ShippHill-Inc

All roads lead to Home

2008-05-14T01:40:00.000-07:00

Mist, mountains and mad motorway bridges that span and spin over and through the pre Appenines. We have driven through a multitude of Italian coastal towns, all the shops are closed and our dreams of steaming plates of pasta are soon put to rest. It is taking ages, our nerves are frayed, the clock is ticking and we are tired of driving. Just as we are about to hit Savona and the road inland, Mark sees a sign. Strada Chiuso – does that mean road closed? We drive on, hoping it is an aberration. This is the only road other than the autostrada and if the sign is true we have to turn round and drive back. Two tunnels later, we realise not only that it is but that we have to somehow turn the caravan round in the restricted space between the sea and the mountain side. Mark pulls off a splendid 5 point turn and we head back to the motorway junction, cursing the time we have lost. Once again we will be arriving in the dark.
After the mad dusk drive over the myriad viaducts we arrived at Montechiaro d'Acqui. Luckily we have clear instructions to look for bin 21 near the pine trees, and the kids excitedly spot it. Mark is not happy – the road down to Ian and Lisa's house looks like a near vertical drop and he is panicking about whether we will ever get back up if we bite the bullet and go for it. I go ahead on foot to check the terrain, pleased to get away from his prophesies of doom. I find the house, and our hosts shining faces, and Ian accompanies me back up the 'road' calling mark a wuss and spurring him on to take the plunge. We arrive and re-aquaint ourselves, with the girls sitting shyly on my knee for a full twenty minutes, then are invited to stay in the house. After copious glasses of wine and catching up on the last 5 years, we retire to the comfort of the biggest bed in the world which Ian and Lisa have kindly donated for the duration of our visit.

We awake the next day to glorious sunshine. The kids are in heaven, the farmhouse has two barns, chickens, a rabbit, mountains and loveliness all around, enough to feed their imaginations for weeks on end and Ian and Lisa have all the time in the world to spend playing and laughing with them. They set to work living the fairy tale, collecting eggs from the three beautiful chickens and making a house in the barn while we split our time between working the land and relaxing big time. I check out train fares to Rome, and come up with the exorbitant figure of €184 each way – a bit of a non starter really, so we decide on Verona and Venice as a substitute - sadly all roads won't lead to Rome after all. Ottilie's plans have changed again, she is no longer taking Frida back to Edinburgh, but is arriving in Milan the following Wednesday, so we put Verona back till after Easter. We break the news to Ian and Lisa that we may be around for some time, and they seem to take it in good grace. We're going to need to visit the 'cantina'. Their local winery provides top quality vino at rock bottom prices - €1.20 per litre. Even better than this, the bulbous nosed assistant, obviously the worse for wear on perks, managed to charge Mark €0.46 for 30l of wine, missing the decimal point by two whole places. Even Mark thought that was a bargain. The children are enjoying being indulged.
They have adopted Lisa and Ian as their 'other' mum and dad. They wander round an antique market, asking when something takes their fancy, 'If you were my mum and dad, would you buy that for me?', to which the answer is always 'yes'. We go on a picnic and spend the afternoon competing to make the best doll from the stuff we could find. Frida works in a team with Ian, making a twig 'couple'. The nut falls off his figures head - 'She kissed him so hard, his helmet fell off', she laughed. So did we. The night before we are due to leave, Mark has a severe asthma attack. Ian's sister is due to arrive, but Mark and he are forced to set off to find emergency medical assistance. Three hours, a pharmacy, a hospital and a visit to the night doctor later he arrives back totally cured by the Italian medical system (of ever wanting to see a doctor again). And all for a mere €46. We have to pick Ottilie up from Malpensa Airport the next day. The girls hand over control of the barn, complete with kitchen, toilet, beds and a swing, to Roisin and Bobby, Ian's neice and nephew. Before we leave I check my emails. There is contact from Isabel at The Guardian. She has requested amendments to the piece I have written. We have three hours before we leave to pick up Ottilie, and I spend it all remembering, researching and writing. I have spent hours previously cutting it down to the specified word count, and find myself having to put all the detail back in – but hey, it's for The Guardian, what does it matter? When we finally head off, Mark attacks the track admirably, the love shack is light, we have left half our belongings in Ian's shed. We'll be back.

We hit the Autostrada – doesn't make our car go faster though. It's all so confusing, none of the towns on the signs are en route – but the road seems to have the right number so we go with it and arrive at the airport 15 minutes late. There she is, the lovely Otter, all smiles and loveliness. It's Chewbacca! she laughs as she sees Mark's impressive facial hair, and he is renamed The Wookie henceforth. We head straight off to the Colombo's farm East of Milan, wondering how people tolerate paying to be stuck in a traffic jam for hours on end – we drive 50km in two hours and arrive at the farm after a 14 year absence. Ottilie is so stressed her skin is rebelling, but the relaxation process begins immediately. We spend a day ligging and laughing at the kids attempts to roller skate. It is our first glimpse of 'real life' since leaving- jobs and homework rear their ugly heads and I have the semblance of a panic attack about what the kids might have missed at school – but it's too late to start worrying now. We make our way to Lake Como- the internet has turned up no open campsites, so we are taking a chance on finding a likely spot and are delighted to find a tiny place right on the banks of the lake. There is a trampoline for the kids, a bar and no other takers, and we set up camp, awning and all and squash in.
Ottilie is sleeping on the floor of the caravan – for 2 days we are 5, and in the morning we all pile into the big bed and eat easter eggs and biscuits for breakfast before making our way to Bellagio in the sunshine We eat pizza and ice cream, look out at the lake, totally surrounded by mountains, then going home for a roast dinner curtesy of the caravan's tiny cooker. It snows heavily in the night, Mark has to go out at 3am to re-erect the awning as it blows madly in the wind. The morning brings blizzard conditions, the mountains on the other side of the lake are covered in snow. We take the soaking awning down and fold it up on the wet mud before locking it in the top box - our fingers aching from the cold. It is done before 9am, and we head back to Malpensa. We have three hours, but weather conditions are grim. There is one road around the mountain and one that goes over the top. As we head south on the coastal road I see a sign – strada chiauso – seen that one before – so we head off by the only alternative road, up into the snow covered mountains. This is a bad thing.
We soon realise the foolishness of our actions as a car drives towards us from the top, it has a good 10 inches of snow on its roof, and outside the snow flakes have grown to the size of biscuits. Mark spots a driveway and a rare opportunity to turn the car. I get out to guide, but he is heading towards the edge fast and there is a step between the road and the driveway. I scream at him to stop but too late, the car is grounded on the tarmac, it's underside screeching and crunching as it comes to a halt. Shit, this is bad. We cannot reverse, and daren't go forward. We are blocking the traffic going up and down the mountain. I envisage the kind of machinery that will be needed to get us out of this mess, look at the snow and am totally at a loss as to what we should do. Mark gets out to inspect the situation, then orders the girls out of the car. The chassis lifts a fraction but it's still not clear. The people in the cars are loosing their amused expression as they realise the effect our dilemma could have on the rest of their day, but before it gets ugly, Mark is in the car – he is driving it on – it creeks and scrapes and moves slowly round – then ,yes! We are back on the road! Triumphant in the face of seeming impossibility once again! Chewy The Dude. We get in and drive off, realising at the bottom of the hill that the road will be closed in a couple of weeks – not today .
We have lost time, but it still looks doable, so continue towards the airport, gliding down the duel carriageway at speeds of up to 60mph, but look, there is a car passing, a man staring in, showing me a badge and telling us to pull over. 'Is that a policeman?' I ask Mark. It might be, so we stop on the road and wait. He is an ugly little man, and gesticulates for us to wind down the window. He establishes that we speak very little Italian, so addresses us in English. 'Give me the keys' he says, as he pushes his lily white hand into Mark's face. He takes the keys and smells them then asks us if we use drugs. No. Have you been selling drugs? No. He asks to see our money while explaining that some English people have been reported for doing a deal up the road. We have €15 between us, and he soon realises his mistake, hands the keys back and drives away, leaving us confused and even later than we were already. It is Easter Sunday and our thoughts of empty roads – surely the Italians will all be at church – prove unfounded. It is packed and we crawl the remaining 20km to the airport, arriving less than an hour before Ottilie is due to depart. But she gets away and we arrange to get back in time for the shoot in April.

Back at the Columbo's farm we have a little more time to relax. We've inadvertently gatecrashed their Easter celebrations, but they reassure us it's fine so we do the Aperitivo thang, drink campari bianco, eat the dinner Giovanni has been cooking all morning, then go for the traditional passegiata with Andrea, Nicole and the kids. The banks of the river Adda are as packed as Oxford street, crowded and rowdy with groups and families making barbeques, picnics or just walking along, dressed up to the nines. We had walked the same route on our previous visit, when it was tranquil and empty, and the contrast is startling. A man who we had seen at the farm when we left is walking towards us from the oposite direction, and we realise he has driven to the 'walk', suddenly noticing the number of vehicles parked around the place. These people love their cars more than the English.
We return to the farm through traffic jams and are relieved to be fairly isolated again, and make preparations to leave the following morning. It has been lovely to be treated as part of their large family for a few days, lovely that they just adapted their plans and made us part of them, but as ever, all things must come to an end, and we eventually leave for Verona, a mere 2 hours drive by experienced reckoning.
They've obviously never done it pulling a caravan. 5 hours and endless traffic jams later, we pull into the walled town of Verona with no idea of where to camp or what to do. Italian holiday season starts late, and most of the campsites don't open till April or May. The Tourist information tells us there are none open, just an automated camper park so we drive around aimlessly shouting at each other as it looked like the only option. It is horrible, stuck in the middle of as busy road junction. A tar-mac triangle with markings for pitches and a place to empty your chemical toilet – if only we had one. We decide the €10 fee is not good value for money, then drive on to the carpark just outside the town wall. We are right next to the moat, it is grassy, quiet and free. Much more amenable. We are not the only campers on the block, our neighbours seem to be living there on a more permanent basis. We plot up for the night in preparation for our visit and are up at 7 the next morning. The car park is filling up in a strange regimented manner. Each new car pulls into the space directly adjacent to the last. They are getting nearer and we are parked at right angles to the markings. Mark moves the caravan with me and the girls inside -we've been desperate for this moment for the whole trip – to a double parking spot, and we continue our preparations as the cars slowly surround us. Togged up and in we go, towards the Roman Arena, the third largest existing in the world. First, coffee. We sit in a cafe facing the roman monument, then notice the coffee is €4.80 a cup and make a hasty exit. Searching the side streets for something less salubrious, we find a spacious pool bar, quiet vast and authentic. Frida orders her customary chocolat calde and is presented with the most delicious confection, more like a mousse than a drink, a happy girl. We use the facilities and make our way back to the Arena.
Outside we are accosted by two gladiators, much to the girls' delight, and pose shamelessly for photographs. Inside, Silvie translates the all the Roman numerals she can find and we wander round the vast corridors, catching the occasional glimpse of clear blue skies at the top of the marble staircases. It is so intact. We talk about what it would have been like all those years ago, with the gentry and public milling around in their togas. We move to the inner corridor, where the servants and gladiators would go about their business and see cages – for lions? It is so impressive, we feel like detectives working out what what would have happened in each location all those years ago. Next for the main event. We walk out into the arena itself, into the sunshine, into history manifest. A fantastic lesson – the girls make a video report and Mark and I fain a gladiatorial battle in front of the bewildered sight seers before leaving the site. Pizza at Bella Napoli, then on to Juliette's balcony – there's Shakespeare to discuss as well! Education, Education, Education. I'm feeling vindicated again.
We go to the amphitheatre and museum, get an ice cream then return to our cosy home in the car park. Gas is low, and we have seen nowhere selling it, so we reserve the dregs for tea in the morning and hope we'll find some tommorrow. We're up and off early again, heading to Venice through Vicenza and Treviso driving through their ugly outskirts, horrified by the neglect of the beautiful farms and the proliferation of industrial buildings. The sky is grey, the roads are packed, the signage is myriad, this is not what we had expected of the country, so commercial and spoilt, even the girls comment on it. It is not the ideal place for a road trip. We arrive at Punte Sabione and stop make our way to the Miramar, where a friendly welcome and a shop selling gas awaits us. We will catch the water bus into Venice in the morning. The prices are exorbitant – it will cost us €84 for a 36 hour pass, but hey, it's Venice! The next day, in the pouring rain, we make our way to the boat stop, and after a false start on account of their no card payment policy, make our way across the lagoon to arrive at St Mark's square. The rain has stopped, blue sky is being unveiled and even the crowds of anoraked tourists can't detract from its splendour. We wander. Frida is enchanted by the masks in every shop window, while me and Mark pray she doesn't want to 'buy one with her own money'. Silvie is counting bridges, stopping at every one and waiting for the gondola to pass under it before rushing hysterically to the other side, hardly noticing that they are waving at her cuteness. We spend the day exploring the narrow streets, taking turns to lead the way, busily going nowhere in particular. We ate ice creams opposite the giudecca in the newly arrived sunshine, just being on the water lapping up the vibe, The Wookie and Princess Leia showing their kids the wonders of the world. A lovely day.
We leave from St Mark's Square with the sun setting over the lagoon, planning what to do with our remaining day. Unfortunately there is a difference of opinion. I want to go to the Doge,s Palace and Mark mainly doesn't want to get involved with the crowds. Arriving the next morning there's hardly a queue at all, but Mark's still not keen, his argument has failed to materialise, but he is even averse to small queues and tries to maintain his position regardless. It doesn't work and we make our way in to the ticket office, getting our family ticket for much less than expected – Mark's objections are dwindling – then into the courtyard, up the Golden Staircase, through leather lined, map covered and painting encrusted rooms. Stopping to draw and discuss their purpose before moving on to the dungeons, the children exhaling for effect over the Bridge of Sighs, imagining the dispair of the condemned citizens catching their last glimpse of the city.
We leave 4 hours later and take a picnic on the steps of the Salute. We are starting to feel like freaks, everyone is staring at us – because of the picnic? Because of Frida's furry boots? Because we look like visitors from another planet? Frida is part lapping it up and part outraged. She points the camera at the passers by as they stare - 'let's see how they like it!' she exclaims . What a gal. We show off for the audience before catching another water bus to the Museo Correr. It closes in less than an hour – ah, we wanted more time to see it all, instruments, equipment, painting, sculpture, just not enough time...We do our best to fit it all in, losing each other, finding each other and after leaving, feeding corn to the pigeons and eating more ice creams before leaving Venice for the last time. It's a sad moment, from here on we are homeward bound, final destination Longton Avenue. But before we get there we travel East via Mantova, stopping overnight near its mercury polluted lake, then an early stop at the incredible church at Grazie. It has a stuffed crocodile suspended from the roof, devotional offerings pack the chapels and the walls are covered with small hands, hearts, breasts and eyes. There are wooden sculptures in every alcove, lifesize figures awaiting gruesome deaths, soldiers, milkmaids, princes, children look down at us. Frida is overwhelmed and walks around with her eyes downcast attempting piety, while Silvie lights a candle for all her friends, but really she just wants to play with fire. On to Sabbioneta, the ghost town.

The guide describes it as an having the air of an abandoned film set - two palaces, an olympic theatre, three grand churches, and about 12 inhabitants as far as we could make out. Great for us. We picnic, camp and make a film. Mark and I even manage a glass of wine at the only open bar while the children climb trees in the main square – there is no one else around. The next day we make our way to Velleia, the ruins of a Roman town in the Appennino Piacentino. Up we go, minding our own business when once again we are stopped by the police. What are we doing? where are we going? Are we going to camp up there? He checks Mark's licence and looks us over, but fortunately having a mucky caravan is not against the law, even in Italy, so we make our way to the huge partially excavated site. The girls are freaked out by the guardian assertion to watch out for vipers, so we tip toe around looking more at the grass than the ruins.
There is so much left to be excavated that I am convinced we are going to find treasure so go off looking hopefully for a relic, a piece of gold, anything they haven't found yet, but to no avail. Ah well, it was a bit of a long shot anyway. We stay a couple of hours, cooking up some food in the caravan, then make our way back to Ian and Lisa's farm for a few final days. Ian has made a pie with 'hello gypsies' written on the top, and we slip in right where we left off .There is table football, a mountain of dirt to transport to the terrace in waiting and piles upon piles of old wood and brambles to burn, so while Lisa and I risk life,limb and eyelashes with our home made braziers, Mark sets to work with a wheelbarrow and spends days going back and forth digging and tipping while the girls spend their time catching up with schoolwork and making a bar for the workers in the barn. We christen it the Cengia Benda Bar, and relax at the end of the day with apertivos and table foot tournaments. We head off for the alps to check out a mountain pass, but after two hours driving, and a photo stop at Bra, we don't seem to be any closer.

