OurTour 2022 Round Up

Yes, it’s that time of the year folks, round up time. I can’t believe how quickly this year has gone, it has really flown by for me. Although we do often say that the weeks are fast, but the days are long. We find this to be especially true when we are back at home, because we feel we should be out there doing something.

As 2022 started, so did our marathon training plans. We were both signed up to run the Boston (UK) marathon in April and as this was my first marathon, I really did need four months to get ready for it. We were also still waiting for the courts to issue our tenants with a date to leave our house, having served them notice to them back in April 2021 and them then stopping paying the rent. So, while we waited we nipped off to our happy place and had a week in a cottage in Whitby. Why didn’t we take the motorhome? Two reasons, our favourite campsite in the area was closed for the winter, but mainly because someone else was living in our motorhome – mice!

While we were at Whitby the courts got in touch to say we’d be getting our house back the following Tuesday, so from that moment on it was all systems go. We got back to Nottingham on the Sunday, got our house back on the Wednesday, and then also got our other rental, a bungalow, back the following Monday. The tenant in the bungalow had sadly passed away over Christmas and his family had needed some time to empty his belongings.

When we got the keys to both properties back, they couldn’t have been more different. The bungalow was immaculate, even though the tenant had been there for a decade. The house was a disgusting mess. With the help of Jay’s Dad we scrubbed, cleaned, picked up bags of dog poop, and slowly got the house back to a reasonable state. Then we redecorated it from top to bottom before finally getting carpets fitted just one month after we’d taken back possession of the place. As soon as the carpets were down, the estate agent was round taking photos and it was sold within a few days. We got a good price for it too, so the hard work was worth it. The tenants refusing to move out may even have worked in our favour, as the market was hot at the point we sold. It’s odd how life goes sometimes?

Our attention shifted to the bungalow, which got a fresh coat of paint and new carpets before our new tenant moved in at the end of March – Jay’s Dad. He’d mentioned several times about moving into the bungalow, but we didn’t think he was serious. However, once we realised he was, we checked that the rest of the family were OK with it, and helped him to sell his house and move in.

In April we nipped over to Tenerife for a few days to see my brother and his wife who now spend most of their time there, before coming back to run the marathon.

Jay absolutely smashed the marathon and earned himself a ‘good for age’ place for the London marathon in 2023. That was no mean feat in itself, but he was right at the top of his age category so he was competing with men five years younger than him for one of the coveted places. I managed to get round the distance without injuring myself and vowed never to run another marathon!

Our mice friends had now moved out of our motorhome (sadly with the help of a few traps), so we headed off for a short (for us) break to Wales. We’d toured quite a bit of North Wales last year when Jay ran the Snowdon Ultra marathon, so having heard lots of good things about the Gower, we decided to spend a month touring South Wales. It seriously didn’t disappoint. However, unlike pottering around Europe where you have a choice of aires, campsites and a lot of free camping places, in Wales we needed to stay on campsites, and some of those were the most expensive campsite we’ve ever stayed on.

We chilled out on the Gower, caught the bus (something we haven’t done in ages) to wander around Saundersfoot and Tenby, visited St Govan and spent a couple of nights at Haverfordwest, loved the tiny city of St Davids, wandered around Fishguard, Goodwick and picturesque Lower Town, met a chap who had made himself homeless and was walking the Welsh coast cleaning its beaches. On the way home we popped into historic Ironbridge, staying at a pub stop for the night.

We would have loved to tour around for longer, but we’ve needed to plan our trips around doctor and hospital appointments for my parents who were both diagnosed with Alzheimers this year. So, we’ve just been nipping away as and when we can.

Once our house sale had gone through in June and we’d reinvested the money from it into shares, we jumped back in the motorhome and headed to a Camping and Caravan Club temporary holiday site at Carsington Water. This is just an hour or so from my parents, so we took the car with us which enabled us to be away for Jay’s 50th birthday, while still being able to nip back and support my parents.

At the start of August we spent a fantastic evening at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham watching Eilish McColgan win the 10,000 meters as the crowd blew the roof off (OK, we would have, had there been one!). A few days later we had an afternoon at Denby Pottery learning how to throw a pot for Jay’s birthday.

After that we had a gap in our calendar, no appointments, so we jumped into the motorhome and caught the ferry to Calais. It was mid-heatwave, so we stopped on a campsite by the sea until it passed, then decided that as the weather was good, we’d use this opportunity tour Brittany.

