The Mid West of England

Hello again from a relaxed and happy couple of Browns and a very sleepy dog 😀. After 6 weeks on the road we have been thoroughly enjoying ourselves taking in the sights of each county we visit in England. We have so far visited and slept at least one night in:

West Sussex

Hampshire

Somerset

Wiltshire

Avon

Gloucestershire 

Herefordshire

Worcestershire 

Warwickshire

Oxfordshire

Northamptonshire 

Leicestershire 

Rutland

Derbyshire 

Staffordshire 

West Midlands

Shropshire 

Cheshire

Merseyside

Greater Manchester

Lancashire.

We have completed 21 counties of England, out of our challenge to try and visit and sleep at least one night in all 48 counties of England.

Our scratch map of the UK reveals the flags of each county we have visited. 

In our last blog we had stopped in Banbury, Oxfordshire at a lovely campsite. In this blog we show you the mid north west of England. We have visited friends in Market Harborough, Leicestershire and also in Shropshire. Daphne has had some TLC and we have encountered two storms, thunder and lightening, rain, wind and hot hot weather.  England is certainly a very beautiful country and we have seen some wonderful sights. We hope you enjoy the pictures below 😀.

Otto is now firm friends with Reggie, even though he stole his stick! 

Ivan and Reggie relaxing after a cuppa and a stay on our friend Phil’s driveway in Leicestershire. We felt thoroughly spoilt by Phil, Charlotte, John, James & Emily as they cooked us a fabulous meal and we managed a socially distant visit in Phil’s garden. 

We decided to visit the smallest county in England: Rutland. We cycled 20 plus miles around Rutland water and had one of the best days out so far. We even managed drinking with a mask on at the pub! 

The campsite was empty mid week in August at Breedon on the hill. Not bad for £6 per night and we enjoyed a walk around the village in the evening. 

The weather was getting hotter as we walked around Carsington water in Derbyshire. 

We decided to find a campsite in the woods for a weekends forecast of extremely hot weather and we stopped for a few nights near the historic town of Ashbourne.

The county of Staffordshire was beautiful and we enjoyed the scenery and gorgeous sunsets wild camping at Blithbury reservoir.

The west midlands has over 500 miles of canals to explore. The farm shop at Great Haywood let us stopover and we explored the 5 ways of canals and rivers nearby. 

One of our hottest days was spent cycling around Cannock chase. We are so pleased we brought our cycles with us and Otto has adapted to running alongside or having a carry in the basket when he gets tired.

We arrived in Shropshire and spent time relaxing near the river Severn allowing our plants to thrive with the welcome rain. 

Ironbridge, Shrewsbury and the Shropshire hills were explored to our hearts content. It’s just wonderful waking up to new places to explore. We are loving this lifestyle. 

Great to spend time with friends. We had a fab day out with Nick, Helly and their dog Millie. We also enjoyed a weekend with Ali, Mike and their dog Cleo. 

Our next county of Cheshire led us to beautiful places, the river Dee and our lovely campsite near Chester. We generally stay in smaller campsites that are only certified for 5 units. No facilities are open due to Covid, however many of the smaller sites do not have facilities anyway and we are self contained in Daphne. When we are not in campsites we “wild” overnight using a website/app called www.searchforsites.co.uk for possible locations. The freedom to travel like this suits our new lifestyle as well as our budget. 

PS. We hope you noticed Daphne’s new door poster #breakingbad 😛. 

Daphne had some TLC with a service and MOT and passed with flying colours 😀. We celebrated by travelling to another country and popped into Wales to visit the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct that carries the Llangollen canal across the river Dee. We have seen this on TV and have always wanted to visit. We can say that it’s very hairy walking across 😱 and is an amazing site to see. 

We took the ferry across the Mersey and dodged the showers to visit Liverpool for a day and night. Daphne was parked next to the historic Albert dock and we had great fun exploring the city. Last time we were there we were on our motorcycles catching the ferry to the Isle of Man. We looked into another visit to the Isle of Man and it’s still closed to visitors due to Covid 19. 

Just outside Liverpool is the extraordinary sight of 100 iron men stretched out along the beach next to the infamous Liverpool docks at Crosby beach. The photos do not do them justice and we stayed next to the beach with only the sand dunes to protect us, imagining them coming to life and doing their worst 😱. At night time they are pretty eerie. 

This way of life does not suit everyone and we cannot believe we have been living like this for 20 months now. Time has gone so quick. We find it best not to plan ahead more than a day or two and be open to new places and ideas. In this uncertain time we have found everyone to be friendly and welcoming. We feel safe in Daphne and have everything we need. As we live this life more we realise we need less and less and we love being outside and enjoying nature. 

