A few weeks ago we bought a new backpacking tent and intended for her maiden voyage to be on 12 April*, with a quick overnight trip from Ma-in-Law's house in Halifax. That plan got as far as digging out our backpacking gear (dormant since May 2019) and packing our bags during the week prior. Then I examined the weather forecast, which was really quite good and, via a few intermediate plans, we concluded that our time and the weather window would be much better spent conducting a recce of the northern end of the Lakeland 50 route. Our backpacks were unpacked and my attention turned to a different set of plans using Erica as our accommodation.
Half a day was spent coming up with a complicated set of logistics involving four circular day walks (so as to avoid public transport) which in total would cover the relevant section of the L50 route. I then needed to find convenient places to stay. For various reasons, we didn't want to kip in laybys or car parks on this trip, but equally we weren't prepared to spend £31 a night for a patch of grass on which to park Erica (particularly in view of campsite facilities currently being closed). It was sometime whilst I was trying to solve that conundrum that I realised that the whole endeavour would be much more straightforward and efficient if Mick and I didn't walk together. Instead of four circular day walks (involving a lot of unnecessary miles on the return leg of each day), if one of us walked and the other drove, we could each cover the whole distance in one day, with a support-point in the middle. I located a campsite that was sufficiently convenient for the revised plan and we began the process of packing Erica for a couple of days away.
(*12 April was the first day when it was generally acknowledged to be acceptable to spend a night away from home (other than in one's bubble), being the date when self-contained holiday accommodation was allowed to reopen. I didn't trouble myself to read the legislation after 29 March, but I'm pretty sure the changes made on that day (i.e. the removal of the 'stay at home' requirements) permitted one to go away in a van, provided it was parked in a lawful non-campsite location. Likewise, I don't believe one would have been breaching the Coronavirus legislation to have wild camped in a tent after that date. However, given the widely held belief that these activities weren't legal until 12 April, we decided that having waited this long for a trip, we could wait the extra days between these two key dates.
As a separate aside: when movement restrictions were lifted last summer we decided to stay at home. At that time it didn't feel appropriate, to us, to be moving around the country and potentially being unwitting spreaders of the virus from a more populous area to a less populous one. That was, of course, a tiny risk, given that we generally keep ourselves to ourselves even in normal times, but there was also the issue of the feelings of locals, whether rational or not. I think two things caused us to run for the hills at the first opportunity this time around: 1) we've had enough of being at home! (an entirely selfish reason, but true); and more importantly, 2) the most at-risk groups of society have now had their vaccinations, making it feel entirely more reasonable to be moving around).
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