Obviously with hindsight, we’d have been much better off getting the ferry straight to Brittany from Portsmouth, but the journey there gave us the chance to meet up with our friends the Grey Gappers for a few hours as our paths crossed in Le Treport, and to see just how busy the motorhome aire at Honfleur gets in the height of summer (answer – very busy, over 200 vans in once place). It took us a week to finally reach the edge of Brittany and a motorhome aire at Saint-Jacut-de-la-Mer, but it was worth it.

We ambled our way along the Côtes-d’Armor making use of free aires, paid aires and campsites. We’ve always avoided France in August, but as we don’t stop on the big commercial sites and try to arrive at an aire around lunchtime, we found we didn’t need to book ahead and could still get a place. We spent a couple of days at a campsite at Cap Frehel before moving along to the island of Île-Grande where we stayed for a few days making use of the coastal path, which goes all the way around the island. for running and walking.

Realising we’d missed one of the best walks on the pink granite coast, we back tracked slightly to a motorhome aire at Tregastel, where we were able to not only do the walk, but also were treated to a display by the Patrouille de France (the French version of the Red Arrows). We then had a couple of cheeky free nights in Brest, staying in the car park of the fantastic Oceanopolis aquarium, in which we spent the best part of a day as there was so much to see and learn.

We then moved onto the Crozon Peninsular and stopped in the motorhome aire at Camaret-sur-Mer which was just a short walk into the town, and had spectacular cliff walks in the other direction to French forts that had been converted into German Atlantic Wall defences during the war. We also had our first experience of a Pass’Etapes Camping-Car Park on the peninsular in the seaside town of Morgat.

With rain forecast, we spent the night in a free aire close to the beautiful village of Locronan, where we popped in for a look around before moving on to the city campsite in Quimper. Another motorhome aire had us staying just a short walk and an electric ferry ride away from the fortress citadel of Concarneau, before we stayed within the walls of another fortress citadel at Port-Louis. From Port-Louis it was a short ferry ride over to Lorient to walk in awe around the massive u-boat pens.

Then it was time to start our journey back towards Calais for the ferry home. We nipped into Fougeres for a night before settling in to a motorhome aire perched right on the seafront at Saint-Valery-en-Caux. We rounded off our trip at the free aire at Sangatte, which is perfectly placed for an early morning ferry back to Blighty.

We got back home just in time to celebrate my Mum’s 80th birthday as well as my 50th, followed a week later by me running the local Robin Hood Half Marathon. Unfortunately Jay’s suffered from plantar fasciitis (painful heels) for most of the year, yes even when smashing out the marathon, so he took the summer off running to let his feet recover and defered his place in the half marathon until next year.

At the start of October we spent a long weekend in an Airbnb on the Norfolk/Suffolk border so we could take part in one day wooden spoon carving workshop. We absolutely loved it, and while our spoons don’t actually get much use, they sit in pride of place in the bowls we made in Denby earlier in the year.

In November we popped up to Bridlington to see our friends Richard and Jenny who we first met when they parked up next to us in Estonia while we were on our motorhome tour of Scandinavia. They moved to Brid at the start of the year and are renovating their new place which is in a fantastic position right by the sea. It was great to catch up with them again and hopefully we’ll both be in our motorhomes somewhere when we next meet.

We managed to squeeze in one more trip, back to our happy place of Whitby in December. We stayed in an apartment and were so glad we didn’t bring the motorhome as the town froze. We slip slid our way around the town on icy pavements and roads, taking refuge in the arcades to warm up, and enjoying every minute.

Just an hour or so after we got back home from Whitby a water pipe burst in the attic of our bungalow and flooded the place. So our run up to Christmas was filled with finding alternative accommodation for Jay’s Dad, putting all his belongings into storage and trying our best to dry the place out. Unfortunately the cold snap caused a lot of pipes to burst, so we’ve done what we can and are now waiting for the nod from the insurance company so we can get a company in to dry the place out, then we’ll be redecorating it and recarpeting it (again).

Apart from the bungalow related activity at the start of the year, and Jay running the London Marathon in April, we really don’t know what next year will bring for us. We’ll probably be at home quite a lot supporting my parents, but will hopefully still be able to get away in our motorhome for a few trips. We’ve talked about going to all sorts of places this year from Ireland to Iceland, and not done any of them, so maybe 2023 will be the year.

Have a fanastic New Year wherever you are and we’ll raise a glass to you all and many more adventures in 2023.

Ju x