We abort the plans to toboggan on the snow capped peaks and visit Dogliani instead, where Ian can't resist buying a cake from the patisserie for Rovers forthcoming birthday. We stop on the way back to coo at a baby donkey at the side of the road. We visit the local second hand 'mercatino' 30 minutes drive away, and come away with as much stuff as we can carry for a mere 10 euros, and go to view a beautiful mansion house with its own chapel, woodland and views over the valley. It is for sale for a mere €180k and quite tempting, just round the mountain from Ian and Lisa's farm – if only we knew how to make money fast...We go back and make preparations for leaving.
The Guardian has contacted me again with bad news. It's too long, they couldn't fit it in the family special, maybe they'll use it in the summer. I am not amused, but resist Mark's suggestions of phoning and demanding payment. - as Ian concurs, if I do that I'll blow my chances of ever getting published. We have a party for Rover's birthday, pile all the stuff in the caravan, and head off up the track for France. We are going to visit the Pods in Roussillon en route, Wim Wenders is going to be there, it's all very exciting.

France and the final exit.

So we're driving off towards the Autostrada, weather still grim but feeling relaxed, we negotiate a slippery bend, and find a lorry jack knifed right in front of us. There's no time to scream, Mark is pumping the brakes, but the caravan is sluishing us forward, everything is in slow motion as we come to a halt 4 inches from total write off. Mark can hardly speak, he is ashen faced, and we wait in stunned silence for the truck to move on. Not a good start to the day but at least we're still alive. Within an hour we are passing through the tunnel that marks the border between Italy and France, driving North and upwards on the Route Napoleon, We are headed for the Cornich Sublime which follows the canyon de Verdon, our preferred destination for the night. We are high up in the mountains again, there is mist and rain but the views are still spectacular. We stop to look down at the cloud filled valleys below us – a clear day would have been beautiful, but the grey mistiness has a certain charm of its own. A fter the dizzying heights of Grasse and the Pas de La Faye, the terrain flattens out and we eventually park in a wooded valley. The kids run around, looking for a likely spot to pee, there is a white camper van running it's engine, parked close and the other cars have us in their vision as they pass. They give up trying to hide and just do it, but not in a nike way. We follow suit. within ten minutes our fellow campers have gone – it's obviously all too crusty for them. In the morning we have coffee, buy bread in the nearest town and push on up canyon. Why do we do this to ourselves? (always finding the 'most interesting' road on the map – i.e. the steepest, windiest, most dangerous road available). It closely follows the corse of the river, 200m below us down a vertical drop. The water is turquoise, meandering (like the bloody road) hither and thither into the distance. We stop and peer over the edge at the Balcons de la Mescla and all suffer instant vertigo - except Silvie, who wants to cross the barrier and climb on the ridge. We stop for coffee with a view. Frida has the usual, Silvie buys a biscuit as big as her face and we share a coffee 'cos we're officially skint. We can see a road on the other side, skirting the edge of a the gorge and joke nervously about it being our road. Surely it can't be. It's not really ideal for a caravan. Ten minutes later we see the cafe from the other side of the gorge and continue onwards, me holding tightly to the door handle just in case...The car is a legend and despite all the groans and creaks of the caravan, pulls it over the summit.
We will stop for for lunch at the Lac de Ste Croix and still shaking from the breathtaking, terrifying pass, we pull up in a car park on the shore. Suddenly there is a crowd (of 7), people are taking pictures of the rig and walking towards us like they know who we are – maybe the blog has been more popular than we'd anticipated; perhaps we have become famous in our absence ? But no, it is a French crusty mob – dog on a string types. Despite the huge sign - 'Camping Sauvage interdit' they are, and have been for the last 10 days. Cool. Julien introduces himself. He is friend of Mattieu and Sasha, one of the posse they were meeting up with after we left them in Marrakech. They have seen photos, heard stories and handled the tickets Frida made for the open air film show. We talk while the girls stare at the 2 beautiful puppies. It's a small world. We retire to the caravan and cook eggs on toast. It is raining so we play cards and read stories on the big bed. The girls are desparate to get their hands on those puppies, and when the rain stops they hang about smiling for long enough to get invited over. Turns out they found them in a bin in Morocco with their 6 dead siblings and smuggled them through the border. Hopefully they weren't rabid, eh? We drove on, Irmin and Hildegarde's place is in our sights, we are following Sandra's precise instructions – in 100 metres there is a left turn, we turn left into a driveway, but oh no, it was less than 100m and this isn't right. We realise we have driven, between two tightly spaced pillars, into the wrong house. The owners are driving towards us from the opposite direction, wanting to get out of their blocked driveway. We have it off pat, she reverses like a dream with minimum stress and maximum confidence. Mark has recently pointed out that in order to reverse the car a) he needs to be able to see me, and b) the hand movements I make need to relate to the movement of the steering wheel, not the caravan. The pillars are safe, it glides out, nearly hitting a car coming along the lane. Not to worry, it is Eustace and Rene, they are expecting us. We arrive and are provided with gin and tonics within 34 minutes. Wicked. Hildegarde offers us one of the many lounging contraptions to relax on, but we have been sitting in a car all day, so waft about in the boho surroundings, sipping our drinks standing up, it's all very langourous. We are obliged to go out for pizza, Irmin is having dinner with Wim Wenders, the egos have landed - so it's off for a pizza for us mere mortals. I've been hoping the €20 I have in my purse was going to last us as far as the shores of Blighty, but it no longer looks possible. The pizzas are good, and we go back to the house that is a lounge and try to integrate. We consider the perks of being the Pope - whether he has a personal fortune or an allowance to spend, but it seems he has none, because better than this, he has all his needs attended to -kinda like being super rich but without the guilt. The personification of catholicism indeed. Wim tells us anecdotal information about thePope's crimson slippers – probably he's met him – we are 1 degree of separation from the Pope - and Isabella Rossilini for all that, and Denis Hopper, and anyone else you may care to mention. They go to bed early, they have a plane to catch in the morning.
So the next day is chill time. The kids get some fishing rods and head down to the pond to catch tadpoles. We enquire about the possibilities of a boat, and find it upside down in the grass. After making it ponworthy, Pod gets in and the kids all get a ride. For the afternoon's entertainment we fire up the hamam, and sweat the afternoon away, sitting between heat sessions on yet another lounger, and guess what? It's about time for an appertif – so we sip sparkling wine on the heated bed, wrapped in soft towels, and warm blankets while the children play spider girls, whooshing their towels around like wings. Poddy comes back from the cellar with a second bottle to find Mark in bed with his wife, drinking fizz and smoking a fag. But no, it's all good clean fun. We are relaxed and superclean, Sandra has even scrubbed me down in the shower. During dinner, Pod takes Mark to fetch more wine from the cellar.
They come back with a huge bottle, a litre and a half, it's so rustic it doesn't even have a label. God it's good for vin de pays, he fetches another, then another. Over dinner the next evening, Pod brings its charms. Irmin looks slightly startled before telling us it was the only wine he cared about in the whole cellar. It was supposed to be kept to grow old gracefully. Oops. All very Black Books. We have to go. We have an appointment with destiny in the shape of our actual lives back home. Lara donates Hazi, her favourite toy to the girls for a holiday, we say goodbye, and off we go to our final destination.
All day and all night driving. We stop somewhere and nowhere at midnight, it's pouring with rain, the ferry's gonna be tight.
In the morning, in the immortal words of Leo Sayer, the sun is out, the sky is blue, there ain't a cloud to spoil the view...and despite it being Sunday morning we find a patisserie open. It is our last day, Euros need to be spent, we buy extravagant cakes for the first time since Portugal then drive along and choose our spot. There is more cake than anyone can eat, and we have coffee and hot chocolate on tap. Frida is the waitress and I am the cafe wench so we while away an hour before we push on. We are driving through wine country, all the towns have names we recognise from the labels on the bottles we can't afford to buy anymore. Next we e hit the Somme, graveyard territory, and the conversation turns to the war - the children asking about great grandfathers and the roles they played. during the horror. Strangely we stop off at the only German WWI cemetery in France. It has Jewish as well as regular German graves, and it is strangely poignant that in such a short space of time they changed status from allies to enemies. The fickleness of politics, eh? We shed our tears and manage to drag the children away from the scale model of the local burial grounds and the cross made by the local nursery children, and before we know it we are closing in on Calais. Everything is fine, the children are playing and laughing hysterically in the back of the car. But suddenly the mood changes, there is panic, there is misery, there is a plastic dolls head attatched to Silvie's finger...I look round- it is like a horror film, the head is lolling on her little finger, her face is contorted and tear stained, and all that comes out of me is hysterical laughter. We stop and I make her pose for a photograph before taking action. Mark has a scalpel, it is really tense because her finger has swollen and there is no gap between the neck and the finger. He has nerves of steel, and after cutting away the head, he goes straight for the thick plastic ring that is surrounded by her bulging f;esh. He manages to cut it off without drawing blood. After this drama, everything is smooth, and before the hour is out, we arrive at the familiar shores of Calais.
We are early. It's unheard of. Ten minutes later I am cooking mushrooms and garlic in butter, the delicious smell is wafting out of the caravan door, Mark is chatting to some English bore in the queue about taking up skiing after separating from his wife...he is trying to find a commonality, but can smell the mushrooms and can't concentrate. We sit on the bonnet, the four gypsies, and soon scare him off and eat. We are going to be taken home, we are quiet and reflective, it is surreal, in two hours time all of this will be the stuff of memory.

Up the Ariege

2008-04-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

We sped over the border through the Pyrenees, and stopped at our earliest convenience at a French supermarket, entering the vast, delicacy packed aisles like we'd died and gone to food heaven. We stuffed ourselves with free samples of cheese and roast pork, returning far more frequently than would be considered decent. The assistant at the meat counter started hovering menacingly and eventually removed the dish. Just as well, I was starting to embarrass myself. We wandered around dazed, wishing desperately that we weren't on such a tight budget. Oh we loved France so much at that moment. We were making our way to visit Tim in the Ariege, an old acquaintance I'd bumped into in Chipping Sodbury the day before we left for Portsmouth, but we couldn't make it in a single hit, so planned to stay in one of France's great travellers' resources, the aire de repose.
We wound our way around the foothills of the Pyrenees, wondering at the lushness of the scenery and the splendour of the hilltop Chateaux that seemed to be everywhere. No modern development going on here, everything is ancient and beautifully locked into the past. We stop 50km from Foix and camp up for the night. It is a strange point in the trip, the adventure seems to have gone out of the equation, everything is safe and predictable from here on in. Our main challenge now is to see how far we can get on the available funds. We have received a text from Ottilie. She is making her final film and has suddenly changed the story and wants Frida to star. She is shooting at the end of March and is trying to make plans to pick her up. All this makes us feel like the end is nigh, and we feel vaguely depressed by the idea of life without her.

Next morning, relaxed – we make our way to Montesque Volvestre, along beautiful tree lined roads in glorious sunshine. What's Poddy on about? This place is paradise. We arrive at Tim's - a lovely spot, with views of the Pyrenees, rolling hills, greenery and a super chilled vibe, and he jokes about our 'gypsy encampment' as we hang the washing out to dry between the chestnut trees. It's strange meeting him, I only met him twice about 25 years ago, but we talk for hours about the meantime, his travelling life and the gypsy camp on Sodbury common where he lived for years. Strange how things turn out. As a result of our new found kinship, his hospitality is generous -we can stay as long as we like, use his facilities and spread ourselves out on the land outside his garden. We have our first baths since Granada, Zom comes round for dinner and invites us round to his to eat deer. We picnic and go to the local market, which feels more like a social club than anything else.
Everyone seems to be nursing a hangover and self medicating from the bar in the square. Here we meet another Tim who offers to change the radiator in the car – a job that's needed doing since we were in the Asturias at the start of the trip. He has 2 Mercedes 240s in his back yard – a right result. It's a cool area, affectionately known as the' arse-hole' of France – excuse my French – and has the feel of a vast hippy commune. French, English, they're all the same, making money as and when they can. Zom turns out to be an ex London bus driver affectionately known as the Arthur Daley of the Ariege – you want it, he can get it. Over dinner the next night, he tells us how he has managed to convert a bike he found in a skip into a 4 wheel drive in 3 transactions, discusses his wheeler dealer lifestyle and shows us various treasures he has accumulated – an ancient Indian yellow sapphire ring set with an intricate 23 carat gold setting, a beautiful object. Less convincing was the 'genuine' Roman coin that looked remarkably like the ones on sale at the British Museum – and he's got lots of them. Don't suppose it matters out here though. We stay for nearly a week on the land outside Tim's house and manage to upload the blog in the local shop come cafe where Charles lets us use his computer by special arrangement for a couple of euros– internet cafes appear to be non existent down here.
Our next stop is at Kate's – my ex head teacher, who has recently bought a house in Toulouse and offered to let us stay in exchange for airing her carpets, so we drive north for a couple of hours, pick up keys from the agent and find ourselves in possession of a beautiful vacant house. The shutters are opened, light and warmth flood in, and our attention is drawn to the swimming pool, where a strange snake like creature is flipping and twisting uncontrollably. No one dares to pick it up, it doesn't seem to have a head - for once Mark and I are stumped as to what it could be, until we see a small tailless lizard sitting on the window ledge, obviously in a state of shock. We have chopped off its tail when the shutters were opened.
The tail continues twitching for a full 10 minutes in front of our horrified eyes. Poor bugger. Mark wants to dispatch the lizard with a spade, but we manage to persuade him that a life without a tail is better than no life at all, and the lizard limps off disconsolately, adjusting to it's newly lost agility admirably.
The girls pick their room, bring in their sleeping bags and turn it into a dorm We revert to our school personas – Mr Dobbs and Miss Darling, spurred on by the fact the house belongs to a head teacher. We eat like kings, wash our clothes and clean ourselves in the en-suite bathrooms, ah the luxury of it all. In the local woods wild orchids and honeysuckle carpet the floor. The girls insist on a visit to the local village of Poupas – just because the name's funny.
The following Sunday we go back to the market in Montbrun Bocage, visit the 'swap-shop', swap some clothes for roller skates and a bread bin for Kate, then go to see Tim to get the car fixed. The radiator is changed for a mere 50 euros, and we spend the afternoon drinking tea and checking out his caravans and circus relics.
Back at Kate's the weather is changing and during an excursion to Lavit the hail stones start to fall. The temperature has nose dived and the house is freezing.
We all spend our days in the kitchen by the wood burning stove playing backgammon, baking bread and pies and making dolls out of old pairs of knickers. 'Mr Jessop', the school photographer makes an appearance, but is later sacked for taking crap pictures and getting Miss Darling drunk at the local pub. The house has a T.V so Mark watches the weather forecasts with mounting panic – the Mediterranean coast is being hit by an anti Cyclone, the Pyrenees are covered in snow, people are stuck in their cars, the snow is so deep. Ah well, we put off moving for a day, quite pleased to have the excuse for staying a bit longer.
Being here has been more like a holiday, we never quite managed to get out of the immediate vicinity, but what the hell, being settled for a week was just what we needed to recharge the batteries. Mark and I stay up late into the night reflecting on what we've been doing, but never quite get a firm plan for where we're going next. The Guardian has contacted us for a possible article in their travel section, so, after dropping the laptop on the tiled floor in the kitchen (which miraculously cures the long standing charging problem), we write something quickly while the electricity is available. Who knows, perhaps we'll get the funds for Rome after all. Mark texts Ian in Italy for a weather report, and after a positive response we do the inevitable and start the journey East.
It is a long stretch, via Albi and the Parc National del Haute Languedoc. Well recommended. We stop short of the caves at Roquefort and eventually plot up in the car park of the medieval Chateau of Latour sur Sorgues,. We are being watched by a curtain twitcher opposite, but Mark is so hairy by now that no-one would dare approach us. His face resembles the old sandy dog that waddles up to be petted by the girls. This is the sort of thing that makes him nervous, but fortunately Frida has learnt a little trick of her own - 'Oh Pappy', she sighs when the stress is rising and he melts like a puppy, breaks into a smile and everything is OK. We wander the empty streets as the sun goes down, invisible dogs barking furiously as we pass their territory.
It is tiny and deserted - most of the houses don't look like they've been inhabited for 50 years. A closer inspection the following morning revealed tiny doorways on all the houses - like they were built for a diminutive local race, or even a town of children. The kids love it, but when we make our way down to the river we see full sized people catching trout from the local river, blasting our theory out of the water. All the old people are pretty small though, we see them going in and out of the mobile hair salon that has parked next to us.
In with grey, out with orange. We watched them with their heads stuck in hairdryers through the glass back of the truck. Not much else going on though, so push on, stopping for another night on the mountain tops near Digne les Bains, then continue down to the coast at Nice, which wasn't as nice as it used to be – more uglification through development. From there we wind through the tiny mountainous roads of the south coast.
It took an age, if you were to stretch the road into a straight line it would be three times as long as the one on the map. We passed Monaco and drove through Monte Carlo, and our spirits were lifted by the approach of a stream of vintage cars on the way to the rally, one of them even signalled for us to turn round and join in. Tempting mate, but we're heading for the Roman homelands to meet old friends and see the lovely Ottilie for Easter.

