need any, but walked that aisle just out of interest, having seen the rest of the store), just a few pieces of fruit and veg were left on display (we weren't able to get any of the items we'd gone for, but did buy oranges in lieu of bananas), the fresh meat aisle was similar; all big bottles of water had gone (good job we drink the stuff that comes out of taps!); the pasta shelf was bare. We, of course, reacted to this by doing our own bit of panic buying: we bought 1kg of rice.

Slim pickings on the meat shelves

We have no idea what has been said in the Spanish media to have caused this reaction today, but I did check out the current reported number of cases of Coronavirus. Last I'd seen (a few days ago now) the UK had two hundred and something cases, versus five hundred and something in Spain. Today Spain was reporting over 3000.

Yesterday I read that the major week-long Fallos festival in Valencia, that was due to start today, had been postponed. So has the Malaga half marathon, which is not, to the best of my knowledge, a major event (I did vaguely consider entering the Elche Half, another minor event, which was due to take place this weekend; I decided against, but presumably that has been cancelled too). Will we be affected by travel restrictions at some point? (if I knew where to insert a shrugging emoticon that's exactly what I'd do)

Sculpture of the day

Wednesday 11 March - Castellón Grau

Where's Bertie? He's at an Aire opposite the beach, and just along from the port, at Castellón. Exact location: 39.97983, 0.02255.
Weather: A lovely sunny day and warm enough to be out in shorts and t-shirt.

A 40-space free Aire with a service point right on the coast is always going to have more demand than spaces. Fortunately this place also has a 48-hour limit, which is allegedly enforced*, so we employed our usual tactics in such cases and arrived at 10.30am - the peak time for departures in our general (non-city-Aire) experience. We arrived to find plenty of availability, but an hour and a half later all slots were full and van after van has since arrived, driven around optimistically then left. Bertie is probably fuelling their optimism as he's smaller than his neighbours, and we've parked him right at the back of the slot, so on the approach it looks like this space is empty.

Looking across the beach

With elevenses time rapidly approaching we headed off towards the port, passing a large nice-looking park on our way, just beyond which we found a Mercadona supermarket that supplied us with bread and some very tasty pastries.

Looking down the beach

Post elevenses and pre-lunch we headed off in the other direction, walking the broad beachside promenade/cycle route until it met a road. The map tells me that the route continues along that road giving a total length from Bertie of 5.5 miles. That will be useful for a run.

This afternoon I broke the rules, although in my defence: a) I didn't know about the rule at the time; and b) it's a ridiculous rule. A few days ago I witnessed a woman spend hours cleaning her motorhome and wondered how she could possibly find that much to do in a space so small. I decided that she put me to shame, so this afternoon I threw Mick out for a while whilst I swept and scrubbed. It was only afterwards, when I took myself for a little stroll that I stopped to read the full regulations for staying here and discovered that 'cleaning any part, inside or outside' is prohibited. So, no wiping down the stove or the worksurfaces after tea tonight...

Sculpture of the day

^{(*I reckon the fact that the parking bays are so narrow also encourages both greater compliance with the 'no camping behaviour' rule and less inclination to overstay.)}

Tuesday 10 March - La Vall d'Uixó

Where's Bertie? He's still listing to the right on this sloping car park at La Vall d'Uixó .
Weather:A sunny start, swiftly followed by layer of high cloud forming, which has stayed with us all day.

No culture today; it's been a day of activity.

Yesterday I'd spotted on the map that we are surrounded by paths running through the nearby hills and after consulting Wikiloc I found that by far the two most popular routes hereabouts are a 16km circuit (the PR241) and a 10km circuit, following the PR241 up a nearby hill ('Alto de la Pipa'), before taking a shorter route back.

Having started the day with runs (5 miles for me; 5km for Mick), we opted for the shorter walk and we set out straight after lunch.

I'll tell the story in captions below these photos:

The first stretch out of town took us along a river (currently dry). The initial section was stony and not particularly comfortable to walk; the latter stage had this covered pipeline giving easy tread.

Then a million mini switchbacks led us wiggling steeply upwards.

I'd just snapped a view along to the next village inland (which was much better to the naked eye)...

...when I rounded a bend and came to a roped section. The ropes were only for the overly nervous, as whilst the drop off to the left was significant (I'm not sure whether you can see that drop at all in this snap?), the path was wide enough for comfort.

Around another bend and the next roped section was more vertical. It was the first of quite a few scrambly sections, but all short and easy (in ascent, at least!)

Finally, after being fooled neither by a turned signpost on the col, nor by my confusion between east and west, we made it up to the summit (589m) - a tremendous viewpoint, although I'm subjecting you to the selfie rather than treating you to the views.

The first mile or so of the descent was slow going, on a narrow path on variously rocky or eroded terain, such that after 2 hours we were only half way through the 10km outing. It was starting to look like going out without a snack was a poor decision, but then we hit a track and our average speed doubled. Even so, our quick nip into Aldi on the way back to Bertie could easily have got out of hand if I hadn't recognised that I very much had a 'shopping when hungry' head on!

It was a good and varied route that was more demanding than expected. I think my legs would appreciate a rest tomorrow.

The gold dot is Bertie's location. The arrows point in the direction we walked. 

