Flying in a Box

 

When I started this blog I wanted to use it as a place to share all the exciting places we've been to in the caravan, unusual walks, cycle routes...

Well, we took the 'van for a service in February 2020, then we washed it, and then... took it for another service in February 2021. It's been that kind of year. But I'm not complaining; I'm just grateful to still be here. And hey, we've discovered lots of walks, cycle routes and places we didn't know existed within a few miles of our home on the Wirral. It's given us a new perspective about where we live.

Still, I missed the caravan.

I haven't been totally inactive though. I published book three of the Travelling in a Box series. If you've read the other two books you'll have picked up hints that we were about to board a plane for the very first time, and... well the title gives it away, doesn't it. Flying in a Box isn't just about fear of flying or our frenetic road trip around California. It isn't just about the snake and bear attacks or the Oscar-like award ceremony where I received a writing award. No, after America we needed to unwind, and what better way to chill than embarking on a nerve-jangling, thousand-mile tow down to the French Mediterranean.

There's even a flashback to a wild camping trip (wild in the lunatic sense) I tried, with a school friend, in our early teens. And yes, me and Sarah get to Italy. But was it Milan? That would be telling. If you want to know you'll have to read the book. This link will take you straight to it.

Let's hope 2021 will be a better year for all of us.

Two in a Box

Moreton-in-Marsh: Full of autumn colour

I sometimes think the caravan can be more fun in the winter than in summer. Back in the days of failed heating, zero insulation and ice cold, hand numbing tap water I might have argued the other way, but winter caravanning, now, is good. It is warmer and more cosy in the caravan that at home.

We headed for the Cotswolds. I had a sci-fi convention to attend in Bristol and I need no further excuse.

But that was the end of October, early November. Today is 29^th November, so why only talk about it now? Well, I’ve had a project. I’ve been preoccupied with NaNoWriMo.

What is NaNoWriMo?
It’s short for National Novel Writing Month and it comes around every November, and it is a kind of challenge, to write a fifty thousand word novel in the thirty days of November. It’s supported by websites and a buddy network and graphs. (I can't resist graphs. Graphs plus writing: sign me up.)
Well, I’ve never tried NaNoWriMo before. It’s been on the to-do list for years. Maybe this is the year to start. 

“I’m going to try NaNoWriMo,” I said. 

We were in the caravan at Moreton-in-Marsh. Outside was dark, nearly freezing and only five o’clock.

“What’s NaNoWriMo?” said Sarah.

I explained.

“You’re going to write a full novel in November? The whole thing?”

“No. Not a novel. Something else.”

“So…?”

“I can’t write the third Sphere of Influence novel because I need to edit the second book first. The story might change.”

“What are you going to write then?”

“Two in a Box.”

And that’s how it started. I’d never intended Travelling in a Box to be a series, but then the book did come to an end in 2001, and I suppose a lot of stuff has happened since then: problems with the old caravan after it started to bend, arrested in Chamonix, losing part of the car in Belgium… and the whole family growing up and moving out thing. Yes, there’s at least one other book there.

So I pulled out the laptop and started, on that dark cold night in Moreton-in-Marsh, two thousand words a day, my target.

And here I am, at the end of November, the proud owner of a NaNoWriMo badge and fifty-thousand words of Two in a Box in the can. I’m not finished yet. I’m guessing another thirty thousand should nail it. But I imagine Two in a Box will be hitting Amazon early in the year. You heard about it here first. More news to follow in the blog.

Okay, so what of Bristol and the Cotswolds?

Loved it! Bristolcon was fabulous, as always. Nothing went wrong with our travel plans. Nothing fell off the car. Nothing broke in the caravan. Didn't need to hunt down any hospital A&Es... Lovely caravan sites, autumn colours were fabulous. Makes a rotten story when that happens, doesn't it? 

So I’ll just tell it in pictures:    

The village of Broadway

Bourton in the Water

Broadway Tower

A Postcard from Wales

Rhosson Ganol. Wish you were here?

Does it mark me out as being a bit old fashioned, that I send postcards when I’m on holiday? I could email or Instagram or put pictures on Facebook. Hell, I could just ring people. It’s not hard in this day and age.

It isn’t the same though. A postcard carries history. It feels travelled. A postcard will often bear the scars of a journey and adventure: the words might be smeared by rain; the corners are often tatty and dog-eared; the postman might have left some of his breakfast on the picture on the front. Often times the stamp will be postmarked with a blurry ink-pad logo that has missed the stamp and obliterates half the words. If you’re lucky it will have been lost and found and postmarked twice. All of this is evidence that you are far far away. Somewhere remote… On Holiday!

Postcards are hard to write. You sit in the coffee shop, pen in hand, and decide who will write to whom. “I’ll do the kids, you do the parents, yeah?”

“Okay.”

“What are you going to write?”

“Dunno.”

I wonder how many cards I’ve written over the years that start ‘Having a great time’ while the rain softens and delaminates the card and the ink blooms and spreads.