Granada or Bust

2008-03-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

We arrive at the campsite in Granada and it feels fantastic. We have regained our freedom, but unfortunately it is considerably more expensive. We realised one of the reasons we'd stayed so long in Jatar. We make up camp, gypsy style, (to deter 'the wrong sort' from parking too near) and check out the facilities. A warm shower block, lush -we have only come across this twice on our whole trip. Me and the girls anticipated the forthcoming event with great excitement. Frida and Silvie decide to pass the time by practising flying, inspired by an old broom and a stick they find dumped near the caravan. Frida realises it is a game, but Silvie seems to be taking it a bit more seriously. There is a shop on site, we can book our tickets for the Alhambra and when the kids have gone to bed after their ritual story time, we realise it is St Valentines night, so we celebrate with a 2 euro bottle of red wine and loud music, courtesy of the first electric hook up for nearly four weeks. It feels good to get our lives back, we can continue with our journey, but it's all a bit sketchy from here on in. The evening is balmy, Our ticket for the Alhambra is not till 2 the next afternoon, so we can relax.
Next morning we put on our best togs, gather our sketch books and catch the bus for the Alhambra. The sun is shining, the city is beautiful, the Sierra Nevada shining in the distance. We have a coffee, then make to pose for our first photo. Bugger. We have left the battery charging in the caravan. Our entrance to the Alhambra is in 2 hours, so I hop on the bus (because it's my fault) and go all the way back to the campsite – hoping that it will be somewhere obvious. Eventually I locate it in the Silvie's underwear drawer. It has only taken 10 minutes, but my heart rate has doubled. I go back to realise that my attempts to save money by going back alone had been foiled by Mark spending 15 euros on a picnic. Nevermind, the photo session can begin immediately. We make our way up the hill towards the Alhambra, collect our tickets and quickly notice that we are not allowed to take our picnic into the palace. We munch it in the courtyard before we go in, then realise there's no-one looking. Everything is beautiful, the location, the buildings, the vibe. We wander around the fort, talking battle strategy to the kids, looking at the amazing views. Silvie mainly wants to go in the barred areas, but doesn't have the guts, even when we dare her.

Eventually our entrance time for the Palace of the Nazrids arrives. We start by getting told off by the ticket puncher because we've joined the wrong queue, then push in the other one and have to wait for 10 minutes. It outclassed anything we had seen in Morocco. Sitting in the first room, we got our sketch books out, but soon realised there was nothing you could draw, there was nothing to focus on so we waited for the many too many to leave the room and got into the vibe. The further into the palace we moved, the further removed from ourselves we felt, as if our worries and stresses were melting into the walls We made some pointless attempts at taking photographs of the intricate decoration, but as Mark said, 'you can't take it away with you'. So we imagine how cosmic it would be to live somewhere like this. It is truly a thing of beauty, and it wasn't busy. We felt suddenly vindicated in our decision to travel in the winter. It was worth it just for this.

Eventually we are forced to leave by Silvie's bladder and move on to the gardens, the views and the fountains. A lovely day. We take the bus home and are delighted to find Emma waiting for us. She has managed to escape, and after the emotional reunion, she tells us the site has wifi. This the second thing of great beauty in the day, but obviously not in the same league.
Silvie is still practising her flying technique, convinced by now that she can travel further whilst flapping her arms than when she doesn't. She keeps on practising We cook pizza and after the kids are in bed, delirious with happiness at the reappearance of Emma, drink, email Roger, still stuck in Jatar, reminisce and make a plan. Emma has been texting and e-mailing old friends in Calpe to find somewhere we can stay together. Nothing works out, so we set off anyway – we'll find somewhere. We are moving north together, a mini convoy, she in her Citroen Berlingo, us pulling the love shack. We get off by mid day. She is going to speed ahead and find somewhere for us to camp, which seems like a brilliant plan to us. She is going to follow us out of the city, but we lose her at the first roundabout - eventually reappearing 40 minutes later, and passing us like a blue flash then disappearing into the distance. After numerous texts, we meet her in Villajoyosa after dark, rendezvousing at the chocolate factory, then she takes us to the wasteland car-park that is to be our new camp. Emma's plan is to sell her van, then use the funds to get to South America and see what happens there. She is 25 years old and carries her life around in a rucksack, making it up as she goes along. She could fill a book with her mad cap stories, despite her unassuming demeanour and has fabulous tips on how to get by with no money, including charging your electrical items at public toilets and washing your dishes at petrol stations. As we have no remaining clean crockery, we try this out, getting a mouthful from the female attendant when we come out– but it's too late, the dishes are clean.

We spend two days together in the car-park, visiting the reservoir which is 100 meters up the road, watching the processionary caterpillars marching in formation across the gravel. and just getting our lives back . The girls, inspired by Emma's travels spent a whole afternoon practising their driving skills. It is at this point that I check my bank balance in the local cyber, and realise our finances are dire. Rome, which where we had planned as the crescendo of the trip, may have to fall by the wayside. We resolve to spend no more money on campsites or eating out. It's wild-camping, cabbage and potatoes from here on in. Kate, my ex-boss has offered us the use of her house in Toulouse, so north it is, and while Emma stays around to follow some leads for selling her car, telling us she may have an interview in London for a job in Peru, we decide to make a bee line for the border.
The coastal road is built up, but nothing to compare with the horror that is the Costa del Sol (also now signposted as the 'Costa del Golf', I kid you not). We stop to make lunch and pick up a local bloke who wants a lift to the next town.The kids sit silently besides him 'til he gets out, then spend half an hour amusing themselves with the camera.
We are stopping overnight in Tarragona, in the car-park of the roman viaduct, 4km outside the city. We arrive, as usual, in the dark and are followed up the slip road by the guardia. We just act nonchalant – it's not against the law, and there are no signs forbidding it. After they've gone we eat and sleep. In the morning we go to explore the viaduct and to our amazement discover that you are allowed to walk over it. It'd never happen in England. After walking over it twice and wandering around the site for an hour or so, it's back in the rig and off to Figueres – we have an appointment with the Dali Museum. The weather has changed, the further north we drive, the more wet and grey it becomes. We start to see the positives of Jatar.
We arrive in Castello D'Empuries, 10km away and find a lovely spot near the cathedral to camp, then go to have a look around ,walking the windey streets, going in aforementioned cathedral and spoiling ourselves with a coffee out. It is getting dark so we return to the love shack and set up. Almost immediately our happiness is shattered by the arrival of the local boys in cars. They are practising hand-break turns and parking right next to the caravan.
I go out and say ola, then another car arrives throwing gravel all around and starts talking to the first lot about us. I can tell this by the aggressive tone of his voice and the regular repetition of the words 'caravana' and 'camping'; Poor loves, obviously not much to do in these parts. Me and Mark sit on the bonnet and roll a fag – wondering what they'd do if we asked them if there was a problem. The first batch are arguing our corner, encouraged by the girls waving sweetly out of the window at them, and eventually, presumably realising no one's scared, they leave never to return. Me and Mark spend the rest of the evening thinking up ways to park the caravan in front of the museum – and come up with the idea of a travelling exhibit – 'Salvadore y Gala en Vacationnes'.
We could put eggs and a sign on the caravan with a cup for donations. when the coins dropped in we would open the curtains of the van to reveal Frida sat on the bed brushing her hair. Silvie would go out and practice her flying, Mark would play dead in the front of car, and lean on the horn when the money fell in the cup, and I would walk in and out changing my outfit every time. We could even earn the entrance fee. It seemed like a lot of hassle when the morning came, so we parked in Lidl car-park and walked instead.
The Dali Museum has come on in leaps and bounds since we were there last (17 years ago), no more dymo labels. No more clip frames. the girls looked round entranced by the nutty sculptures, putting their 50cent pieces in to see the little machines work, and laughing out loud at the absurdity of it all. Money well spent. We left, kids inspired, and ran for the border.

Suspended in Jatar

2008-02-26T08:22:00.000-08:00

Suspended in Jatar

Our next stop is to be at El Balcon De Jatar, another help-ex contact, where we are going to work in exchange for food and facilities. However, before we go we visit Ronda, staying in the most expensive campsite in Spain – 40€ for a night. Five times more than the most expensive site in Morocco, and seriously denting our budget. We are outraged, and negotiate a discount. Ronda is very pretty, but we are rushing down to the coast, to Fuengarola where Doreen and aunty Tricia are soaking up a bit of winter sun. Motorways, traffic. We drive around the busy streets, marvelling at the number of people, the hotels lined cheek by jowl, and find the Hotel Angela with surprising ease. With the usual tension we find somewhere to park near the hotel, and go to meet them. The loveliness of familiar faces. We drink tea, chat and relax on comfortable furniture while the girls have their first bath since leaving home in their en suite bathroom – who'd have thought the Hotel Angela would be so luxurious? They buy us dinner in a proper Italian restaurant and we retreat to the caravan, now parked on the sea front with a ticket valid till 9.30 the following morning. It is clammy, noisy and supremely uncomfortable due to the fact we haven't put the beds up, instead sleeping me and the girls in the big bed and Mark on the 'sofa'. Fortunately we are next to a caff promising a full English breakfast, so we keep that fixed in our minds as we toss and turn the night away. We awake grumpy and miserable and go out to find it closed. We meet Doreen and Tricia then go to the local market, leaving at 12.30 for Jatar, promising to return before they go home. We make the climb up the most death defying road so far. Half way up the car starts to overheat. Mark is worried that she won't make it up. We stop and watch the cars pass, seeing them scudding higher, then higher up the same mountain, endlessly. The girls climb trees and I go round the bend to see the next instalment of the terror. Don't look good, but eventually we climb back on board, with the engine cooled and move hair pin twisting steadily upwards to a pass through two peaks right at the top. Relief. The rest of the journey is curvy but flat .We stop off for refreshments at a roadside ranch-house and watch a man eat meat and two plates of chips, washing it down with a bottle of red wine before driving off in his big truck. Spain, eh, it's all meat heads and potatoes.

We eventually arrive in Jatar, unannounced (due to communication difficulties in Morocco) at 5pm. We are a week later than we had arranged, as Catherine immediately points out, but she shows me how to use the coffee machine, fills us in on all the chores that need doing, then we are taken to a spot 2km outside the village to camp up next to the pig pen.

This is not the bad thing it might seem. The vista is truly magnificent. We are totally isolated. Quiet, save the night time owls and the occasional grunting of the pigs. We set up the awning – two rooms for the first time since Christmas, and think about what we need. We might stay for three weeks, if our initial feelings of unease at Katherine's superior demeanour prove unfounded, so it is worth making a proper camp. That night a full moon rises behind the snow topped peaks of the sierra Nevada. It appears unfeasibly large, but the photo I take doesn't reflect what our eyes are telling us. We 'moon' in its original sense, butts high, head between legs, and sure enough our eyes have been deceived. Later there are moon shadows. Everything seems cool out here.

The next day, our creeping doubts of the previous evening prove to be more substantial than we had anticipated. I find myself sweeping two floors of the building, stripping beds, doing laundry, polishing throughout, cleaning windows, making bread and dinner, loading and unloading the dishwasher, clearing and cleaning the table and learning to feed the pigs. Mark is set to work tiling the pantry and grouting the stone wall outside the toilet. What gives, man? We are introduced to Chris, the Romanian bar man – a man on the edge if ever we saw one. He has no English whatsoever, and we, as we have suddenly realised, have no Spanish conversation skills at all. During dinner (2pm sharp), we realise we are not quite on the bottom of the pile. All talk is conducted in English, and Chris is totally ignored in the stilted conversation. Fortunately we have, as fellow servant, Emma, and as we clean up in the kitchen she fills us in on what we've just walked into. It seems we have volunteered to be 'in service'. Fortunately everything is calm at the moment, because Rainier is away. Rainier runs a tight ship (god, it gets worse?) and when he says jump, you jump. Chris never sleeps, he keeps the bar open till 6, playing cards with the locals, and getting drunk, then works on manual tasks all day. Catherine has a constant stream of 'jobs' to attend to, walking the dogs (5), attending to the horse, phone calls, cars, shopping, etc. so people who come to 'help' are generally expected to run the household and bar to make this lifestyle possible. This is not a happy situation. Later, Catherine informs us that people usually work until 6, and have a day off a week. Hmmmm. We make sure to tell us we are going to Fuengerola to see Doreen on Saturday to assert our non compliance at the earliest opportunity.

The atmosphere in the awning that night was electric, me and Mark are a team again, united for the common good. We were outraged – no 'thank you's, no friendly chatter, the exclusion of our Romanian friend at the dinner table – should we stay or should we go?

The next day, Chris became more despondent, but attempts to speak in Spanish on my part went nowhere. He sat in front of the fire, feet up, chain smoking and drinking, making constant phone calls. No one else spoke to him. Mark's attempt to help him with the tiling was less than appreciated. He was shown to the stone clad wall that needed grouting and proceeded to rip his hands to shreds. Oh dear. I am cooking dinner for 9. Everything is going wrong in the kitchen, the chances of getting anything on the table for 2 o'clock are fading fast. The frantic alien nature of the place is permeating my brain after a mere three days. Emma chain smokes, filling us in on everything she has had to endure during her stay. This is nothing, she says, wait till Rainier gets here. And I check the potatoes again. During dinner, Catherine talks almost exclusively to Emma, and we sit quietly, like flies on the wall, staring at our plates with Chris.

Fortunately, Saturday soon arrives, and we set off early for Fuengirola, Doreen and Auntie Tricia. We have a lovely day, visiting the flea market and buying jumpers for the girls, shirts for Mark, a gas heater, folding table and a flamenco dress for me. We go to the sea front and eat chips, fried eggs and sausages. It's like being back in Blighty.

In the afternoon, the kids go swimming with nanny, and Tricia. Mark and I help ourselves to the en suite bathroom. Hot water and no interruptions. Thank you girls. We drive back to Jatar in the dark, terrified. The gap between the twin peaks is lit up, close encounters stylie, like a vision of Hades, more unsettling than the blind curves and hairpins. We wish we'd had the camera rolling.