Thank you reading this blog. Stay safe, enjoy every minute and keep in touch. We hope to continue to travel the counties of England and see new sights. Living our best life 💕

The post lock down tales of adventure

Our blog can continue now we are back on the road, continuing to travel and live our best life. The life we always dreamt of when we planned this lifestyle. The freedom of the open road, travelling with no particular destination in mind and enjoying new sights around every corner. 

Our motorhome Daphne is the perfect post lock down travel wagon. As we all know Covid 19 has not gone away. We have our own facilities on board, our own sheets and bedding, towels and kitchenware. We dont have to share so can limit our risk of infection. Masks are now mandatory in shops and we have all the soap and water we need.

Campsites opened on the 4th July in England. So we started to plan our freedom. After 17 weeks we were sad to leave our lockdown sanctuary in Sussex, sad to say goodbye to family and friends and also excited to continue our travels. We made good friends at our lockdown campsite and as we all started to go our separate ways we were given a map of the UK by our neighbours John & Sheena. This was no ordinary map and once we have visited each county we can scratch the map to reveal its county flag. A great present and good inspiration to explore as much of the UK as possible. We set ourselves a challenge: we would start off by trying to sleep in as many different counties in England as possible. This is no mean feat as there are 48 of them!

Our scratch map of the UK, you can see the counties we have visited so far.

To date we have managed to sleep at least one night in nine out of the forty eight counties. Not bad after 2 and a half weeks back on the road. We have also had our niece Imogen to visit in the New Forest, celebrated a Covid 19 style 50th birthday for Jane's sister Angie in Somerset and visited friends: Ann-Marie in Cheltenham and Mary in Gloucester. Suffice it to say, we have had a great time travelling and making adventures in our motorhome Daphne. 

Ivan with his slippy shoes 😂. We started off in Hampshire: the next county. We stayed on the tidal road at Keyhaven. 

Otto at Keyhaven harbour looking out wistfully to Hurst castle and the Isle of Wight.

Imogen and Otto relaxing in the New Forest 

Beautiful New Forest sunsets.....and relax 😀

Our home for 5 nights. We felt like we were camping in parkland. Lots of places to explore and we were right next door to Ringwood Forest. 

Otto is pleased to see his mum Una and Janes sister Angie is even more pleased to have them together for her birthday. 

A feast to celebrate Angie’s birthday 😋

Dunster castle. Photo by Angie Ward.

Visiting Dunster castle in Somerset. We booked ahead a time slot online and enjoyed a full afternoon with family. 

Moving on we visited the White horse in Wiltshire

The sunset went on forever at the top of the ancient hill fort 😍

We were lucky to find a city centre car park that Daphne fitted in and we stayed 24 hours.

We had Bath crescent to ourselves early morning.

Victoria Park was alive with bees.

Ivan and Otto at the famous bridge in Bath.

The famous baths were shut due to Covid 19. We had to make do with showers in Daphne.

We found some evening entertainment in Bath with an outdoor Pop up beach bar. Very quiet for a sunny Thursday night in July.

Bath city centre knows how to bloom 🌸🌺

Travelling north we tucked away en route for the night. We could see the Severn bridge and the river across the fields. 

The Red lion let us stay in the pub car park for a few nights. 

We always love a visit to Ross on Wye. A beautiful town full of history and book shops. 

Ivan’s first pint of Guinness since lock down 🍻

The pepper pot. 

Upton is another town worth a visit upon the Severn river.

After visiting friends we arrived in Evesham at nighttime and found a riverside car park to hunker down. 

Evesham is a pretty Cotswold town on the river Avon and has beautiful parks and gardens to visit. 

Ivan mid food prep in Daphne’s kitchen

We made ourselves at home with our campsite near Banbury. 

We cycled to Cropedy. It’s very hilly and I’m sure Otto has put on weight in the basket! 

Otto overlooking the Oxford canal. 

We never think cygnets are ugly swans, they are gorgeous 😍

Some of our tomato plants are bearing fruit and we are starting to reap the rewards. 

The tractor factor 😀. If all our journeys are this interesting we are going to enjoy our travels all the more. Keep in touch to see where we travel next and stay safe xx. 

The highs and lows of lockdown

Life is not always plain sailing. As everyone throughout the world has had to restrict their lifestyle and follow their own governments guidelines due to the Coronavirus we are sure we are not alone in our thoughts. In this blog we go through the highs and lows of being locked down.