<sup>(As an aside, we've just had a string of three odd occurrences in the space of 24 hours:
1) Yesterday morning, at Bellús, we went to use the service point and found a man down the adjacent manhole. He wasn't dressed as a workman (indeed, as he emerged we saw he was wearing flip-flops), and was weilding a mop. The drain was not blocked. After a while of prodding around, he emerged, replaced the manhole cover, and told us in French that we could proceed. He then returned to a nearby French motorhome. What was all that about?! We can only guess that he accidentally dropped something down the drain whilst emptying some waste water and was trying to retrieve it.
2) Until first thing this morning here in La Vall d'Uixó, we had a British van as our immediate neighbour. I'm not sure if our presence somehow offended them, but they resolutely refused to acknowledge us, even though our doors were facing and they were occasionally outside as we came and went. I can understand that not everyone wants to chat, but I can't think of any other occasion when a motorhomer (and certainly not a neighbour) has failed to at least respond to a nod or a greeting.
3) Apparently the owners of a French van here also annoyed some of the German contingent this morning. We had a front row seat as the altercation developed at the service point when, apparently, all the Germans had an urgent need to empty their toilet cassettes, one straight after another, even though the French van was using the service point. It looked at one point like the contents of one toilet were going to be used as a weapon. I don't think anyone went away happy and feel that there must have been more to it than simply the use of the service point.

It's also slightly odd that since around 9 this morning there has only been Bertie and a Swedish van in the official motorhome parking area (of 8 extra-long, extra-wide bays). There are plenty of other vans here, but they're all at the other side of the car park - which is just as slopey as where we are.)</sup> 

Monday 9 March - La Vall d'Uixó

Where's Bertie? He's in an Aire at the Coves de Sant Josep in La Vall d'Uixó. Exact location: 39.82353, -0.25018.
Weather: A thin layer of cloud this morning gave way to blue skies this afternoon.

I said at the beginning of last week that by the end of the week we would have jumped all the way up to the coast to the north of Valencia. Only four days later than planned, and after a couple of hours of driving this morning*, here we are ... except we're not on the coast because I spotted this Aire and thought it might be an interesting place to visit. We are, however, now a little further north than where we first hit the Spanish coast six weeks ago.

A couple of forays out since arriving here, on the edge of the sizeable town of La Vall d'Uixó, have not involved a tour of the caves in whose car park we are sitting, as, from all the information I've seen, I'm not sure I'd enjoy it (bearing in mind other caves I've visited in the past) enough to justify the entrance fee. During our wanderings, we have, however, visited most of the other signed points of interest (a couple of chapels - one on a hillside above the town, the other up above the caves, remains of an historic aqueduct, and an archeological site of an old settlement) - all of which have scored at the very bottom end of the 'How Interesting!' scale, but it doesn't much matter as it's a pleasant enough location just for ambling around on the local paths.

We've also learnt that a 100km defensive front, built to resist Franco's forces during the 'Levante Offensive' in 1938, during the Spanish Civil War, runs through the hills only a few hundred metres from where we're sitting. Having gone out without taking any water with us this afternoon, on a stroll that turned out to be longer than intended, thirst caused us to turn back just before we got to the remaining evidence of that defensive line, but the route we plan to take tomorrow may well take us there.

Ermita Sant Antonio. Not an interesting building, from my point of view, but ...

...its elevated position did give a good view up the valley...

...and down the valley to the sea...

...and across the valley. Spot Bertie.


^{(*We nearly got distracted by the town of Xàtiva, within 10km of our start point. When I spotted an impressive-looking castle/fortification spreading across the hill above the town I quickly looked up to see if there was anywhere we could stay in the town. There was, but we steeled our resolve (we simply can't stop *everywhere* that looks interesting!) and drove on.)}

Saturday and Sunday 7-8 March

Where's Bertie? He's still in the Aire at Bellús.
Weather: Overcast start yesterday, before clearing in the afternoon; breezy again. Gloriously sunny and calm today and a pleasant 22 degrees this afternoon.

At a glance Bellús is a standard Spanish village located out in the sticks. Closer inspection, however, reveals it to be quite a smart place. It does have the obligatory abandoned buildings/building projects, but the rest are mainly well kept and there are signs at various points around the village stating, to the last cent, how much has been spent on improvement schemes for its open spaces.

The town hall has also gone to the trouble of installing multi-lingual (Castillian, Valencian and English) signs at all of its Points of Interest. That there are only five of them, and none of them overly interesting, doesn't outweigh my appreciation of the fact that they are trying to make their little settlement attractive to visitors.

The main draw of the location was, we thought, the caves, the nearest of which is about a mile the other side of the village. However, when we walked out there for a little look, it appeared that the most popular weekend pastime is climbing, followed closely by picnicking in one of the two picnic areas that sit between the trail and the river.

Here are some snaps:

Spot the climbers. Surprising (to my mind) how few were wearing helmets. There's also one of the caves visible in this shot.

Some of the caves display ancient drawings and etchings (and also have railings so you can't get near). There is more contemporary art elsewhere nearby.

On last weekend's blog post from La Azohía, I pondered whether it was the proximity of March (it was 29 Feb at the time, which is as good as 1 Mar, isn't it?) that had caused a sudden influx of Spanish weekenders. I'm now feeling more convinced that 1 March marks the start of their season, as the Aire here, as well as the adjacent picnic area, suddenly filled up with vans yesterday with many of the new arrivals being Spanish. Most of those new arrivals left again today, leaving just the Brits, Dutch, Germans and French (who have mainly sorted themselves into nationalities within the four parking areas here; I wonder how much is by accident, subconscious or by design. I hadn't noticed that all of our neighbours were British until after we'd chosen and pulled into our parking space). Oddly, there don't seem to be any Scandinavians here.