The next day we walk the dogs with Catherine and go out with the horse, the children taking it in turns to ride her. We are calm and relaxed, stopping off to feed the pigs and turning the caravan into an impromptu cafe on the mountain. We chat, the kids read and play, loving it. Other than the horse wanting a bath in the stream while Silvie was on her back, the day was going beautifully, everything seemed normal. Then, as we re-entered the village, trailing behind the pack of semi wild dogs she calls her pets, we see a dead terrier being carried away by a man, as a young woman screams in grief on the street. We walk on, confused, to discover it has just been killed by Catherine's two rescued great danes (dogs on the edge if ever we saw them). Emma tells us they are responsible for the wound in 'Patches neck, and the other dogs have killed loads of pets in the village. It's a dog eat dog town. We call off our previously prescribed dog walking duties. Catherine talks about the whole affair as if it's the other dog owner's fault. She tells us of her 'highly strung' nature - she might be using smack. She does it 'all for attention'.and anyway, the terrier was always yapping. There is a total empathy block going on. The dead dogs human uncle comes into the bar, hurling abuse in Spanish, and Catherine responds dispassionately by reminding him that he killed his own dog and put it in a shallow grave as if this made everything alright. It shuts him up, then she tells us how the locals have tried, and succeeded to poison her dogs without even thinking about why this might have happened. We just sit at the table, mouths agape. There is no space in her 'conversation' for any response. She talks at length about the terrible way people treat their animals, and displays pained expressions about the suffering it causes her, but doesn't for a moment think how terrible it might have been for the mentally unstable woman to see her pet dog bitten and shaken to death. This is a familiar take on people's mental health problems. Chris is also talked of in this way. His drinking, permanent hangdog expression and occasional benders are all 'for attention' – but she doesn't seem to want to give any. It's all getting too much. Every day we say we'll go back to camp just after dinner, but never get back before dark. The place is like a black hole, draining our energy so we can't get out.

Rainier is coming home. The countdown begins. We are forbidden to say anything about the dogs. Catherine gets more and more hysterical by the moment. Her physical output decreases in adverse correlation to her faff levels. Emma stands in the kitchen as we cook and chain smoke together. She tells us about the mythical Rainier The time the horse attacked her, cutting her head open and rending her unconscious - within half an hour Rainier had set her back on task. Rainier spitting his dinner out at the table, and throwing it on the floor because it wasn't cooked properly. Rainier making people work 18 hours a day and amusingly, the time Rainier asked a help-ex worker to go upstairs and scrape the 'semen' off the bedroom floor. 'You'll need a trowel' he told them. Of course, he meant cement. In the meantime, Chris is really close to self destruct, Catherine talks about him as if he was a non person, in English, in his presence. How come we're still here? we can't understand why we haven't just left, then out of the ether comes Kate Bush...

'Suddenly my feet are feet of mud,
It all goes slow mo,
I don't know why I'm crying.
am I suspended in' Jatar.

Staying here is like watching a car crash in slow motion. How can we possibly leave? It is total voyeurism and we can't avert our gaze. These people are so self absorbed and deluded it is difficult not to watch, and life back at camp has never been better. Me and Mark stay up talking into the night about how not to live your life, with the new heater tucked under the table with our knees, Moroccan style. It is such a relief to get home at night, we are all on a constant high. Laughing, playing, having the fun that is emotionally wrung out of your during the days at El Balcon de Jatar.
And there are other things. Lupo, their 11 year old son is a star. We can't imagine how it happened, but he is very lovely. He has fallen for Frida, who, in a town of lantern jawed local beauties, shines like a goddess. She has grown two inches since we left England, and is blossoming into a self assured, confident pre-pubescent woman.

We manage to escape and take the kids to the local hot springs and watch the locals washing their hair and bodies in the blissfully warm water. Two hot water experiences in as many days. We drag it out, then return to the caravan refreshed.

Rainier arrives, a man over the edge if we ever saw one. We shake hands and he arranges his features. It looks like a dog mimicking a human smile. You are safe, he is friendly, but it obviously hurts his face. We are sitting around, drinking coffee, and it seems to confuse him, so we make like we're busy. Mark goes back to cleaning all the greasy shelves in the kitchen. I bake and chambermaid as per, Emma does more laundry duties. Fortunately Rainier is mainly taken up with Chris today. He talks to him over dinner, cooked by Catherine, and we see Chris smile for the first time. He has been given the job of installing a post box – which means he can finally receive his mail. He goes outside, smashing the wall in like a man possessed, then installs it. 2 hours tops. Rainier compliments him on the symmetry he has achieved over dinner. Maybe he's not so bad after all. However, it is not long before our feelings are proved wrong. Rainier thinks it's mad that there are 4 people working in the place while the bar is closed. It isn't right that there is only one person on the bar, Emma should help in the evenings, and we should get in early to tidy up in the morning. This conversation is directed at Catherine, over the top of our heads while we are in the room. Rainier is deciding what everyone is going to do without asking or consulting us in any way. I feel my blood starting to heat up, and make my way to the kitchen I can't understand why I can't say anything directly to his face. Emma is also fuming, she doesn't want to run the bar, she gets hassle from the local men who have no concept of woman's rights, drawing their opinions of women from a land before time. However, resistance is futile, and we find ourselves complying with our indirect orders before going out to fix a gate post that the horse knocked over earlier in the day . Strictly speaking we're not in the business of offering concrete solutions, but we'll do anything to get out of the boot camp for an hour, and manage to push it to two. That night we frantically text Sandra for tips on the how to deal with a big German bully.

We arrive at 10am the next morning to fulfil our cleaning duties and find Catherine and Emma driving round in the car. Chris has finally cracked. He has been up all night drinking, Rainier has sacked him and he has gone crazy, cutting his wrists with a kitchen knife, threatening to burn the bar down and bring the Romanian Mafia in to do them over. They have his stuff in the back of the car and are trying to find him so they can get him to the airport and transport him out of their lives. But Chris proves to be elusive, he is somewhere in the village, drunk, and getting more so. We imagine Catherine and Emma ,who is looking totally bewildered in the passenger seat, trying to bungle him into the back of the car. We receive strict instructions not to let him back in the bar, and they drive off on their mission. We look at each other bemused – bouncer duty? – not our thing really. We leave the door open.

Catherine and Emma return after failing miserably. Everyone waits anxiously for Rainier to get out of bed and be given the bad news. He'll actually have to do the job himself. Emma fills us in on the gossip. Chris is drinking in another bar, he is sleeping under a tree in the square, he is dishing out 50 euro notes to men in the village (he has finally been paid his money), he is unconscious half way up a mountain. The day before I had overheard Catherine saying that all the mail had been burnt because it couldn't be delivered, and |I wonder if this may have related to his meltdown. Probably it's just working like a dog in Jatar - 8am start, tiling 'til mid day, stilted lunch, open the bar, working, drinking and gambolling hard 'til the early hours. No friends, family, transport or appreciation. It's hard to say. But whatever the cause, Catherine and Rainier don't see it. We get on with our usual chores.

Rainier finally gets up and asks Mark if he can finish the pantry, quickly replacing his lost worker. He is in the past now but they still need the jobs doing. Chris eventually returns. He can hardly walk, he is foaming at the mouth and ranting about his treatment. Rainier looks set to explode, but fortunately Roger the healer has just arrived, lured to Jatar with offers of Massage work at the local hotel. He is lovely, and slightly confused about the situation, but seems to have a calming effect. During dinner (late again) he does his usual thing of talking exclusively to Catherine about who is going to run the bar that night. He is worried she is going to have a nervous breakdown because of all the things she has to do. 'It's ridiculous when we have all these helpers' he says, and we try not to look at each other in case we start to laugh. After a week it is really difficult to work out exactly what she does with her time. It is bonfire night, they can close early, but they still need someone to pull the pints. We pointedly refuse to volunteer, Emma reiterates her reluctance from the previous evening. So he decides Catherine will do it with Emma – did he hear what she said? - and he will work in the kitchen – he really doesn't want to be the barman. We retire to the caravan for a couple of hours under the guise of feeding the pigs, and return after dark so the girls can enjoy the bonfire night activities. We go off to join them but there's not much going on, so we go back and get slightly drunk. It's our first 'night out' on the trip. Emma, surprise surprise is working behind the bar when who should arrive but Chris. He is totally delirious by this time, making imaginary phone calls on his mobile, ranting again, taking up his old position by the fire. Inevitably the police are called and he is ejected from the building. Unfortunately for the owners, the police want to see their paperwork. Oh dear, there isn't any. The bar is promptly closed. We spend the rest of the night drinking and cooking big chunks of meat on the open fire.

Rainier is leaving the next day. We had planned to go to a flea market in Granada for our day off, but found out the evening before it had been stopped. Instead we are invited to go over for dinner. Frida has bashed her toe at the bonfire party the night before and can't walk properly. When we arrive, Catherine gets all witchy (in a good way) and starts boiling and grinding herbs for a compress, whilst Roger, the masseur entertains a stream of glamorous women and I start work on writing a fairy tale with the kids. The village is beautiful, the light and landscape are a filmaker's dream, so the children are set to work writing ideas for it. Meanwhile, Mark is engaging Rainier in conversation about our recycling ethos, suggesting ideas for the bar. He has previously shown him the article in the guardian. He appears interested and comes up with a brilliant 'recycling project' of his own. The project involves removing the engine from our car and putting it in another Mercedes he has 'absolutely no use for'. It's great for us, he says because, 'with respect for your family, it is much safer' – it having no rust. Mark looks blankly at him. Obviously this would mean leaving our beautiful car behind and taking a crappy modern model instead. It doesn't even have a tow bar. He has visions of our car with engine removed, Rainier leaving for Germany and being stuck in Jatar for weeks on end. No brainer, Rainier It's not really our idea of recycling? Emma later tells us that he had really wanted Speedy when he'd seen her and suddenly it all makes sense. We affix the witchy poultice Frida's toe with special mud, and she sits complaining in front of the fire. She has become separated from her playmates. Usually they work in the mornings in the bar, and stop when Lupo and Helena come back from school, then they're off into their own world, but now she can't play. As a result she becomes an honorary adult, joining in the discussions about our hosts' behaviour We return to the caravan, saying our goodbyes to Rainier, breathing a sigh of relief. Emma manages to escape and comes to join us. She is not convinced he will go. We sit in the awning and laugh at the ridiculousness and outrage of it all. It is so weird. Working hard all day with no appreciation, no asking, just, directing and ignoring. It really is like a life of servitude, there is no time to do any of your own stuff. We commiserate with her on having to live there. She has not had a day off in two months, and is on call 24 hours a day. We have received a text from Sandra, telling us to just ignore them, be happy, make 'em jealous, and one from Jonny 'They don't like it up 'em' he says, drink them under the table. We decide to try it out. We will do enough work to cover our rental of the pig space and our dinner, and will ignore the bad feelings and tantrums that may follow. Frida takes the poultice off, and pronounces her toe healed - like magic, nice one Catherine. Emma returns home late and texts us that he is back. Oh blimey.

The next day we discover that he is too worried about the situation to leave. Emma is given a bollocking for not looking after the kids while they were visiting the airport (even though they hadn't asked her to). She has cooked their supper but not made them eat it. She swears at Rainier – disciplining their children, she says, is not her responsibility. Mark has overheard and adds his two penny's worth. There is rebellion in progress. We make the dinner, but they are not ready to eat it. The kids are patiently waiting at the table and the dinner is getting cold as they negotiate the sale of a crane to some Moroccans. Me, Mark and Emma sit around the fire chatting, laughing and making audible comments about their rudeness -are they completely mental? Mark asks in a slightly raised voice. Rainier states that he doesn't want to eat cold lunch again today, and Mark helpfully suggests that they sit down and eat it while it is hot. A confused expression flashes across his face. Jonny's right, they don't like it up 'em. We eventually eat the luke warm dinner after Helena has had enough of sitting round waiting for them to come to the table and has stormed off in disgust. Then they go off for a lie down.
The kids dress up for carnival, parading round the village in fancy dress with the kids from the school. I film them all passing, and cheer them on.

We are on a work to rule. I spend my time planning the film and making props with the kids while Mark is stuck in the pantry, doing a beautiful job (when the health inspector comes she comments on the quality). We are working, but at our own pace. Rainier isn't happy but only complains to Catherine – even though we can all hear him. On the afternoon of his departure, he finally shows his dissatisfaction by smashing his suitcase onto the table and rearranging its contents - but Mark has mastered his ignoring technique and cheerfully starts up a conversation about the weight allowances to diffuse the situation. Rainier is left shaking out his underpants in an annoyed way, we are no longer playing the game. He leaves the following morning and plans for the film get into full swing. The kids are all totally excited. Lupo runs to show us his fantastic lederhosen and silk shirt, and we plan the bulk of the filming for Friday. Everyone is going to take part. Catherine is the witch, Emma the queen, Roger is the fool, and the children are princes and princesses. Other than fumigating Chris' old room, making bread and dinner (which becomes more and more sketchy as the week rolls on), this has become my main job. The bar has been closed so the work load has diminished, although everything needs seriously cleaning for the arrival of the health inspector. They need the certificate – and another bar man, in order to open legally.
We manage to complete most of the filming by Friday night, and go back to the bar to relax. We have been invited to stay overnight at the bar/ hotel so that we can have a drink and spend an evening together. The kids rearrange their bedroom and are allowed to watch a video and eat chips in bed. We sit by the fire, cooking and eating rabbit and chips, chatting and drinking red wine. Just as the conversation gets interesting a man turns up, and Catherine spends the rest of the night talking to him. We sit and chat to Emma and she tells us side splittingly funny stories about her youth and adventures. Suddenly we realise what the problem is with this place - the hosts generally dominate the conversation, and show little, if any interest in their helpers as people. The result is that everyone gets sucked into their world, their 'problems' , their dramas, their needs, there is no opportunity to talk about yourself at all.

Catherine has devised a plan that we will all go to visit her mother in Competa the next day and stay over night. We are planning to go to a car boot sale in nearby Nerja on Sunday morning, so it seems to make sense. She suggests we all go in the G Wagon, and Emma follows on later in her car. I am feeling edgy about our lack of autonomy on the trip. We will be stuck with no transport of our own, and be unable to escape should we wish to. But we go anyway. The ride over the mountain tracks is exhilarating, and we arrive to discover we have been given sole use of a cottage near by.
Catherine's mother has put on a lovely spread, we eat and spend the rest of the day wondering what we're doing there, while the children play with the six puppies and three full grown dogs at the house. We go and make up our beds and collect some fire wood from Mario, their neighbour. When we return Emma has arrived and we are all going out to a restaurant in town. We panic as we think of the price of a meal for four – our budget doesn't allow for such luxuries. Emma is likewise concerned and slightly annoyed at the lack of consultation. We order the cheapest stuff on the menu and find out at the end of it that they are paying. Very kind, but we Wish they'd mentioned it. We arrange to get up and go to the car boot sale early with Emma, to reduce the chances of being given something to do in the morning.

All goes to plan and we spend a lovely day searching out bargains, having lunch and sitting on the sea front with Emma, who is getting more and more desperate to leave. We arrive back at the bar at 5, finding Roger in charge and turning away a band of 7 bikers who have just come haring down the road and are parking up outside the bar. Some Moroccans arrive to take an engine, we are not sure they can have it, but Emma has seen them doing business with Rainier and there's no one around to ask. We help them to load the engine then they drive away with it in their boot. Emma is on a mission to find somewhere else to stay – possibly for all of us. She is waiting to sell her car to fund a trip to South America, but selling it in Jatar looks like a long wait. I check my e-mails to see if there is a response from our next stop, a friend of a friend in Orjiva who we are hoping to stay with for a few days, but there is nothing. Not good. We go back to camp, leaving Emma to email as many hosts as she can find.

