Week 15: Home again...
- Dec 13, 2021
- 3 min read
Our stops this week:
5 nights at home
2 nights at Cirencester Park Camp site
Following on from where Yvette left off last week, we decided to head back home on Monday to avoid the worst of the weather (this time Storm Barra was on its way).
On the way back we took a de-tour to the Kassam football Stadium in Oxford to see if Yvette could get a walk-in booster jab... surprisingly she was in and out and fully boosted in about twenty minutes. I wasn't quite ready for mine, as at the time it was still necessary to wait six months from the 2nd jab... two days later the rules changed and I was able to get a booster jab too.
We heard that the walk-in centres now had long queues so I was fortunate and managed to book an appointment at a pharmacy in Aylesbury... even better it gave us a chance to catch-up with a close friend over well-ventilated and slightly chilly outdoor drinks in town before heading back home. Although we haven't been away much this week, it's the little things like meeting a friend on a mid-week lunchtime which really remind me how lucky we are to be taking this time away from work and all the daily stress and hassle that comes with it.
Aside from the obvious reason... we both wanted to get the booster jab as quickly as possible, in case the travel rules change and some of our European neighbours want foreigners to have 3 jabs to be considered fully vaccinated, I have read that France is likely to make this a requirement at some point next year (which makes perfect sense).
At the time of writing this we are still hoping to cross the channel before the end of the month (with a rough plan to head south to Spain and Portugal to find some warmer weather). That said we are keeping a close eye on the news and the development of the infamous Omicron variant... who knows what will happen next but as it stands we have done everything possible to give ourselves the best chance of getting away... this includes booking pre-departure antigen tests (required by the French), updating our Covid passes and booking Bear an appointment for an Animal Health Certificate (now Brexit has made his passport defunct).
Being back home for a while certainly helps with keeping up some decent exercise, this is probably one of the hardest elements of being away in the van in bad weather, aside from walking in the rain, the options for exercise get quite limited when you live in a space measuring 6 x 2 meters... I would much rather cycle than run but ever since we had a cycling accident a few years ago, I'm quite reluctant to cycle when the roads are wet... which seems to be every day at the moment!
On Friday we decided to head away for a couple of nights, Yvette said she needed a weekend break!! The weather forecast was looking promising, no rain for a few days and we both felt fine after being jabbed... just slightly sore arms.
We've been to Cirencester a few times and know it fairly well but it's close to home and a really lovely place to visit, especially at this time of year. The Cotswold town is full of old buildings, interesting shops, pubs and markets... although we aren't really going inside anywhere at the moment, we did a couple of nice long walks through Cirencester Park and along the River Churn, with a brief look around the Christmas food market.
We spotted some large hares on our walk around town... not quite sure what they are doing there but we liked them all the same.
We set off home about 10am on Sunday to make sure we had plenty of time to unpack the van (not that we took much away with us this time), walk Bear and settle down to watch the Abu Dhabi Formula 1 Grand Prix... which just in case you haven't heard was set to be the decider for the drivers world championship title... I won't turn this into an F1 rant but fair to say we were both disappointed with the result of the race and the strange decisions made by the race officials.
I've been trying to take photos of the night sky... with mixed results. I was pleased with the picture of the moon but still need to practice and work out the camera settings... any advice or tips are very welcome! Incidentally, I learnt this week that in Astronomy, Omicron means the 15th brightest star in a constellation, that certainly sounds better than another variant of Covid!
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