But we always write them. It wouldn’t be a holiday otherwise.

We’re in St Davids, in Pembrokeshire, South West Wales. (Actually I’m back home, reminiscing. No internet in St Davids! But hey, I’ll stay in the present just to maintain the illusion).

I’m leery about divulging the name of the site, because this is probably the best campsite in the world. It certainly has the best view. But here goes, at the risk of scuppering things for years to come when we can’t get on because it’s fully booked, our site is called Rhosson Ganol, and it is just west of St Davids overlooking the St Justinians lifeboat station. It is a small piece of heaven. There are no electrics, there is no mobile signal, it isn’t flat, but it is lovely.

There is a postbox. (See picture) It’s a good thing. St Davids is about four miles away, and to use the car feels like cheating. But it’s good. This is all the civilisation we need on holiday: a tap, an Elsan point and a postbox.

We finished our cards and strolled down the lane so they’d catch the morning collection. Sarah climbed through the nettles beside the wall and tried to post the cards. They wouldn’t go in. She tried again. Some kind of obstruction.

Then the air went black.

It seems our postbox has become a bees nest. Or it might have been wasps, some evil, buzzy, stingy thing for sure - we didn’t hang around for entomology or apiology or whatever.

We walked to St Davids.

More camping and caravanning tales can be found in  the Travelling in a Box paperback/ebook.  To buy a copy, take a look at the web site, TravellinginaBox.com 

Insurance in the Age of Steam

I was reminded by someone at work, today, just how easy life has become with the internet.

“Oh, my car insurance just ran out,” she said. “I’d better renew it.”

She went online and five minutes later she was done. Easy.

I recalled the time, a few years back, in the eighties. Eek, that was thirty-odd years ago! Hard to believe.

We were camping. We had chosen a site miles from anywhere, up in the mountains behind Harlech, in North Wales. It was raining. Some things don’t change.

“The car tax runs out at the end of the week,” I said, looking at the disc on car windscreen. There was little else to look at. Beyond the windscreen there was mist. We were sitting in the car because we needed a change from lying in the tent; letting the oxygen run down to our feet for a change.

“Is it a problem?” said Sarah.

“Nah, we’ll be home in a few days. There’s no need to—”

And I stopped. We always renewed our MOT and car insurance a couple of weeks ahead of the car tax to be on the safe side. You can’t get a tax disc unless you have MOT and insurance, and in those days we didn’t have anywhere to park off-street. I’d been caught out once before, incurring fines and points and humiliation even though I’d been honest and never driven the car.

I rummaged through the glove box and, sure enough, our insurance expired a few days before we’d come away.

We had to renew it.

These were the days before mobile phones, never mind internet. We set out on foot to the nearest phone box, about four miles away. At least we knew where it was; we’d used it on one of the many occasions that we’d broken down in this valley.

Did I mention, it was raining?

I suppose we could have waited until it stopped, but we’d been there, soaking up rain, for the best part of a week and it had shown no inclination to stop up to now. Also, it was Friday afternoon. Insurance companies closed for the weekend in the good old days.

So yes, we walked, in our not-very-waterproof waterproofs, and we got wet.

You can fit two people in a phone box. It’s cosy, but on a wet Welsh afternoon, cosy is good.

This was a phone box with two buttons, A and B, marked in big white letters. I didn’t understand the principle then. I’m glad I don’t have to understand it now. Whichever order you chose to press the buttons the general idea was that you pumped prodigious quantities of silver into the heavy black box and you got to talk for about thirty seconds before the phone started beeping at you with insatiable hunger for more.

“Hello, XYZ Insurance here.”

“Oh, hi. My name’s—”

Beep beep beep.

Insert cash. Press button A. (or B?)

“Yeah, my name's Mike Wood and I need to—”

Beep beep beep.

It is a painful process. We fed the beast and watched our supply of change dwindle. We were put on hold. We were cut off. We dialled again and had to wade through the formalities of name, reason for calling, redirect, beep beep beep, several more times. The inside of the box got hot and the glass steamed up. Hearing was difficult with the rain hammering on the glass. The wind somehow managed to rock the whole structure, even though it was built from glass and girders and buried in concrete.

“Insurance? Would that be household insurance? Life insurance? Buildings ins—”

“Car insurance! I need to renew! I need to pay you money!”

We were down to our last ten pence. I was on the edge. My sanity was about to burst out of the phone box and make a break for it.

But I’d reached a sensible person.

“What’s the number of your call box?”

I read it out. Not easy because some of it was hidden under the graffiti. Who walks a gazillion miles with a can of spray paint to vandalise a phone box in the middle of nowhere?

“Okay, I’ll—”

Beep beep beep.

But yes, she rang us back. Ten minutes later and we were insured. Broke, but insured.

It would have been nice to drive back, but the car was with the tent, so we walked. In the rain. And the wind.

We live in an age of miracles and wonders. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.