We have told Catherine that we will be leaving on Tuesday, but by Monday, we still have nowhere to go. I phone Frances in Orjiva and it becomes clear that it's not convenient. She doesn't have the space, she was expecting us in January and now she is very busy. She offers us tea at 3pm on Thursday, and the address of a campsite up the road. Oh dear, our plans of escape need rewriting.
In the meantime, Emma has overheard that the Moroccans were supposed to come and take the engine out of the VW Golf which is up near our camp – not the massive Mercedes engine they took the previous day. We are slightly panicked and decide we need to be out of there before Rainier returns, just in case they've nicked it. In the meantime, the horse has developed a mysterious illness. Her tongue is hanging out of her mouth, swollen and pink. She has lost all control of her face and is drooling a thick frothing mucous continually. She might die her tongue gets any fatter. Lupo is mortified. Mark brings a bowl of iced water to the horse and she troughs it – being the son of a dog breeder has finally come in handy. We receive reports that the weather is about to change. Snow has been forecast for the next few days. Catherine receives a phone call from Rainier . He has been beaten up in a kebab shop in Germany. He is going to the hospital. We imagine him getting airlifted in, furious, and discovering the missing engine.
Half a deer has been sitting on the kitchen table for two days, and Catherine wants it boned and chopped into stew sized pieces. There are no volunteers (our policy by now is to wait to be asked properly), so she asks Roger to do it. Poor Roger. Since his arrival he has been put on horse, dog, building and kitchen duties, despite his lack of experience. 'I am a healer', he says, 'I don't know how to do these things...' Like the rest of us, he is less than happy with his life of servitude and is keen to leave. Emma and I help with the butchering, getting more and more hysterical by the minute - all the people she has contacted have responded in the negative and we are starting to wonder if we'll ever get away. Afterwards, Mark and Emma go back to camp to pull the caravan up the track with the G wagon. While they are up there a car passes and chucks a puppy out of the window. Will it get eaten by the big dogs? Who knows, it's a brutal world out here. We are supposed to leave the next day, but we have nowhere to go. We go back to the bar and watch the film. We decide to go to Granada the next day and leave the caravan near the pigs. This is okayed by Catherine, so we go back late after a drink and more meat. The puppy is waiting. It has adopted the caravan as its new home. The girls are deliriously excited when we get back at 11.30 -like all their dreams have come true. We tell them the bad news – we are leaving and we can't keep her, but they don't seem to hear the words that come out of our mouths.

Granada doesn't work out – we need to pre book tickets for the Alhambra, so we go to see the caves at Nerja, and plan to visit the donkey sanctuary to find a new home for the puppy. We drive around for an hour trying to find it, then abort. We go straight to the caves at Nerja to find it closed until 4. We've been so used to having our time mapped out for us, we've forgotten how to do it for ourselves. We have the first row for three weeks, I throw the picnic at Mark so he kicks me up the arse. We eat at seperate tables. When we've made up – just in time for opening, we visit the caves. It is like a cathedral, housing the biggest stalactite in Europe. Colossal. We look at the prehistoric remains and the history of man's use of the site. The kids are fascinated. We phone Frances in Orjiva to tell her our plans have changed – it's a bit far to come for a cup of tea – then decide we will head for a campsite in Granada the next day. We go back to the bar for our farewell dinner. Emma joins us for a drink (usually she doesn't indulge) and we have the strange experience of a conversation where Catherine doesn't get a word in edgeways. In an attempt to compete she comes up with her best story yet. Listen. She had a beautiful donkey who she loved, which had escaped from its field and was grazing on someone else's land. Being busy herself she asked some poor sap who was staying to go and fetch it. She instructed him to take a rope and put it round the donkeys neck and pull it behind the truck. So the guy does all this, but lets the rope get longer and longer until the inevitable happens. The donkey falls off the side of the road and is choked to death by the rope. He comes back and tells her that the donkey has killed itself, and she wonders how anyone could be so stupid. Anyway, they go and fetch the dead donkey and take it to the workshops and proceed to skin it, chop it up with a chain-saw, and put the meat in the freezer for consumption for family and clients. The poor helper had a heart attack the next day – and serve him right, she says. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. She proceeds to tell me I look like Britney Spears when she shaved her hair off and makes snipey comments to all of us. A fitting end to our stay.

The next day, after the children have used up all their powers of persuasion to get us to take the puppy, we pop in to say our final farewells. We have become firm friends with Roger and Emma, we give her the address of the campsite we are staying at for the next two days in case she needs to join us. We go to the school for emotional goodbyes to Lupo and Helena, then drive away. Past Alhama, towards Granada. We have been driving for 20 minutes when we realise we are going the wrong way and turn round – Oh God help us, we are going back, we can see Alhama again, twinkling in the mountains in the distance, we take the proper road and 40 minutes later see a sign for Jatar – it is 10 km away, we are the other side of the reservoir we could see from the pig pen. We drive quickly past without looking back.

Morocco

2008-01-28T06:47:00.000-08:00

Ahh...if only we'd decided on three months in Morocco. So far we have been here for 6 days and we are just about getting into our chill zone. Mark is finally relaxing, despite having to deal with the hassle and payment etiquette at the border, talk his way out of a 400dh fine for crawling instead of stopping at a police check point, being unable to access alcohol on demand and, due to navigatorial incompetence, negotiate the Karachi like back-streets of Larache, which steadily deteriorated into a rubbish strewn, rock filled puddle 100m from a busy road junction.

We arrived nervously in Cueta on the 28th, got hustled immediately out of 15 euros and spent another 100dh paying various blokes to ease our way through the border. We headed straight for Martil, thirty km or so down the coast, and plotted up for a few days to acclimatise. I washed all our clothes peasant stylie, Mark got propositioned for a hash deal within 15 minutes and Silvie befriended the campsite's resident shepherd. Then we made our first foray into a Moroccan town. Totally hassle free. despite the stories we have heard to the contrary. We ate a fantastic lunch for almost no money, bought provisions in the local shops and chatted to the campsite workers about the proliferation of middle aged french travellers in white vans and the environmental degradation that has come hand in hand with tourism.

In the evening we get to watch a Belgian crusty juggle with fire, and joined up with Robb and Helen, die-hard biker travellers who we first met in Bolonia on Christmas eve. We spent the evening celebrating Helen's 60th, the six of us in the caravan. Us 4 squashed up on the bed drinking whiskey out of plastic cups talking in hushed voices, while the girls slept soundly in their bunks. After a few days we made our way to Larache on the West coast. Driving through the mountains, watching people on donkeys loaded high with farm produce or pulling carts, ancient looking bicycles, and the ubiquitous grand taxis - Mercedes 240. At one point we saw two figures in the distance, she in blue, sitting on a donkey, and he in brown leading - 'Look it's Mary and Joseph! ' one of the girls piped up - and it was like watching the nativity before our very eyes. The campsite we were aiming for in Assila was closed, so after tense negotiations we went on to Larache and tried to find the free campsite. Unfortunately the road turned into a mud track, then a bolder strewn wetland, which led us steadily deeper into the less salubrious part of town. I asked directions, praying that someone spoke french, as my Arabic isn't a strong point-and were told we were going in the right direction. As previously mentioned things only got worse, but eventually, after Mark admirably rescued us from a difficult situation, we found the free site, complete with cafe, play-park, hot showers and clean toilets. We plotted up for new years eve celebrations with our one remaining bottle of wine. We had the good fortune to meet a convoy of English with various heavy duty trucks heading south for the Dakar rally. They shared their beer, snacks and stories. Come midnight Mark (a nutter with a plastic ear), after recounting a tale about getting drugged and serving a prison sentence in Sweden whilst drinking whisky at and African wedding, retrieved a jerry can full of Jim Beam from his truck. Introducing it as his new 'decanter', he proceeded to pour it straight from the can into our awaiting glasses. 'Nuff said. In the morning they left for Rabat, giving the girls presents before they left.
We walked into Larache, past the building sites that are everywhere to accommodate Morocco's new tourist acquired wealth, and spent the day wandering. We went to the souk, bought some couscous from an old bloke who looked like an extra from The Last Temptation of Christ, ate lunch and drank mint tea next to the 'Tele-boutique', then looked at the distant Spanish cemetery where Jean Genet is buried -got to get a bit of culture.

The next morning we head for El Jadida further down the coast and hole up for a couple of days. The Portuguese city is a 16th century port and is still functioning and lived in as such. It was really interesting to see the similarities with Portugal – history brought to life. We spent hours in the Portuguese cistern, looking at our reflections in the shallow water from every conceivable angle. Testing the acoustics, taking photos. Well recommended. We climb the battlements and visit a fish cafe in the port and order the local fare. A selection of freshly caught fish battered and fried with heads still intact. Bread and salad. The children hardly complain, indeed Silvie takes great pleasure in introducing her delicious 'mate' by animating its head and saying hello. Frida is slightly less impressed. On the way back we get caught in a tropical storm, palm trees bend and water pours forth, and we take refuge in a cafe and just watch - wondering how wet we are going to get on our way back to the campsite. Luckily it stops as suddenly as it started so we go back and plan the next stretch of the route. Can we make Essouira in a day? We're going via the coastal route – no more motorways from here on in.

We travel South, the storm and rain that started the night before following us as we go. We think about stopping off at Oulidia, parking up next to 25 modern white campers. We walk on the beach, then start to cross the causeway which leads to the spit. Unfortunately the tide is coming in and a single wave starts to cross the block our path, we run, laugh, scream towards the shore, trying to beat it but to no avail, we are all drenched up to our ankles. The rain has decimated our shoe supply, and growing feet have made the wellies and Silvie's boots (bought a mere two months ago) redundant. Their trainers are still wet from the unexpected downpour the day before, and Silvie is inconsolable after the adrenaline rush of the event and loss of her only pair of dry shoes. We manage to calm her with promises of new ones from the souk in Essouira . We eat lunch in the caravan, declining offers of couscous bought to the caravan, and razor clams from the back of an old bloke's bike. We decide to drive all the way.

We arrive (as usual) after dark, go the wrong way into town, turn round, miss the campsite, turn again and find the campsite full. Luckily there is a huge car park on the outskirts of the town so we park up. No electricity, but free and spacious. In the morning, the girls go out for a pee and return in a state of total excitement.

Over the sand dunes is the beach and on the beach are camels, loads of them. They have already been offered a ride by the camel touts, so we lock up and go for an hours bumpy ride along the beach and sand dunes. Because of the short amount of time we have in Morocco and the size of the country, we hadn't thought it would be possible to get far enough south to ride a camel. Knackers the old hips though. I could feel it for two days afterwards.

We spent four lovely days visiting the medina, buying dry shoes for the kids at the souk, eating out, befriending the local children and 'chevaliers' along the beach. We had the pleasure of meeting Akhmed, a Berber with a camel, who came past the caravan every evening and took the children for a ride around the car park, talking at length about the touristic spread of Essouira, how the landscape and people had changed in the last 20 years, the rubbish, the hustling, the begging – not a feature previously, but now a good way of making a living. But the spirit of 'progress' is upon them now, we have seen it everywhere – in 10 years time Morocco will be to the French what the south of Spain is to the English! C'est pas bon, eh? The car park filled up on our last night with a convoy of French crusties, with weird and wonderful trucks welded together from military vehicles, caravans and buses. Mark and I got quite excited about what we could make or get for our next trip. It felt like being on holiday.

We have evidence of a stowaway in the car. A mouse has been travelling with us. We have suspected his presence for a while, there were sightings as far away as Sydenham, South London. Fig rolls have been nibbled, chocolate chomped, and a small nest found in the boot. The girls want to have it as a pet, but Mark regales us with stories of mice eating the 'loom' and disabling the vehicle, incurring much expense. He proceeds to purchase, with much difficulty, a mouse trap, involving me doing an impression of a mouse and a trap to make our requirements clear – we have a laugh in us own way. The trap is set. The first night he eats the chocolate round the edges. The second night the same. Me and the girls are making up stories about 'The mouse who travelled the world', imagining him looking out the rear window and saying 'oh look, there's a camel...etc etc. The third night I plead for the mouses life, and Mark concedes that if the mouse survives till morning, he's on the tour bus. Alas, this was not to be.

MISERY IN MARRAKESH.

Well, I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. We left Essouira early in the morning in order to make the drive to the Cascades d'Ouzoud before nightfall, but 15km outside Marrakech everything goes wrong. The car starts to rumble and smoke, and we stop on the road side to assess the damage. There is fuel all over the engine, smoke is billowing out. Mark sits with his head in his hands – this is his worst nightmare. He suddenly realises his error in killing the mouse. Now it's pay-back time. We are approaching a small town, the land is flat and dusty. A boy rides past on his bike and stops to look. Unfortunately he only speaks Arabic. Mark is about to call for recovery, when another man on a moped appears. He dives in. chatting to Mark in his best 'Berber' peppered with semi random french words and Arabic for good measure. He diagnoses cracked fuel pipe and disappears off down the hard shoulder with Mark hanging off the back of his rickety moped. 20dh for the weld, 50dh to the Berber roadside assistance, and 10dh each for the kids who fiddled with the engine – total £5- seemed like a bargain. He invited us back to his house for coffee but we declined his offer on account of the language barrier and the fact he lived in the opposite direction to the one we were travelling. When we start the engine up it still shakes uncontrollably until we reach speed. We make it to a French supermarket – the second one we have encountered in the whole country- buy provisions and booze. We decide to get the car looked at properly and make the decision to stop at a campsite in Marrakech and call the breakdown service. Marrakech with limping car is totally stressful, but we make it and camp next to the crustiest truck in the campsite. We may be here for a few days, so it's worthwhile picking the most interesting rig on the site. Good choice.

The dog / child fusion works within minutes, and I am offering them a 'tasse de the'. We relax and decide to call the breakdown service in the morning and spend the evening in the big truck chatting and drinking the wine we bought in Marjan. We are up till 3, and in the morning Mark begins to get stomach cramps, made worse by the fact that the guy at the breakdown centre tells us we aren't covered for breakdown in Morocco. He uses £30 worth of credit arguing the toss, and just as we'd given up and got ready to find someone to rip us off by ourselves, a truck arrives to take 'Speedy' (never was a car less appropriately named) to the local garage. Mark goes anxiously, plagued by his lack of French and ill health. But there is nothing else to do. Me and the girls wash the clothes, find a den, write in our diaries and draw pictures and Mark returns 3 hours later, carless. That evening Mattieu offers to go down the garage with Mark to bridge the language gap. We are communicating well in 2 languages. I speak in French, they in English, helping each other out and correcting mistakes and Mark throws in the odd 'dans ma poche' and 'quel surprise!' for good measure.

Next day Sasha and the girls make a tagine, I try to write a blog, Mark's stomach gets worse, and we are unable to contact the garage to find out when the car will be ready. He spends the day curled up on the bed in the caravan - ruing the day he killed the mouse. Mark gives up on phoning and goes with Mattieu in the truck to see what's happening. The garage is closed. The next day, reinforced with Sebastian and Mattieu's father in law, they drive back and berate the owner. (Turns out the holiday was related to the new moon, and couldn't be precisely predicted until the day...New moon, new year.) With the assistance of the French speakers and the fact that Sebastian's dad is a mechanic and lets on he knows the charging system, they negotiate a considerable discount.

Our last night in the Marrakech campsite was spent watching a movie in a home made open air cinema. We go our separate ways, addresses exchanged, the next morning and make our way to the Cascades d'Ouzoud.

We are 4 days behind schedule, and our plans to meet up with Jane and Jamey in Chefchouen have been scuppered by the delay. We decide to wait around at the cascades for them, as it's the most beautiful and chilled place we've been – apart from the nightly howling of the pack of wild puppies that foraged the local rubbish dump every night. We stayed at 'Rashid's Camping' a.k.a the car park at the back of his shanty town. Really cool though.

We gave him some provisions and his mother made us a tagine (but not necessarily out of the stuff we'd given her, you understand.) We fed the monkeys that live on the mountain, cooed at the permanent rainbow that lives with the waterfall, crossed the river on a gaudy raft and picnicked on the sunny side of the gorge. We spent the evenings in Rashid's super cool cafe.

Big open fire, mint tea, locals coming in an drumming the night away. Frida was ill but happy, Silvie the centre of attention, getting kissed and asked to play football with the local stall holders all the time. Jane and Jamey are on their way. We are planning to go the next day, (my birthday) We are going to spend the night with them, get up, and drive. I figure that way, Mark will have to be cheerful en route. A big plus, and worth the bum ache. However, this was not to be.
Instead, we spend another day at the Cascades and scrub Chefchouen from our itinery. We go to the local market, nearly buy a bargain of a carpet, but get into a wrangle over the price of a pair of second hand boots. believe me, it was absurd – half the price of the bloody carpet! It is another lovely day, and we eat in the cafe, go back to the van and talk like old friends.

