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It’s been quite some time since we’ve posted as most of 2020 (and the beginning of 2021) have been a wash out as far as trips are concerned. We did manage two trips between lockdown 1 and lockdown 2.
The first was a trip we made with the Opus to a site called Love 2 Stay. Unfortunately, we didn’t Love 2 Stay and we renamed it to Love 2 Leave. We had originally booked to stay for 6 nights, however we left after 3. It was mainly issues with disabled facilities that cut short our trip. The bathrooms had a swipe card to get in (not sure why), toilets that flushed by waving your hand in front of a sensor, washbasins that worked by waving your hand in front of a sensor, with showers that operated in a similar way. The disabled bathroom was accessed by swiping your card into the washing up and laundry area, then swiping another card to open the door to the disabled bathroom. However, the disabled bathroom is not signposted from the outside, so I only found it by chance as I was being nosy and wondered what was behind the door! The swipe card system was extremely difficult for John to manage on his own - firstly making sure that he used the correct card on the correct door, as there’s two different cards needed to access the disabled bathroom, then making sure that he was waving the card in the correct place. It meant that every time John wanted to go to the bathroom that someone had to go with him. It would have been so much simpler to use a standard RADAR key on the door. The shower in the disabled bathroom also required that you waved a hand in front of a sensor to switch it on. The shower was on a timer, so you had to wave your hand several times to get a proper shower. The shower was impossible for John to use on his own as he had no idea where the sensor was, so that he could wave his hand in front of it. That provided some amusing bathroom scenes with me standing there telling him to wave his hand “up a bit, down a bit, right a bit...” well you get the picture!
The second trip we managed to get in just before lockdown 2 and this was on a fish & chip train. This was on the Ecclesbourne Valley steam railway. It was very well organised with social distancing maintained throughout and masks being worn in public areas. Each party had their own carriage, where masks didn’t have to be worn, and the train travelled through the beautiful Derbyshire countryside. On arrival at our destination, we got our fish & chips and ate them while the train made its way back to our starting point. We really enjoyed this trip and the fish & chips were pretty good too.
We are currently in lockdown 3, although the vaccination programme is going well, and we have a ‘road map’ out of lockdown, providing that everything continues to go well. We’re hoping that this is successful, so that 2021 doesn’t turn out to be the washout that 2020 was. We’re really looking forward to being able to go out again and, me especially, really looking forward to being able to get a haircut!
In our latest video, we’ve looked at our top 5 things that we’ve done (plus a bonus!), and John got really excited(!) at hosting the top 5 in his best cheesy radio DJ voice!
The video can be seen here
