2020 - THE YEAR OF COVID-19

FRANCE & LUXEMBOURG, WINTER 2019/20

We headed through the Eurotunnel Le Shuttle (now our preferred Channel transit method) straight after Christmas aiming to spend a relaxed three months mainly in France and Germany. We’d decided that our Carthago, as brilliant as it is for full time travelling, was unsuitable for venturing much east of Hungary. Narrow roads in poor condition and some concerns about security in an expensive vehicle had helped us decide to buy another smaller and more basic motorhome suitable for venturing to the likes of Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Morocco etc. The Carthago could have a well-earned rest in storage in the UK during those trips. Another objective for the second motorhome was that it could be used by family or visiting friends to travel with (or without) us in Europe.

End of a bitterly cold walk by the channel from Gravelines to the North Sea

Long winter nights in a warm van overlooking the Gravelines marina.

Avion; yet another free aire for a couple of days.

Out of the tunnel we first drove to an aire at Gravelines (pron. gruv-lin) between Calais and Dunkirk where we stayed for about ten days until returning to the UK. We’d planned to go further into France, but with the van nice and warm in typical January weather, we stayed (€4 a night) overlooking the marina while catching up on emails and movies and taking some nice brisk walks and runs. Then it was back to Chichester to leave the van for the repair - under the ten year water ingress warranty - of a water leak in the rear left corner of the roof.

This timing worked well as we’d undertaken to dog-sit Louisa & Joe’s pug Teddy while they enjoyed a week and a half in Mexico. We took the opportunity of a fixed address in London to catch up on our online purchases and to meet up with our good friend Dierdre visiting from Sydney.

Lens-Louvre Museum in Lens, Pas-de-Calais, Hauts-de-France

Lens-Louvre Museum; excellent, highly recommend a visit.

Then it was back through the tunnel to resume our French travels and to make a great discovery; Lens. We had no idea that Lens - a one-time intensive coal-mining region - had been chosen as a now-depressed part of France for the construction of a branch of the Louvre to stimulate the local economy. The museum, with typical French flair, had a stunning array of archeological art.

The broad plan was to look in Germany for a second motorhome, but first we went to Veron, an hour south-east of Paris, to check a potential storage location for the second van when not in use. After a half day of due diligence with Phill and Hannah, the English owners of EuroCampingCars, we gave it a tick should we decide to store the van in France.

Then rather than head to Germany to search for a van, we started to hear reports about coronavirus in Germany and thought it best to explore Burgundy for a bit, especially as we were waiting for a replacement habitation control panel for the motorhome. After several days of playing games with the courier company, we finally found the panel and installed it to once again have a fully functional GPS and entertainment system. The panel had failed (or more correctly gone into SOS mode) as we collected the van after its roof repairs. All part of the joys of motorhome living, but much less hassle than owning a century old arts and crafts home in Sydney!

Our Bike Friday New World Tourist Silks taking a breather on the Canal de Bourgogne. Easy riding on flat canal paths you say? Did we really need our “water bottle” Cytronex electric assists? Well in fact yes, as there were over 50 locks on the return uphill section!

Great cycling through the vineyards of Burgundy. Here we could just make out Les Alpes in the far distance.

We’d been lucky with the weather, especially in February, and took full advantage of it to cycle the Canal de Bourgogne and the vineyards on the typically excellent French cycle paths. There were no problems finding free (or almost free) aires to stay, and the van’s big gas tank was well utilised for cooking, central heating and refrigeration.

So, keeping a wary eye on coronavirus developments we headed north to Luxembourg. This turned out to be quite a surprise. Lots of history, nice city centre, free public transport throughout the country (implemented two days before we arrived!) and great cycling paths.

By that time, we had pretty much decided to put the second van acquisition plan on hold and to try the Vennbahn a 125km long cycling rail trail from Aachen in Germany to Troisvierges in the north of Luxembourg.