Next day onwards, to Fez. It is a 10 hour drive, across breathtaking scenery. We stop Bin El Ouidane, truly the most beautiful place I have ever seen, and repeat endlessly to each other,
'Is that real?'
It looked like a painting.
We arrived in Fez, with the sketchiest directions from the guide, and find the campsite. Our plan is to leave the car and caravan there, go into Fes in the morning, and stay in a hotel of some description. We revel in electricity, watch Pirates of the Caribbean and sleep. In the morning we catch the local bus from 'the other side of the road' (what's wrong with a bus stop, man?)
We arrive in Fes with no map, but Londoners' sense of direction, and head off for the Medina. Some guy wants us to give him some lolly for walking in the same direction as us, while repeating 'Ill take you there' several times. We decline his offer then end up giving him 3dh, just to get him off our backs. We find the Bab Boubeloud (that might not be the right spelling) and walk inside, getting lost within moments. It is mad. We rush out again and re-consult our maps. We know the hotel is close, and manage to find it on the second attempt.

The place was beautiful and unexpected, but no bar, no anything but beds and tiles. We went out and ate, watching the comings and goings at the main gate from the terrace, and tried to eat pastilla – who invented that? A meat pie with sweet almonds and 3mm of icing sugar on the top...too weird man.

We had the pleasure of walking the alleys of the medina on Friday afternoon when all the stalls were closing and the sound of the muezzin echoed through the empty streets. Outside the mosque the air was filled with bees, catching the sunlight through the slatted roof of the souk. A film makers dream. A beautiful moment. We paid a girl to take us to the tanneries, and stood watching the men dyeing and drying leather hidden from the deserted streets. The rooftops were covered in wool and skins, and we watched a man take what looked like a handful of wet, white cloth, and transform it into a patchwork of stretched animal hides. We went back to the Ville Nouvelle, ate french patisserie and found the only off licence in Fes, before catching the overcrowded bus back to the campsite.
Wishing we had more time, we made our way back, in another massive hit of driving, across the Rif Mountains back to Martil. Our pit stop turned out to be the best restaurant in Morocco, whose clients included the King (not Elvis). The food – rabbit - was truly sublime. The children bought chocolate puddings with their own money, and debated whether or not to buy another when they'd finished. Total cost, about £15. Bargain.
We arrived back at our first stop, meeting up with the campsite locals and spending our last night in Morocco. In the morning we left early for the border chaos, but getting out was much simpler than getting in. The guard looked in the caravan, noticing the foodstuffs and implements that had fallen from the cupboards and shelves, and waved us on.

After a ferry ride and five police checks with dogs, we were back in Spain.

Luzianes; Lisbon and Christmas

2008-01-03T05:36:00.000-08:00

Once again we arrive in the pitch blackness of night, after stopping off at ....... and asking a Portuguese bloke the way, phoning Sabine for directions and panicking somewhat at the sudden change in terrain. They live in a valley up a dirt track that snakes under dark, river lined tunnels, up and down, over the bridge and up a slope so steep that the car refuses to climb it. Steve is there guiding us up with his wind up torch, but the car won't budge, and we have to content ourselves with reversing and parking on the bridge next to their house. It is freezing. Mark is ultra stressed. Already worrying about how the fuck we are going to get out again, what is going to happen if it rains, whether the kids will fall into the river in the night, etc etc. We go up to the house, meet the family and eat, feeling strangely alien in the new environment. We take the girls to bed and chat about what to do. The caravan has sustained major damage to the roof during some unknown wood based collision between Coimbra and here. The seam is split and the metal twisted in two places. The music system in the car is crap and needs serious attention. If it rains (and the rain is two months overdue) the place will turn into a quagmire, and getting the caravan out of the valley looks like a delicate operation even in the current weather conditions. It is the same temperature inside the caravan as it is outside. We can see our breath by the light of the flourescent lantern. All our stuff needs charging. We laugh hysterically at the absurdity of it all and go to bed fully clothed. The next morning, the family leave for their kids' christmas concert and we are left to our own devices. The ground is still blanketed with frost at 10.30am. Mark has to re negotiate the hill that beat him the previous night. We have a fracas about strategy while Mark is reversing back off the bridge, and without warning, he stamps on the accelerator, surging off in a fit of pique. I watch the caravan bouncing this way and that, falling items clearly visible through the rear windows. But up it went, and so did our spirits, and we set up the rig on the slope and secured ourselves two hours extra sunlight (and warmth) a day.
The next day we need provisions, Steve offers to show the way, so he comes with us. Just as well. The 'roads' are mud tracks, leading to tarmacked roads, and on to more mud tracks. The village shop is like someone's front room, and Steve asks for the items we need in Portuguese, then we go round the back to find an incredibly well stocked shop in the back, and are able to buy more or less everything we need. We move on to the post office, another bar. We buy coffee and chocolate milk for the girls, who proceed to stick rose thorns from a stem they have found into their finger tips for fun. The village is tiny, with a river running through, we drink our coffee and chat about living the slow life with Steve while the locals pass in and out, chatting on the streets, drinking their varied beverages. He is a Scottish stonemason and poet, and is happy to live the simple life here, getting involved with village life. His children attend the local school and speak three languages - english, german (Sabine is german) and portuguese. They are virtually self sufficient. There is a small german community in the area and half the children in the local primary school are foreign.
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They have been living at the farm for two years, and Steve has done a phenominal amount of work on the place, using anything he can find, or is given. They have a solar panel and a generator, but it seems every time they get a new one it last a few weeks then dies. Even the solar panel is failing to produce the energy they need. Not good for us. My dreams of steamy showers and easy internet access are soon dispersed as we settle into a more basic mode Mark works, digging, collecting wood, building bean cane structures, and I wallow, limping about because the constant putting up and down of the beds has done my back in. The kids all play together, and relax into it in the way that children do. I content myself with menial tasks.

Taping the gaping hole in the caravan, fixing up a cloakroom in the old toilet, which will house the coats, jackets boots and shoes that constantly clutter the caravan. I fix the cupboard that won't close and sweep two weeks of muck off the caravan floor. The power situation is problematic for us, but even more so for Steve and Sabine. They have a constant battle on their hands for the most basic of facilities. Not important during the long hot summers, but at this time of year, when the temperature at night is well below freezing and nights draw in at 5.30pm, it's quite debilitating. We don't like to ask for power in these circumstances. We decide to take the train to Lisbon and stay overnight. Splash out on a two star hotel...hot showers lure us on. The rain arrives the night before we leave, and continues all the way to Lisbon. We have decided to go on a Tuesday because there is a hugh flea market on Campo de Sta. Clara every week. However, despite leaving Luzianes at 8.50am, and going straight to the market after dropping stuff off at the hotel, we arrive within 10 minutes of it closing..
Ah well, as Silvie says. We still manage to pick up a few bargains, I get 2 new dresses for a euro, frida gets a skirt, tee shirt, handbag and scarf for 2, and Silvie picks up a mickey mouse tee shirt and hat, for a euro more. We walk up and down the windy streets, castle in sight but no way of getting there, eat a hearty meal, cakes and coffee, then are treated to an amazing show of starlings on the waterfront. Ah...civilization
There are shops and christmas lights, and santa's special tram, and beautiful lifts and tiled buildings and staircases and hotels with hot showers. They live up to our expectations, no press buttons, time limits or draughts, a constant perfect water temperature. Lush. Cleaning our teeth till they shone, washing my hair for the first time in three weeks. We all came out warm and shining, feeling fresh and new.
The next day we had a ride on the no 28 tram, through Alfama, but the rain was heavy and we, being ourselves, forgot to take anything waterproof (I'd worn clothes soley for glamour value). We had lunch and had to head for the last train home - they run twice a day at 7am and 5.05pm. We left the centre at 3 to catch the connection to find they left every two hours and we'd already missed it. Foreigners abroad eh , forgot to read the timetables cos we couldn't locate them, and whereas I'd be able to ask in pigeon spanish for the information I'd need, portuguese is a totally different ballgame. We get ripped off by a taxi driver, but work out we're only 20 euros down. We catch the train.

Back at the ranch everythings back to cold and grey. The rain keeps coming and we realise we need to go before we're stuck. Steve has told us how the bridge had been washed away twice during their brief time there, so we decide to move on. In Lisbon we had read about Cintra, and its mystical reputation. Lay lines and batteries that drain quickly, lightbulbs that pop. Sound familiar? Possibly due to the angle of the iron lode in the rocks. We discuss a lead box for the batteries on the farm...who knows.
Next day, Sabine takes me for an amazing massage by a wonderful masseuse, and I am blissfully relaxed for an hour. I take my laptop and camera battery, and we all recharge together. After fond goodbyes we watch Steve pull the caravan down the track with his 4X4. Lovely time, lovely people.
Morocco here we come.

CHRISTMAS

We drive past Faro and the Algarve, stopping off for a night at Fuzeta,, a wierd campsite enclosed by high fences on all sides. Through the gates you can see the sea and marshes, and the next morning we walk to the seaside and wander around town, visiting the local market, eating more pastries in the Pastelaria. The girls befriend a pair of border collies and their owners. We stay for another night and move on. There is no christmas food. No cake ingredients, there is a paucity of gifts from santa and us. I manage to buy a penknife for Silvie at a service station. I read in the guide that Christmas in Spain is on the 24th. Today is the 23rd and it is a Sunday. All the shops we pass are closed, and I start to think about what I could possibly make with the ingredients we have . Potatoes, cabbage and carrots, various tins of fish, eggs and not much else. My Christmas anxiety has followed me unawares. I pull myself together and resign myself to being creative when in flashing lights ahead shines 'CARREFOUR' (pronounced 'care for' by Frida), and Mark tensely drives the rig into the car park. I find myself in a shopping mall, people, lights, products, plastic bags, lights, christmas a la capitalism. I hadn't missed it. We bought a chicken ans chocolate and cheerios on Silvie's request. Everything we needed. mark takes a phone call from Jamie. They will be in Chefchaouen on the tenth. We will be meeting mates in Morocco. How cool. Mark is totally happy, and suddenly chilled. When we get out it is dark - same old, same old...We negotiate the town, and manage by some miracle to find the campsite. It is extortionately expensive and full of modern tourers full of aging europeans with satellite dishes. We stay the night and decamp early, heading for the christmas stop in Tarifa. En route we stop off at Bolonia, site of more Roman ruins, sand dunes and the atlantic ocean. It is everything you don't imagine the southern coast of Spain to be. Undeveloped, unspoilt, quiet and peaceful. In the distance, across the sea, we can see the Atlas mountains. We are still in two minds about taking the caravan to Morocco, everyone we have mentioned it to has mumbled and disengaged eye contact at the mention. It'll be expensive, they tell us, you'll have to pay extra for the top box, there might be hassle over the lack of documents (it seems the UK is the only country where you don't need an MOT for a caravan - up until recently, Portuguese citizens even needed a registration document for their bicycles). Then we meet a biker and his limping mate, and their two orange haired spouses. One of them talks at length about travelling with caravan in Morocco. They make it all sound so easy, old hands. Their daughter goes on about her memories of Morocco as a child, then recommends a campsite on the beach just down the road. When we get there, I manage to secure a discount and we plot up for the festivities.

We put up and decorated the awning, instantly doubling the living space, and go to check out the beach. Very nice. Kids instantly run to the sea, then spot the sand dunes, then the 'lagoon', as they call it. The sun goes down, and we walk the three minutes back to the campsite. Kids abed with stories and songs, Silvie worrying that santa might not find her, finding two socks (which will never be the same again), and somewhere to hang it. They go to bed excited. Mark and I go through the usual Christmas eve ritual of drinking wine and wrapping presents. It was done in no time, we laughed at the simplicity and cheapness of it all. Usually we are up till 2am, having spent a small fortune and earning the christmas morning hangover whilst still worrying about the adequacy of it all. Tonight was better. Tomorrow we will go to the beach and make a cake, and play.
True to form, the kids wake up at the crack of dawn, but can't find the socks, so go back to sleep. Bliss. 2nd time they find their socks stuffed with chocolate and a small doll. They join us in bed for tea and biscuits. We have given them their flamenco dresses and a pen knife each, plus a CD of Queen's greatest hits - which includes their current favourite - Don't Stop me Now. They want to cut apples and sharpen pencils, they want to open and close the blades. We have to confiscate them within an hour after admitting to waving them at some other kids on the campsite to show off. They open their presents from nannies, grandads, aunties and uncles, all very well appreciated, then make phonecalls, feeling slightly homesick for the first time. I do miss everyone. Then we go for a walk down the beach taking our swimmers and towels but it is not really that warm. The beach is full of fully equipped germans, the car park is full of fully equipped german trucks. They are all kite surfing for christmas day, sporty in their neoprene outfits. We lay our frayed towels down, and head for the water. It's freezing, but we have to prove a point and go the whole hog. The girls play in the sand as my fingers go numb, we run back via the sand dunes, bumping into beetles sheep and cows meandering in the scrub. I get out the two day old chicken which isn't smelling so good, make a cake and crack open a bottle of wine while the children disappear to find the three dutch ferrets down the road. We eat, we laugh then watch Little Lord Fauntleroy on the laptop. Lovely day.

On the road

2007-12-19T03:55:00.000-08:00

Driving

Today was a travelling day. We had intended to leave early and drive through to Coimbra, but after the last night festivities, we had stayed around chatting, and had to steel ourselves not to say, “...well, maybe just another night...”.
Jamey looked at the Merc with Mark, and discovered the radiator is shot to pieces. The cooling fins have fallen off like the needles of a christmas tree. Coimbra, apparently, is the place to get it fixed. In the meantime we have to ensure the temperature of the engine doesn't reach 100 – if it does the engine could auto destruct. We decide to chance it and hook up, driving off after emotional goodbyes, and I film the hair raising journey down the mountain, watching the scenery change constantly as the light catches and casts shadows on its slopes. I look at the track leading to Priedamo carved into the mountainside from the other side of the range, amazed by the fact we have just driven across it, saddened by the fact we might never go back...

We are driving West, towards Orviedo, then south to Leon. We have to climb 1500metres over 40 kilometers, on a constant incline. The temperature gauge crawls towards 100 as we strain up, sometimes at less that 20 m.p.h. It takes over an hour to travel the distance, but eventually we get there, passing through tunnels bored into the rock, to arrive at the peak. We drive along the plateau of Spain, looking out at the vast flatness of it, such a contrast to where we have been. As night slowly falls, we watch the sunset in the east, the clouds beautiful red and black silhouettes against the orange sky. Then the darkness. We haven't organised a campsite, this is not the part of Spain that is used to tourists, and very few of them exist, non are marked or mentioned in our book. There is no way of knowing where to stop. There are no stopping places to set up in, if there are we can't see them. Eventually, just before Zamora, we stop in a petrol station and ask (in spanish) if we can park our caravan in the space behind the building. “nostromos vamos en manyana...' I say off my own back, and the man assents enthusiastically. We plot up behind the petrol station, make dinner, play cards, read stories and wait to see what tomorrow will bring.

High Plains Drifters

The station we stopped at in the pitch darkness turns out to be beautiful in the morning. Like midwest America – vast, flat and dusty, men with rifles make their way into the fields, mad dogs bark wildly, echoing over the plains. The sun is shining, and all around is nothingness, as far as the eye can see.

We plan to stop off at Salamanca, then cross the border to Portugal through the Beira Alta, round the national park near Guarda, and then through to Coimbra. It looks like a days driving. We start off early, high spirits, music playing, waving to the petrol attendant as we go. We drive and drive, stopping for lunch at a service station. Fish Soup gourmet style, filled with half crabs, prawns, clams, a treasure trove of seafood in a bowl. Arriving at Salamanca, we manage to smash the extendable wing mirror we bought before we left. Parking with caravan attached is problematic, reversing in particular is a nightmare. There seems no logic to it, turn one way and the van turns another, turn the other and... who knows where it will go. We haven't worked out the pattern yet (surely there must be one?) . I persuade Mark we'll deal with the breakage later, and we head into Salamanca for lunch and a snoop.