Ivan and Otto at the entrance to our quarantine site. Daphne is behind.

In January 2019 we sold, stored or gave away everything we owned, ended our jobs  and said goodbye to our family. We went travelling in our motorhome Daphne. We had a great time and decided this was definitely the lifestyle for us. We love every minute of living in Daphne and the freedom it affords us. Little did we know that 14 months later, on the verge of another foreign adventure we would have to stop, cancel all our plans and actually end up a mere 5 miles from where we used to live. We are now on our 9th week of lockdown.

In lockdown, similar to the UK weather, when often you can experience all four seasons in one day, our moods change as often as the wind. From feeling grateful in our remote field, enjoying nature, beautiful walks and home cooking, we can often feel bereft, miss our old lifestyle and our friends and family, all within the space of a few minutes. The anxiety that a virus like this can bring must be experienced throughout the world and we feel worried for our friends, our family, society in general and each other.

This pie chart resonates with us 😂.

Generally we are positive. At the start of our quarantine we felt unsettled and anxious about what was best to do. We read about fellow motorhomers who were being unfairly judged and victimised because of their lifestyle and choice of where to isolate. We felt relieved to have found a place to stay. Within a few days the police visited to make sure we were not on holiday and moving around too much. They had complaints from nearby residents. They took pictures of our registration numbers and told us to stay put, not to move the vans that were on our site (4 units are here) and to keep safe.

We both felt unwell when we first arrived. We had sore throats, headaches and lethargy. No temperature or cough so not Covid 19 symptoms. Ivan managed to feel better after a week or so and Jane felt generally unwell for 3-4 weeks. Whereas before we felt physically fit we would struggle to walk up a nearby hill without having to catch our breathe. We slept for England and made do with food in the cupboard so we could stay away from shops and people. 

The campsite is closed and after a few weeks we were then told it had been sold and new owners were taking over. We had a period of time when we did not know if we could stay. We didn't know where else we could go and keep ourselves safe. Jane had conflicting advice about her health condition and if she needed to shield or not. It was not until 5 weeks in that she received her shielding letter from her GP.  We could not follow the exact guidelines in the letter as we are living in a 6 metre long van. We had already taken a proportionate approach to keeping Jane isolated so we will continue in that vain. That means that only Ivan goes out to do shopping and laundry. We both walk or cycle everyday and keep fit, avoiding contact with people. 

The highs of lockdown are definitely getting out with our pup Otto and exploring the local countryside. Coming back to Daphne for tea and homemade cookies makes it even better 🙂

Luckily the new owners have agreed we can stay, phew! We do love it here and feel it's the best place for us. Somedays we struggle with a lack of purpose and are struck with the sense that we are not contributing. We think this must be quite common for everyone who is not an essential worker and who has to isolate. We long for the days when we can travel again and enjoy the freedom we did last year and that we had dreamt about for so long. Thankfully our friends and family have been ok so far and we hope they continue to be. The highs and lows would be very different if this was not the case. We are very grateful to those who are continuing to work, to hold everything together and provide for us.

We have listed below 6 things we feel have helped us:

1. Recognising it's ok to feel out of sorts
2. Going outdoors and enjoying nature and exercise 
3. Staying connected with family and friends
4. Eating fresh food and experimenting with cooking
5. Trying to achieve something every day. For example: completing a crossword; reading another chapter; writing a diary or blog; learning something new
6. Making each other laugh.  

Jane and Ivan outdoors

Let's hope we will all be ok no matter what x

Daphne and a moody sunset sky #houselessnothomeless

We would be remiss if we did not mention the loss of life from Covid 19. Our thoughts go out to those that have lost their lives and their loved ones. We know people are working hard to combat Coronovirus and we know each country is going to be hit hard by a tough economic climate, the worst of which is yet to come. It's hard to comprehend the dramatic change that is happening to all our lives and will leave a world that's very different from just a few months ago.

One overarching 'high' linked to lockdown is the knowledge that we will and can all help each other. If we were to reach out for any help whatsoever we know this would be forthcoming from many areas in our lives. This is a huge comfort and makes us safe in the knowledge we are not alone. In these unprecedented times stories on social media and the news reflect the kindness being shown nearby and worldwide minimising the impact of any negative actions and giving us all hope.

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. This is just a snap shot of our time in lockdown and everyone will be experiencing it differently. Although we do not have a house to stay locked down in we do most certainly have a home in Daphne and for that we are very grateful. We hope the highs outweigh the lows for us all. Stay safe and keep in touch xx.