Here we are in first class having struggled to buy tickets from the machine and as we later discovered, being probably the only people in Luxembourg who didn’t know that it had just become the first country in the world to abolish all regular fares for public transport.

One of many stunning perspectives in Luxembourg City.

Flat starter battery; excellent Iveco breakdown service supplying and fitting battery in a very inaccessible position and it only cost us a two hour delay. (Not cheap though!)

Rain delayed our first day riding the Vennbahn and it was probably during that day that we decided we should listen to the children’s increasingly concerned phone calls and messages about the desirability of being back in the UK should a pandemic be declared. So from St Vith, in the East of Belgium we scurried into France on the day that Belgium announced closing of its borders and headed back to the Eurotunnel where the French military were all over the place with guns drawn.

To see more photos click here. (Our SmugMug photo and video gallery is still under construction as at June 2020. You should be able to see dates and locations and some captions, and do a slideshow by pressing the triangular “play” symbol. But it’s still a work in progress as at June 2020).

LOCKED IN WITH CORONAVIRUS IN THE UK, MARCH 2020 TO ???

Back in the UK we headed to get our Fiat 500 out of storage and A-framed to the van thence to a Caravan and Motorhome Club site in Thetford Forest, Norfolk to await developments. We didn’t have to wait long before the club announced the closure of all its 200 UK sites and we were politely told to go home. This of course for us was an impossibility as “home”, our mailing address, is Louisa’s central London flat.

Louisa has always enjoyed the critical care dimension of a speech and language therapist’s role (brain tumour operations, MND, strokes, brain injury etc) and she had just finished a contract at St Thomas’ Hospital (opposite the Houses of Parliament; where PM Johnson was treated for his dose of Covid-19). She was recalled as the pandemic preparations were scaled up and so quickly found herself treating her first Covid-19 patient. Within a week virtually all the patients she was treating were Covid-19 positive and it’s now been like that for the last couple of months.

Because - being over 70 - we were classified as vulnerable, and especially so because of Louisa’s job, the club has very kindly allowed us to stay indefinitely along with only two others on this 80 pitch site. We’re now into our eleventh week of lockdown here in a somewhat dystopian existence. We do worry about Louisa’s daily exposure to this thing, even though she assures us that her hospital has high standards of PPE (personal protective equipment - another metric of pandemic management on which the government has failed overall).

On the other hand we’re in a nicely isolated part of the country in the middle of a forest with lots of options for running, walking and cycling and we’ve had glorious spring weather with May being the UK’s sunniest month since records began.

We have three operational RAF bases within 50km of us - a legacy no doubt of the many WWII airfields in Norfolk - so most days we have fighter jets practising overhead and ancient US Air Force Boeing tankers in transit between the USA and the Middle East.

2020 was looking to be a busy year. The children had organised a celebration of our half century of married life at a destination in April that still remains a secret (to us), we were going, last month, to walk 200kms of the Camino de Santiago with Greg and Anne, our good friends and former Sydney neighbours, and we should right now have been meeting up for a week of tandem cycling in East Anglia with our Tandem Club colleagues from Wessex. Hey, but things could have been much worse!

Oscar and India having a good lockdown. We’re so thankful this dreaded virus targets us oldies (Papa and Moe-Moe to these two) and not the toddlers.

With some relaxation of lockdown just recently we’ve been able to catch up at different times (socially distanced of course) with Tim, Liv, Oscar and India and with Bjon and Amy in nearby Brandon Country Park.

As a family we’ve been very lucky so far to have been untouched by the virus; more than can be said for the 60,000 poor sods who’ve died; not to mention their grieving families and friends. However we’ve all been appalled by the British government’s incompetence - and if not incompetence then callous disregard for the lives of its citizens - that has unnecessarily cost tens of thousands of lives to date.

JFG June 9, 2020

(To see more photos of our lockdown, click here. We’ll aim to keep updating them.)