It is as beautiful as the guide book tells us. Amazingly well preserved and complete. The girls take pictures and film each other under the hugh swaying cypress trees.

I manage to get sucked into a tourist shop and buy the girls flamenco dresses for Christmas. Mark buys 'hornazos', a pie to beat all pies, thick of crust and containing enough meat to feed a family of four for a week. Delicious.

We head off, later than expected, and drive and drive, past the border, into the strange alien landscape of Portugal. Virtual scrubland, dead trees everywhere – they have had no rain this year, and the effect is devastating and depressing to see.

The land is covered by giant boulders, like a giant's playground, and we swing up towards Guarda, the highest city in Europe. It is huge. The road swings away and circumnavigates the mountain, and down we go. Again we notice the dark approaching, and panic slightly, after last night we had vowed to stop before dark. It is so stressful, the roads curve, there is nowhere to stop, if you pull off the main drag it might be impossible to turn with the caravan . We have really sketch directions to our next stopover, and arriving in the dark could be problematic, particularly as the maps we have are far from accurate and the signs in Portugal are pretty random. The darker it gets, the sparser the signposts become. None of the places they point to appear on my map, and the places we are looking for are not on the signposts. We drive on and on, hoping Serpins will appear in neon lights and it will all be over. After 2 hours driving in the dark, and various attempts to ask the locals directions in Portugese, and a couple of calls to Hugh, our host, we arrive up the track, mad dog barking, and camp up on his land. The relief of knowing we can stay here for a few days is immense. The kids will be able to catch up on some work, and we can complete some running repairs on the van and the car.

And relax...

Coimbra

How can two countries, sharing the same peninsula be so different.

We wake the next morning to clear blue skies and frost on the ground. As the sun rises the earth steams. We get up and walk around. Hugh will not be back until lunch so we have time to explore. It is not remote in the same way as Priedamo, where could be, but we are in woodland, in a valley. The land is terraced, and sectioned by clumps of olive, cork oak and bamboo. There are caravans and converted busses dotted around the various crumbling buildings.

Old bikes, a London taxi, sofas and other dusty furniture sit like relics around the place. A reminder of times past. Mark wants to go, I want to stay. The thought of spending another day on the road is abhorrent. This place is beautiful, and the children have already found toy tractors and go carts, Silvie is rushing down the rutted track at 20 miles an hour screaming with laughter and Frida has started work on a 'mechanic's workshop' in the bamboo clumps. The sun is shining....

Mark is persuaded, and Jay arrives, Hugh's son, ginger and charming and cool. He talks about his plans as if he knows us, drops some stuff off, tells us where to get provisions, and leaves.

The kids are persuaded to take time out from their perpetual play time and write in their diaries. I snoop around, looking in the windows of the vans and busses. There is a Safari, bigger than ours, all decked out on the inside with wood panels, 'EXODUS' in the front window. A bit of traveller history.

Hugh arrives smiling. Before long Mark and he are engrossed in car talk. He isn't overly concerned about the radiator.

A visit to Lousa, the nearest town follows. It is so different to Spain. The houses hug the streets, the town is beautifully clean and well kept. Children are playing in the school, going about their business in a calm relaxed manner. An old woman comes up to the children, concerned that they are cold (they are wearing tee shirts) and we laugh at the notion that it could be considered cold by anyone (It is 18 degrees). We shop, go back, and after the children are in bed, go to meet Hugh properly. Ex of Archaos, inventor and rider of the stilt bike (google it), he tells us of the fate of our old blue volvo, sold to the group in the nineties. Covered in shells and used in the act - well maybe. We shared stories of Royal Delux and La Fura Del Baus, and chatted the night away.

We visit Coimibigra, a ruined Roman town 30 minutes drive from the homestead. Frida and Silvie disappear, checking out the jacuzzi, baths, fountains and mozaics, asking question after question, reading the information on the signposts. We wander and wonder, considering wether to slip one of the Roman column bricks that are just lying around into out bags. We find one with a dogs paw print impressed into it. What a lovely sight. The girls are entranced with the idea of the Roman dog. But no. We leave it where it's been for the last 2,000 years.

After another evening at Donkey Island, we prepare to move on the Steve and Sabine's place near Odemira. It will be two days drive, and we organise our stop off point. We will definately stop before dark. We plan to stay in the car park at Os Alamendres, a stone circle near Evora, and leave early (midday).

Night driving.

It gets dark before we arrive at our destination. We stop in a layby, but it is too close to the road, and the road is busy, so we drive into Montemor-o-Novo, and stop in the car park. It has a toilet, and is next to the municipal park. I take the girls to run around while Mark rearranges the caravan for sleeping mode. They have run ahead, and suddenly reappear in a state of excitement. There is a small amphitheatre with a dancing fountain, light show and piped music tucked round the corner. They dance and run, avoiding the spray. We go back to get Mark, who is stressed and miserable, and worried about sleeping in the car park - even though Hugh has told us the Portuguese aren't bothered. I tell him to bring a bottle of wine, then cover his eyes as the girls take one hand each and lead him to the spot. We sit and chill as they use up all the energy they have stored over the day, then have the noisiest night's sleep so far.

The next morning, we decamp early and make our way to Os Alemendres, the stone circle we had planned to camp next to. First we have coffee at the local cafe, then while wondering whether the car and caravan will make it up the track, watch two coach loads of school children dissappear up it. The town is desserted and the kids smash the ice covering the puddles that are still in the shade, whilst in the sun it is gloriously warm. We arrive to find the school children swarming like ants over the stones, scuffing about in the dust, climbing on them, kicking them absent mindedly whilst checking out their phones. It was not the experience we were hoping for. I cook eggy bread and egg on toast for Mark in the caravan, and they eventually leave. So we hang around for a couple of hours, with the place virtually our own. Taking pictures, shooting film, dressing the girls up in their flamenco dresses for the beauty of it, watching the sheep run past bells tinkling,

Afterwards, we moved on again towards Odemira where we will be staying with Steve, Sabine and their three kids for a week or so.

Happy Christmas, everyone!

Asturian Enders

2007-12-11T15:41:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Priedamo, land of the free.

Meet JAMEY, 31. Owner of a County 4X4, six wheel, raised wheel based ford transit, trail bike, joint owner of a 17ft german caravan and the green house in Priedamo in the Asturian mountains. Nerves of steel and a taste for adventure. The Dude. He is married to

JANE, 25. Loveliness personified, dreamer, builder and dead ringer for Ottilie. They are sharing the villiage with

NIC, erudite, death defying owner of the blue house, and

CHRIS, 47, dog lover and owner of FLUKE II.

As Jamey would put it, "it's all a bit sketchy up here", the days go by, the evenings are filled with wine and smoke and words, and it feels almost impossible to get anything done. So we do very little, the hangovers are blown away on the first venture out of the caravan in the morning, leaving a pleasant vague feeling which lasts until the next session.

The village is one of the highest in the range. From here you can climb to the nearest peak and see the sea to the north, the Picos de Europa to the south, and everything in between. The road is cut into a mountain with an almost vertical drop -certain death is all I can think of as we drive up it, and we have driven up and down it on numerous occasions now (Mark focussed, the children discussing matter of factly, the possibilities of survival if we go over the edge, and me with a frozen smile on my face.) It is literally at the end of the road, and visited only by the owner of the cows and its inhabitants. The village itself is a small clutch of farm buildings and houses in various stages of dilapidation perched on the top of the Asturian Mountains. It is the most remote spot we have ever visited, it is idylic and beautiful and peaceful. The only sounds the bells round the cow and sheep's necks, and the screech of the occasional vultures. The constant, muffled chiming is calming and deters us from listening to music or making noise.

During our stay - we have been here for over a week, we have climbed the nearest peak, visited the nearby beach (about 30 minutes drive from Priedamo) and helped around the place. But mainly we have been chilling out and listening to stories - Nic's near death experience with an aeroplane propellar, Chris' shaggy dog stories, and J&J's travelling tales, gleening information about the local area and places to visit en route. Generally experiencing life on the commune. The girls are in heaven. Up and out every morning, skipping up and down the mountain roads, walking far away from the house up the mountain sides. One day they built a den and we didn't see them all day, they were so wrapped up in their own world. They put on a firework display for the whole villiage (all six of us) and we spend the night round the fire eating sausages and bread, chatting the night away.

They write in their diaries about their adventures, and learn about the mountain wildlife, the geography of the area, how the clouds sit in the valley for days on end, and learn a smattering of Spanish, which will serve them well on our way back up north after visiting Morocco.

Jamey takes Silvie on two motorbike rides up the winding mountain roads, off roading down the slopes, and she is totally delighted and excitied. He shows her how to measure the electric current in the caravan, and how it changes when extra batteries are added, and learns by asking so many questions that she makes everyone feel dizzy. Frida and Jane plant trees and plants that she has brought from England, and shows them the best local spots to play. Chris will chat to them all day, letting them help to make the fire and look after Fluke. We don't want to go, but we will have to push on. We cook dinner and chocolate cake on our last evening, and everyone eats, chats and drinks, and we discover they know the man at our next stop in Portugal. We baulk at the coincidence.

It is heartening to think of the serrendipity that bought us to this beautiful spot. A chance exchange with Jamey in the queue to embark on the ferry – admiring each other's rigs, and then again as we prepared to get off the boat. It seems they were also booked in for the ferry on Wednesday, but car trouble prevented them catching it. They describe the life, the area, the plans and fill my head with ideas. It would be tempting just to stay here. I can see it in my mind's eye, just dropping out and taking a whole new path in life. It is so beautiful.

First days

2007-12-03T07:59:00.000-08:00

We have been in Spain for two days. Off the ferry at Santander after meeting Jane and Jamey who have invited us to stay at Priedamo, their villiage in the mountains. We have vague directions on a post it note stuck roughly to the map book. Santander is straight forward enough to negotiate, and we drive on to Santilliana, supposedly the prettiest villiage in Spain and follow the parking signs to our first mistake. We take the wrong street and cannot turn the caravan to get out. Mark reverses with me shouting instructions from the rear, and we manage, somehow to crash into the sign and smash our rear indicator into the bargain. I wait for an irrate Spaniard to come out screaming, and panic at my lack of language, but nothing happens. Noone seems remotely bothered and we eventually reverse out to the car park opposite, look at the town and get some lunch, using every opportunity to practice our Spanish.

Onwards to El Rosal, a beachside campsite on the coast where we are planning to spend our first night. We arrive to find it shut, despite the Rough Guide's statement that it is open all year. It is adjacent to a massive open space, surrounded by sand dunes and woodland, and we decide to camp here, next to the beach. The kids are delighted and strip off to their knickers immediately. They spend an hour or so splashing in the Atlantic, making channels to capture the waves, and generally being careless to the fact that it's only a few degrees warmer than England. Behind us the sun sets on the Picos de Europa, snow capped, golden and stately in the distance.

We are woken in the night by some local youths, doing handbrake turns next to the caravan, it sounds as if they are right upon us, then they drive away. In the morning we see the tracks they have left, barely five feet from the caravan. We are told by a fellow camper that this practise is fairly common, and a way for locals to discourage people sleeping overnight in public areas. Fair play to them, I suppose. Friday turns out to be beautiful. The girls go off to play in the little woods, making a splendid bed of moss and campfire while Mark and I superglue the indicator casing back together. Our main concern is getting stopped by the Guarda, we have been told so many stories about being fined on the spot for any infringement. It is unlikely we will be overtaking anyone in our old banger.

The town has a causeway over the estuary, and local lore has it that if you hold your breath for the length of the bridge, your wish comes true. We manage, blue in the face, and I wish for our luck to change. it seems we have had nothing but worries and bad feelings for the last three weeks. We follow the signs for the car park and again manage to get stuck. Under the watchful eye of the students of the local school, hanging cool with their sultry good looks and ciggarettes, we reverse and drive off like pros, deciding we will no longer take the caravan into the Spanish towns, they are labrynthian, narrow, steep and twisted, often leading to dead ends, with no turning places. Best to park on the outskirts and walk.

We stock up on provisions, ordering cheese from the shop keepers, and go for a drink in a local cafe. We decide to take Jane and Jaimey up on their offer. So we find the note, check the map and head off. The instructions are vague, and only one of our mapbooks has the local town on it. None have the villiage marked, and the only instructions we had were to go to Nueva and take the road up the mountain. We stop and ask directions, part Spanish, part sign language, and the man points us in the right direction. We make our slow assent up the foothills. The road is steep and narrow, we are slightly nervous about the terrain we will encounter, but it soon becomes apparent that once the journey up has started, there is no way back. The road is so narrow it would be impossible to turn. The views become breathtaking, the sun spills through the dips in the mountains, almost tangible, and the road climbs and narrows. From one side of the valley we can see the road clinging to the mountain on the other side. The sun shines in our eyes blinding us both as we turn the corner from one side of the mountain to the other. By the time we reach the tiny road leading to the village, I am almost in tears. There are hairpin bends and no barriers but at last we turn the corner to the breathtaking views and with relief, see our hosts with their caravan, just down the road. We park the rig.
Everything is beautiful...

Viva Espagna

2007-12-03T07:55:00.000-08:00

28.11.07

We have finally embarked on the ferry. Our cabin is on the 6th level, pink corridors, carpets, doors and bedding, much to the girls' delight. We had a slap-up dinner, justified by the fact we no longer have to return to the UK half way through our trip, and went to see Pirates of the Caribbean in the onboard cinema. However, the rocking of the boat is too much for the kids, and Frida is sick seven times during the film. She fills four sick bags and we pile them up neatly in the corner, warm and heavy, for disposal after the feature. She is so brave and quietly heaves into her bags between scenes, pale faced and weak. We have the cinema to ourselves, and watch the film with growing confusion. It is so crap. It is turgid, boring rubbish and I sorely regret chosing to see it when we could have watched the sun go down over the Bay of Biscay instead. Afterwards we return to our cabin and I stroke her face til she falls asleep, then try to stop Silvie from her incessant chatter about the construction of the boat and the bunks, and the strength of it all. When she is still and quiet I look at her, in her bunk, and watch as her eyes glaze over and finally, slowly close, and she is asleep.

Mark and I pop out on deck, via the bar and cabaret, looking for the preferred route from Santander to Portugal. There are so many mountains and we worry about driving up them, and how slow we might have to go. But for the first few days we will chill, stay on the coast, maybe get a bit of good weather and take our time. The night is mild, we see the moon moving upwards the down again with the rocking of the boat, watch the white trail of the boat behind us marking out where we have been. We will be in Spain tomorrow, finally..

Turn Around

2007-12-03T07:47:00.000-08:00

We have had three days of anxiety and panic. Stuck in a campsite on the outskirts of Plymouth, with practical problems galore. We have realised how totally disorganised we have been. The computer has been playing tricks on us – not charging the battery- the oil dip stick has become unstuck, the wheel clamp we have borrowed has a padlock and we have no key, the insurance company are still insisting we return to England after 90 days, then come back and continue for another three months rather than taking the full 180 days in one go. We have been walking around with knots in our stomachs, wondering what on earth we are thinking of, running away in a knackered old caravan pulled by a twenty seven year old car. Headless chickens.

Today however, everything comes into place. The girls are so happy, so pleased to be on an adventure, so laughing and happy and funny, they lift our spirits and bring us together despite our differences. In Plymouth Mark wins his battle with Norwich Union and they decide we can stay away for the full 180 days without a return trip – a massive weight off our minds. We traul the charity shops to find cagoules, boots, various stuff we have forgotten, but they are crap. Six in one street selling various tut made in third world countries for the western customers whims. They are sterile and soulless, trying to mimic 'new' shops. Oh for the days when you could buy other people's discards for next to nothing. Now it seems there is someone deciding what is and isn't saleable, acceptable, useable for their target customers. Poncing themselves up for the middle classes looking for a bargain. There was a time when they existed for a dual purpose. Making money for charity and providing stuff for the 'have nots' in the community. Recycling in action. Now they fly their products half way round the world to bring us all the ethnic gift items we crave.....

We will catch the ferry tomorrow. We are so close we cannot miss, and in fact the three days of living in the caravan have been infinitely useful and lovely. Getting up at the crack of dawn, seeing the sun rise in east, turning to see the moon behind, fading slowly as the morning progresses. Cold and misty, birds singing. Nature is a beautiful thing. We should cherish it.