More camping and caravanning tales can be found in Travelling in a Box. And for a limited time only (until 14th June) you can get the e-book for just 99p (or 99cents in the US). To buy a copy, take a look at the new web site, TravellinginaBox.com 

Caravan in Chirk

At last our caravan season has begun, and we’re in Lady Margaret’s Park in Chirk, near Wrexham.

We didn’t get off to a smooth start. We had the caravan serviced last month, and if I’d troubled to look inside, after the service, I’d have noticed how the radio and other electrical things had been left on. We knew we had a problem as soon as I fired up the motor mover to get the ‘van off the front garden, because the motor mover didn’t so much as fire up, as just flicker, with the power of a birthday candle, then die. So, job number one, after rushing home from work and as the Friday evening light faded to gloom, was to swap out the leisure battery for an old one we keep in the back of the garage, ‘just in case’, and hope the spare had enough charge.

Success! On our way.

We arrived in the dark. I set about doing the 'man jobs' outside while Sarah did the girly work, getting the inside of the ‘van organised.

I use two Aquarolls, so that we can rotate them and avoid shower catastrophes, and after I’d filled the first and got the pump running to fill the hot tank, I went back to the tap to fill the second. By the time I returned, the pump was dancing about making funny noises. Had there been light I’d have noticed all the water around the caravan. But it was dark and I didn’t. So I spent ages checking for all the less obvious problems, like splits in the pipe and bad seals between the pipe and the outlet, and half an hour of fiddling passed by before I noticed that the Aquaroll was empty.

There is a bright yellow switch under the bunk that has to be opened to drain the hot water tank when leaving a site, and it has to be closed before switching on the pump, or your water goes straight from the Aquaroll to the floor. Ha! Back to the tap.

This isn’t the first time I’ve performed this little pumping-onto-the floor ritual. Or the second. One day I’ll learn.

Saturday, we walked to Chirk Castle. It’s only about forty minutes’ cross country from the caravan site. There’s a bit of a hill, because, well, it’s a castle and hills are were they tended to build them. I’d like to tell you all about the history of the castle and the Myddleton family who lived there, but here’s what stayed in my head: Minted Pea and lettuce soup with thick crusty bread. We had it for lunch. Gorgeous. Inside the castle there are paintings and tapestries and furniture and stuff, but I remember the soup. I know, call me shallow. I could have looked up some history and facts and sounded all learned, like I know what I’m talking about, but I haven’t got much internet out here so here’s a link instead.

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/chirk-castle

If you visit this caravan site you must make time to see the Chirk Aqueduct, built by Thomas Telford in 1801. The walk over the aqueduct has wonderful views down the Ceirog Valley, and through the arches of the railway viaduct that stands close by and high above on one side. There is also a walk you could try through the Chirk canal tunnel, but take a torch; the tunnel is unlit and is 420 metres in length.

If you’re new to the area and enjoyed the walk over the Chirk Aqueduct, then you should also visit the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, a little further along the canal in the Llangollen direction. Pontcysyllte’s only for the brave, though. It is high and narrow and very exposed. Not one for a windy day, I promise.

Here’s an interesting thing. On one side of the aqueduct there is a sign, Welcome to Wales. Walking over the bridge there is another sign, Welcome to England. So who own's the aqueduct?

Welcome to Wales

Welcome to England

Imagine, now, that your parents are Scottish. A couple with a love for canal boats. Suppose they were on a canal tour of the Marches at the time you were born, on the boat, just as they were crossing the Chirk Aqueduct.

What are you? Welsh, English, Scottish? Do you get to choose? You might choose Scottish and grab a free university education. You might, instead, value Welsh citizenship and hold out for a few more years to claim your pensioner's bus pass that can you can use in Wales and England. Or then again, you might choose to be English, so that… let me think about this for a moment. Yes, I know, you can wear that single star on your England football shirt that says how you won the World Cup Forty-seven years ago.

Grand Book Tour

From England to the Alps in a thirty-year-old caravan. What could possibly go wrong? Well now you can find out, because Travelling in a Box, the book that gave its name to the blog, is available on Amazon, in paperback, and for Kindle.

And in the true spirit of Indy publishing I have embarked on a grand book tour. I have a copy of my book and I’m in a field in Ruthin, then I’ll be in a field near Rhos-on-Sea. Actually, thinking about it, I forgot to bring the book, so I guess I’m just on a grand tour. Maybe not so grand, either; in a field? Let’s just call it an ordinary tour, though technically speaking, a tour should probably visit more than two places. Okay, so I’m just away, in the caravan. How cool is that, though? Could you get more Indy?

So, I’ll set out my virtual sales counter, I’ll put on my big, floppy author’s hat, and I’ll give you a link to Amazon. Two links, in fact, because Travelling in a Box is available in the USA as well as the UK. Also Europe, Japan, Brazil... but come on, I can't link to everywhere; I'm sitting in a field.

Amazon US

Amazon UK