Returning to Home from Home

Our journey back home from leaving Rookesbury was a strange affair. So many emotions were hitting us, initial sadness at leaving the site and the people behind, happiness at the thought of sleeping in a king sized bed again, apprehension in case we felt hemmed in 4 solid walls, excitement at not working for 4 months, then frustration as we remembered we wouldn’t be picking up our new caravan and heading off on our own holiday adventures anytime soon.

The traffic was moving and the tow an easy one. It was the first time towing with Vinny the Van and he did it with ease. Belle had been zipped into her house, a large carrying case with her bed in it, and placed in the rear of Vinny, hoping she would settle down to sleep as she is not normally a good traveller. We hadn’t gone far when I could hear her scratching about and then suddenly to my amazement a little paw appeared between the front seats then the rest of her as she squirmed her way through the seat gap and onto my lap. And there she stayed for the next 4 hours happy and content either looking out of the window or curled up purring herself to sleep. It seems she’s decided where she will be travelling in future.

Gradually we lost the signal for our favourite Hampshire radio station and the road signs for “The Midlands” grew more frequent. We marvelled at new constructions that had appeared and old landmarks that had disappeared during our months away, but one thing that hadn’t changed was the amount of traffic on the M6, how thankful Steve was that he wasn’t sitting in those traffic queues every day now. Pulling onto the drive was surreal, had we really been away for 8 months? It didn’t feel like it. The house looked warm and welcoming, it was clean and tidy, the roof was still on and all the walls were still standing! the kids had done a marvellous job of keeping house for us.

We left everything packed where it was in Vinny and Ruby until the next day whilst we just enjoyed sitting on proper settees and walking up stairs, then began the mammoth task of finding a place for everything to live for the next 4 months. It took 3 days to unpack it all and we are still living with piles of stuff on our bedroom floor and various locations around the house as there’s just no where for it all to go. Belle settled straight back in to her old routines, spending the days sleeping on our bed and sitting by the pond in the garden in the hope of a fish supper. The Rookesbury rodent population must be breathing a sigh of relief as they get a few months off from being hunted. Ruby the caravan was cleaned, hoovered and polished in anticipation of us being able to change it for the new Bailey Pegasus Grande we ordered way back in May during the first lockdown. We were supposed to be picking it up on the 9th November but second lockdown put paid to that. Oh how I wish now that we had arranged for the dealers to deliver it to us during the summer as they had offered, hindsight is a marvellous thing. We had booked 3 weeks away in the new caravan starting the following week which now all had to be cancelled as a: we hadn’t got the new caravan and b: Staffordshire was Tier 3 and so we couldn’t travel out to any sites that were still open. We pinned our hopes on December 3rd and rebooked for then keeping everything crossed we would then be Tier 2.

Arriving home on the day before the second lockdown came into force meant we were suddenly confined to our immediate inland vicinity and it took some getting used to after having had the freedom of coastal excursions on our doorstep for so many months, but the weather was decent and we managed to get external maintenance jobs done on the house. The garden was tidied, gutters cleaned out, patios and drive jet washed and Steve demolished the leaky old shed and erected a lovely new one. Holiday? this was no holiday it felt just like being back at work! Rather different to our planned down time of breakfasts out at Weatherspoons followed by leisurely shop browsing and sightseeing in various locations around the UK. Last January, before we started our new roles, we had booked to spend a month in an apartment on the Spanish coast for January 2021 determined to take advantage of the time off our new life was going to allow us. As the year went by we were increasingly resigned to the fact we weren’t going to be able to go abroad and so it was cancelled. So instead we booked to tour Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Cumbria during January and February, happy that at least we would be seeing lovely sights in our own Country albeit probably in rain and zero temperatures rather than sun and 20 degrees.

December 2nd arrived and we were back in Tier 3 so we were still stuck in the house. There was good news from the caravan dealers that they would deliver the Bailey to us as they could travel for work purposes. Bill the Bailey arrived and was manoeuvred onto the drive, taking up even more room as it is 8ft wide and 26 foot long. At least for now we could admire it and even sit and sleep in it on the drive if we wanted to. December 16th’s review still had us in Tier 3 and in December 30th’s we moved up to Tier 4. January and Februarys travels were cancelled and we are now working on a Plan D.

In the meantime we are lucky that we live in a lovely village with scenic views on our doorstep so are able to get out for walks along the canal and lanes, then return to sit in Bill on the drive to drink our coffee pretending we are on a site somewhere! So until we know what Plan D can be along with the rest of the Country we await with baited breath for the next review and update of our Tiers.

Catch up with us next time as we try to to put together a Plan D and review our first season as Assistant Site Managers.