The huge chimney in the distance belches out smoke, thick and grey, 24 hours a day. Plymouth is awash with ugly retail and trading estates, making more useless stuff for the population to buy. Can't wait to get out.

Capitalism, who needs it?

False Start

2007-12-03T07:28:00.000-08:00

The day started well, awake at 6, dozing til 7, leaving at 8, all of us on a high. We drove off, with Shippy filming us on her phone, waving and emotional, and soon out of sight. The car was like a dream, cruising along the motorway, music playing, looking out the window at the beautiful somerset countryside, the sun low in the autumn sky, filtering between the branches of the passing trees, glaring into my camera lens.

I don't know what went wrong, but suddenly, after a mere ten word exchange, we weren't speaking, and the vibe had gone. It seemed the road went only up, and the car performed magnificently, good practice for the Spanish mountains. At one point we slowed to thirty, second gear engaged, but she climbed and climbed onwards and upwards. We arrived at Plymouth with 15 minutes to spare, filled up with diesel then went to find the port. We had allowed ourselves four hours when the journey should have taken three, we were self satisfied and confident, but when we arrived at the ferry terminal, it became obvious that we had made a mistake. Wrong time. I had read the arrival time as the departure time. Despite our good intentions, we had missed the ferry. We saw her waiting as we cruised up to the port, but she was departing as we arrived. I can't describe the feeling of self loathing, of waiting so long already only to be faced with another set back due to my own stupidity. I did scream like a madwoman for a full ten minutes – such a drama queen.

Thirty minutes and a cup of coffee later, we sat in the port eating lunch in the caravan, deciding what to do for three days until the next one. Wild camp on Dartmoor? Vetoed by Mark. The guy at the ferry terminal offered us a pitch in the carpark, or the wasteland next the sea, tempting (not the carpark!) but we take the safe option and find a campsite and embark in our first night in the caravan since February.

I can report that it is very cosy. Right now the girls are sleeping in their bunks after hot dogs and chocolate, yahtzee and stories. They have explored the site, climbed the trees, rated the toilets, practiced morse code with the old war time torch Mark has lent them, and seem not too disappointed.

The Rig

2007-11-20T15:24:00.000-08:00

the Safari and the Merc have been paired up at last, and have taken their maiden voyage as a couple. She does not actually look like this yet (the stripe has not been painted due to excessive rainfall), but I amused myself on photoshop, and brought the vision to life..

The week has been damp and gloomy, both physically and spiritually. The caravan has let in water. We have been working every night till the early hours to finish our work and are tired and disorganised. The rain has prevented me from painting the 'go slower' stripe on the caravan. The house is full of damp, drying washing, and the days seem over before they have begun.
But today Mark's orders are complete, and the film I have been editing is finished, and suddenly everything seems like it's actually happenning. We have good friends and neighbours cooking us 'last suppers' and there is a pile of bagage on the landing, waiting to be packed in the car. Another media company have been in touch about a future project. We have learnt from experience not to put too much stead in their enthusiasm, but who knows? You have to follow these things, otherwise you'll never know what will happen.

The girls have both had their hair cut for ease of brushing during the trip. They are already starting to look like travellers. They ask for patches on their clothes when the sewing machine is out, and are revelling in the anti fashion ethos. They are at caravan school and can wear whatever they want. They have learnt all the lyrics to Queen's 'Don't Stop Me Now' in 2 days.

just one damned thing.....

2007-11-14T14:20:00.000-08:00

...after another

The ferry leaves on Wednesday or Sunday. Two sailings a week. Mark's massive card order is moving towards it's natural conclusion, and we are on track. On Monday, the BBC phone to say they may want to use the house as a location in a reconstruction. They can pay us £900 for two days filming. Good news, relax. My dear friend Sue will house sit, the caravan looks fantastic, the children are coming round to their new way of learning, farms have been confirmed, we have had our leaving party, and to top it all, someone is dropping extra cash into our laps. It is a good start to the week.

I am told to have faith in a dream - and then everything goes wrong.

This morning we woke up, having finally shaken the weekend's hangover (we are technically too old for that level of consumption), and decide to hitch up the caravan. We push and pull her, then, turning round, realise she has a flat tyre. We pump it up with a crappy handpump we bought from the pound shop, managing a coffe and a fag during the lengthy process. When the job is done, and we have tested the lights are working, Mark revs up the car for the caravan's maiden voyage on the Merc. I rush to get my camera. As I do so, the car dies. I literally run out of the gate to hear it's apparent death throes.

We think she has run out of gas. Mark goes to buy some on his bike. No joy. He buys some more, and some more, but to no avail. We learn the worst thing you can do with a diesel engine is let it run out of fuel, and it seems we have committed the sin. Dan tells us it's air in the pipes, fixable. We follow his instructions, but still it won't work. The guy at the garage it was booked into for a service doesn't want to know. The Green Flag can't fix it.

The man in the shop can't make the number plate, I walk into a lamp post, a virus tries to invade my computer. I am too scared to book the ferry ticket, lest the ferry has stopped running. the day is fast becomming a jinx.

Later, Rennae offers me words of kindness. It is a good thing, she says, it could have happened on the way to the ferry. On a mountain top in Spain. I can see this. It has occurred to me also. It is a blessing in disguise.
Sometimes it is important to look at the larger picture. Things are not always as they seem.

New Plans

2007-11-06T14:55:00.000-08:00

The date of departure has been pushed back a week - hopefully we shall be leaving about the 17th, and we breath a sigh of relief for the extra time. After the general outrage of having to notify banks, mortgage company, insurance companies, fill in forms, modify the house, and store our horde to 'allow' us to let our own home, we have decided not to - we will live on less when we're travelling instead. I can now spend my time finishing the caravan and planning our route.

Farms on helpx (www.helpx.net) have been selected and emails sent. Galicia, Portugal, and Granada, goats, pigs, horses and dry stone walls beckon. We will restore, clear, build and garden in return for free food and accomodation. I have even applied for work in a hotel and bar, an incentive to improve my rubbish Spanish. All we do now is sit back and wait for the replies, and see what we are offered.

I bumped into Fred again today, all spruced up with his too big shirt and jumper over his extravagant neckerchief. Today he recited a poem about death, and told me of his time as a dispatch rider in the war. I ask him to see his poetry some time, the quality of it is astounding, and he remembers every line and delivers them with passion belying his 94 years. He walks off slowly with his one walking stick for support, looking like the slightest breeze will blow him over - such spirit in such a fragile frame.

I am back to work on the caravan and realise I now have time to polish it to near perfection. Tomorrow I will rebuild the bathroom (not at all as grand as it sounds) and buff the upper panels. The girls work in their caravan school house, contented.

November already

2007-11-02T12:38:00.000-07:00

If there's one time of year the house really lends itself to, it's Halloween. We have a giant spider resident above the kitchen door, and our hearts give a little skip everytime we pass through. However, the cobwebs aren't quite visible enough, so we hunt under the stairs for last years fake stuff. It's a nightmare to unravel, as my hands are as rough as sandpaper, and catch constantly in the fibrous material. All the scrubbing has had an adverse effect. The children have spent the morning researching the Mexican Day of The Dead, and Halloween, and we make 'bread of the dead' and carve pumpkins to honour them both. Their friends arrive, and we eat the traditional 'worms in blood sauce' and 'scab cakes' by candlelight, then finish off with ghost stories round the roaring fire.

Mark and I have a night off, and discuss our options in letting the house. The new tenant is elusive and we have to consider a plan B, as there are now less than two weeks til our departure. Cash is proving to be a major worry. The mortgage company want £200 to allow us to rent our house out, the electicity and gas checks will be the same again, the car needs fixing, a laptop needs buying - it feels like all our money will be spent before we even leave. I need to think creatively about what to do, but everything seems to be closing in, my mind is a fog of unconnected thoughts, and flits ever faster from one to the next, not quite managing to make sense of any of them. I need to relax and get things into proportion, but can't quite manage it.

November the 1st already. I wake up feeling close to tears, and make porridge for everyone. Mark and I hardly speak, we are both so engrossed in our own schedules. Too much going on in our individual heads, so that all exchange is curt and unfinished and we snap and grunt at each other. The children too are argumentative, and Silvie has circles under her eyes from the late night and cries at the slightest provocation. All my attempts to comfort and reconcile her with her sister fail, so I take her back to bed for a sleep. She is miserable, and takes it as a punishment despite my soft words, and I leave her abruptly before my temper flares, knowing full well she will not sleep, but instead creep into the little loft space and play with some long forgotten toy that has been packed away in readiness, or read voraciously with her tired little eyes until I return. Frida is on track with her school work. She is shining and happy with caravan school, and pleased to be relieved of the distraction that is her little sister. I go and clear out cupboards, my stimulating new job. The big green recycling bin is full of the old magazines and paperwork that has been building up for years. It feels like moving house all over again.

We are going to Yorkshire to see Doreen, Mark's mum at 7 O'clock, and I am frantic and over emotional, and desperate to get on. The children want me constantly, and my temper flares. I take Silvie to see the Headmaster, 'Mr Dobbs' (A.K.A. Mark), and he offers her the kind, calm words and that I was unable to provide.

Later, in the garden, me and Mark have the row that has been brewing all week, and we go as far as calling the trip off. Both of us. He threatens, and I bark back my assent and we separate in a fury. Twenty minutes later he brings his peace offerings of coffee and cigarettes, and we speak gently and apologetically to each other. He offers me some time alone. He will take the children to Yorkshire without me, and I will phone Doreen to chat and apologise for my absence. I have gained a full day and a half. Time to think and be alone. My body relaxes. We hold each other and kiss each other's faces. We are back together as a team with a mission.

Schools and Students

2007-10-30T17:03:00.000-07:00

Caravan school has started in earnest. The girls have a story and poem book, a geography and history book, a diary and a scooter for play time. I explain the work they have to do during the day. They are excited and enthusiastic and I leave them, sticking tracing paper to their atlas and rifling amongst their box of pens, to continue work on the caravan. It is slow progress and my concentration span and staying power are fading fast. I manage to clean half of the back window shield. No scratches, beautifully shiny.

Mike McCabe arrives. He is a student from Falmouth College of Arts who has travelled to London to photograph the house and use it for one of his final year projects. We chat, leave him to take photographs, and return to our chores. The girls help me during play time. They buff the surface between scooter rides, like a perpetual relay. Up and down the street twice, then switch - cloth and scooter change hands and we continue. We all have lunch together, Mike and us. Beans on toast for five. It is rather like having the lovely Ottilie at home. They are the same age, both in their final year, and it lifts my spirits to have this opportunity to think about her. After plates are cleared, Jonny and Sandra arrive. I have promised them pumpkins from the allotment, so I take the girls for their biology lesson, and me and the Pod make our way to Taylors Lane. He chooses two and we dig up the fresh horseradish I have recently discovered. I pull up carrots and onions for dinner. We go home to cook it, Frida chopping the onions with her medium sized knife and Silvie cutting carrots with her small one. I keep my eyes peeled for their fingers.

Not much progress made today.

Working out the best way to let the flat is proving to be incredibly stressful. It is virgin territory. We start to panic about what we will do if someone doesn't pay the rent and we're 600 miles away. But it soon passes. No doubt the stress is starting to play tricks with our minds. Only two more weeks before we sail off and leave it all behind us.

Stay focussed 'Miss Kate'.

Rollercoaster

2007-10-29T10:47:00.000-07:00

Beautiful beginnings. Rapturous welcome from the girls as I arrived in Bristol 10 minutes late for Frida's Newsround debut. Despite taking a car load of possession for Mum and Dad to store when we leave, I manage to come away with a broken BMX and a scooter for the girls. More things to store. Gathering fixable items is verging on obsession.

Arrive home at 10.30pm to see a light in the caravan. Mark is moving around frantically with sticky tape and cardboard. It seems some numbskull has put the window through. We discuss how it happened and put our heads in our hands, imagining the hassle involved in getting it fixed.

I take the girls to bed as Mark effects a temporary repair. They are happy and relaxed. School is off for six months. Tomorrow they start at 'Caravan School' and are excited at the prospect. They go straight to sleep, cuddling their new pillows - a gift for their travels from my mother. They are obsessed by the smell of them. Silvie's smells of raisins and Frida's smells of 'new' - the word has taken on the form of abstract noun.

We paste a 'Staff Room' sign on the dining room door in preparation for the morning.

Good fortune smiles on us. I check my emails and get an update from the 'safari enthususiasts' club. Seems a member had his window smashed that very day. For a moment, I think Mark has been supremely organised and has posted our problem on the message board. Just underneath is a remedy. 'If someone put it in you can take it out'. Ah, the simplicity of old things. It includes concise instructions on what to do. Thank you AlecGatherer.

We plan the day ahead.

Mark debates whether to sleep in the caravan, Rambo style, in case of repeat attacks. We decide against it.

scrubbing and clearing

2007-10-26T15:04:00.000-07:00

Got up, went out. The usual pattern. The usual clothes. We have been living like gypsies. I get out of bed, put on socks, dress on top of nightie, jeans, jumper, coat and boots - without even thinking. Making a decision about what to wear takes time, which is at a premium. so we wear the same clothes day in day out. I haven't been naked for three days - preparing ourselves physically as well as practically for the trip.

The caravan is looking good. I can see it finished in my mind's eye, I can imagine overtaking us on a Spanish motorway, seeing ourselves reflected in the mirrored, buffed up aluminium surface. I imagine it in slow motion. I have restored the front, the back and part of one side. The transformation is attracting interest. Today, I conversed with a couple who could remember the caravan 'the first time round'. Prestigious in those days, it seems. I imagine a cocktail cabinet, or optics dotted around the confined space inside. Bill came and chatted about Spain and architecture - I think he rarely has the chance to talk of these 'high minded' topics amongst his social circle. Yesterday, a 95 year old man recited love poetry to me, something he had written for his wife. He tells me she isn't interested in the same things that he is. A cyclist stopped just to see what was going on and we chatted for a while about destinations and hard work. It's good being amongst the people, and lovely to share these revelations.

Cleared out the girls' room. After panicking for months that the electrics in the loft were faulty, we found out the extension lead had been unplugged. Paul didn't even have to change the fuse. I went through the room methodically. Clearing the products of childrens long forgotten activities from under beds and cupboards. A hard job. I sorted - to children we know; car boot (saleable) and charity shop. Some things have to go. Not recyclable. There will be more rubbish than recycling this week. It will be a first.

I had a bath tonight. I had forgotten what my body looked like.

preparations

2007-10-23T10:33:00.000-07:00

Preparations are finally underway for the grand tour. Today we managed to get a whole section of the caravan up to a fine gleam, and found a little treasure under the cracking paintwork, which could have been lost forever. It kept our spirits up on this cold and breezy day. 6 hours of scraping and wiping, mindless repetition, with the leaves constantly floating down, forming themselves into little brown piles in the gutter which disguised the similar toned dog shit that i managed to step in twice.

Recycled a cooker to Jules. We 'inherited' it from Margaret, our previous neighbour, after she died. Seemed sad to see it dumped outside the flat so we took it in and thought about her when we cooked on it. After its brief sojourn with the ShippHill household its moved on to jules. As if the cooker's taken on a life of it's own, we've been around for the first three stages. new, 2nd hand, recycled. who knows, one day it might achieve 'vintage', 'rarity' even 'antique'.

The house is full of dust, it billows from the kitchen, through the weave of the sheet that hangs pinned to the doorframe. Paul comes out grey, and we realise we shouldn't complain. The kitchen is being rewired, and we find countless wires hanging plugless out of the walls behind the cupboards. We've lived like this for 2 years, but we can't expect a tenant to take on such a high risk lifestyle it seems.

No heat, so we've resorted to wearing our outdoor clothes indoors.

The place is in semi chaos, the kitchen has moved into ottilie's room, mark's studio has moved into the dining room, and the living room is covered with lists of jobs to be done - no children this week so the motivation to tidy has ceased to exist.
So much to do and so little time.

2007-10-04T05:36:00.000-07:00