Holiday!!

My holiday home

I’m writing this on the hottest day of the year, as it is far too hot to be outside, even though it looks lovely! I put down a small bowl of water for my resident flock of sparrows yesterday and have had to top it up as it looks as if they have been bathing in it too. Perhaps I should get a proper bird bath to put somewhere in my garden. 

This month I have finally got around to doing a couple of things that have been put off for a while. The first was a long-overdue eye test, as I realised that I have never had a free eye test, which starts at age 60, and I am nearly 68! I hadn’t noticed a huge deterioration in my sight and am still able to read road signs and number plates at a legal distance, but still … 8 years? I was amazed to find that my eyesight has barely changed at all in all that time – a slight change in my right eye, but no new reading glasses required, and I only ordered new distance glasses because my last pair are broken and I also wanted an anti-glare coating for night driving. 

The second thing was to finally get my camper van back on the road, with the intention of using it a bit this summer. Unfortunately, where it had been standing under trees for a few months, the body work was green-streaked with black spots of lichen and took several attempts to clean, especially as I had to clean the roof precariously swaying at the very top of a stepladder. Once it looked a bit more presentable, I booked it in for a pre-MOT inspection and MOT and service. This was a couple of weeks ago and I still haven’t got it back, although I did tell them there was no great urgency! 

Almost on a whim I decided to book myself a holiday, as I felt I had been ‘on the go’ for a year without a proper break, which might account for my low energy levels. I contacted my old WWOOF hosts down near Launceston and booked their Shepherd’s Hut for 5 nights, which felt very self-indulgent. I was due to travel down on Monday, 4th July but before that happened, I had a cry for help from Dave.

Before

After

Kerb appeal!

To put it bluntly his landlord inspection had not gone well, and they were telling him that he needed to engage the services of a professional gardener and a professional cleaner to get things back on track – cue urgent phone call to Mum! The only time I could feasibly go and help was on Thursday, 30th June, returning home on the afternoon of 3rd July. Over the course of those few days we transformed the garden (which, incidentally, had looked pretty much the same since before he moved in) from a weed patch to a garden with defined beds, we reinstated decorative gravel areas, put down decorative bark under the front hedge and stripped ivy from the back fence. On top of that we also deep-cleaned the bathroom and en-suite shower room and, after I’d left, Dave sorted out the spare room and put loads of stuff in the loft. We had a bit of fun driving to various garden centres and nurseries to source a selection of herbaceous perennials and did a tip run with the first lot of garden waste we produced. I think I broke my boy, and any concerns I’d had about my energy levels were pretty much scuppered! 

Now you see it ...

... now you don't

Is there really gravel there?

Ah yes, that looks better!

Another 'before' ...

... and 'after'

Dave putting down the decorative bark

However, I was really ready for my holiday after that and was determined not to do much at all, so I packed a selection of books, a couple of quiz books and my travelling spinning wheel and prepared fleece and headed off down the A30 to Launceston. It’s been two years since I was last there as Jeni and I had taken the camper van on its inaugural run down to Devon and Cornwall between the first and second lockdowns (see a previous blog). Jo and James made me very welcome and transported all my bags down the track to the Shepherd’s Hut in the back of the old Landrover, before explaining how everything worked and leaving me to settle in. Jo had provided some scrumptious scones, homemade jam and clotted cream so I made a cuppa and sat outside to enjoy the view and the profound peace and quiet. 

What a beautiful, cosy space!

Cream tea!

I spent most of my holiday just immersed in Nature, cocooned in my off-grid home, emerging from the field to go for a few short walks around the area and, on my penultimate day, to drive to the coast near Bude to paddle in the sea! 

Widemouth Bay, near Bude

I did succumb to work of a sort when I volunteered to help with the churchyard clear up at Lezant one morning, in preparation for a village wedding. I just don’t seem able to completely stop myself! There were five or six of us for most of the morning and we managed to clear paths and remove brambles and ivy from around the perimeter of the building – it definitely looked a lot better when we’d finished. 

Some of the workers on tea break

One of the highlights of my stay was when I went with James to the orchard to see Number 74 (aka Lady) the sheep whose life I had helped to save 9 years ago! If you have read my previous blogs you will know the story and the subsequent visits when she showed every sign of remembering me. She is now 12 years old and showing her age – sadly, James thinks this might be her last summer, so I had to see her one last time. Yet again, she remembered me, and I was able to give her a cuddle and a kiss on the top of her head before she showed signs of embarrassment at all this emotion! I helped a few animals in the 5 years I worked as a WWOOFer on farms around the UK, but No 74 will always remain my all time favourite.💓

She may be looking her age, but she's still beautiful to me x

I left Cornwall on Saturday, 9^th July at the start of this very hot, dry spell that we’re ‘enjoying’ and decided to go cross-country rather than blast down the A30 and A303 with the rest of the hordes. It was great fun to more or less follow my nose through north Cornwall, into Devon and thence to Somerset and I encountered hardly any traffic, even though I was using A and B roads for the most part – people just don’t seem to use these older roads anymore, preferring to drive on trunk roads and soulless motorways! It was a bit of a meandering route taking in Holsworthy, Great Torrington and South Molton before coming into the back of Taunton via Norton Fitzwarren and thence across the Levels via Othery and Burrowbridge to Street and Glastonbury, and it took an extra hour, but it was definitely worth it for the wonderful countryside that I saw.

Perhaps, once I have a roadworthy camper van again, Travelling Jan will re-emerge and go off on new adventures!

The view from the Shepherd's Hut