It was the untimely arrival of the pandemic in our household that changed the plan. Somehow Ali and I had managed to avoid it for almost two and a half years, but a brief coffee stop at the college where I used to work found me unknowingly coming home with an unwanted gift to share with her; one that developed into headaches, sore throats, chest infections et al a couple of days later, just before we were due to head off in the van towards the Brecon Beacons for a return to the bothy we’ve stayed in for several of the last half-dozen summers. Even though we both had a clean bill of health a few days later, the prospect of a combination of a Covid hangover, steep mountain paths and the hottest few days on record in the UK seemed one we didn’t quite feel up to. Add to this the fact that our “Mr Van Fixit” had also been wiped out by the virus, leading to a delay in him being able to fit our new compressor fridge, and for a while we gave up completely on the idea of getting a few days away in Brenda before the schools broke for summer. “We’ll have a few days in September,” we consoled ourselves. “It’ll be lovely when everyone else has gone back to the grindstone and the campsites are quiet again.”
But then the call came. Our caped crusader had returned to full fighting fitness and with his customary advance notice of about three hours he announced his imminent arrival, demanding coffee and biscuits as he built a frame to fit the new fridge where the previous one had been. “Now only a step away from being a garden ornament,” was how he described the old one. Brenda now had a fridge that would run day and night on the power from the solar panels alone, we were feeling more or less back to normal, and there was still a very narrow window of opportunity to escape to the open road before half a million buckets and spades headed towards the A30 and Cornwall. So we went to Devon for a while. With our passports stamped and our jabs jabbed, we loaded Brenda with a pile of things we wouldn’t need and a handful of things we would, told the cat she was in charge of the house and set off for the border.
More than once recently, Ali has mentioned Exmoor, and then gone on to wax tales about Lynton and Lynmouth, where she’d stayed on a campsite half a lifetime ago. No further invitation was needed for me to find a suitable looking site and make a booking while there was still space to be had. And so we set the satnav for North Devon, not an easy area to get to, no matter where you come from; especially in a big old van that’s never in too much of a hurry to get anywhere at all. On a hot sunny day we laboured along ever steepening windy roads, at one point somehow ending up on a single lane farm track for four tedious miles, before eventually making that final ascent towards the Lynmouth Holiday Resort, a peaceful hilltop hideaway overlooking the Bristol Channel with the mountains of South Wales that we’d forsaken on the not too distant horizon.
And then I found myself in Lynmouth, at the end of a damp day gazing up at the famous cliff railway, a funicular that connects the village with Lynton, hanging over the slopes above. Somewhere in the distant memory banks lie the memory of my last and only other visit, as a small boy, fifty summers earlier. My father grew up in nearby Barnstaple, and summer holidays would often be taken with his parents, who’d take us to Croyde and Woollacombe, Saunton and Ilfracombe, and then Braunton where they spent the last years of their long lives together. I can barely remember those adventures on the North Devon beaches, but the funicular railway had somehow stayed with me, bringing to mind the six year old, complete with ridiculous pudding basin cut gazing up at the steep tracks planted into the cliff side and wondering whether he was going to get an ice cream before much longer. Never was there a more true affirmation of how quickly our time here passes. How on earth could I have got to an age where I can remember things that happened fifty years ago?
Of course the six year old is still here, although the pudding basin has long since vanished with almost all of the rest of his hair, and the choice of seaside delicacy may have altered – somehow I’d persuaded healthy living obsessive Ali to have fish and chips for the second time in three evenings, laying it on thickly about the drudgery of dragging the dishes across the campsite late in the evening to wash them. As we sat beneath the boulders, shielding our dinner from the watching gulls, I looked again at the array of posts down at the water’s edge. I’d already made one foray in that direction, but now as what passed for the golden hour on this damp day arrived, the greys and blues intensified. My chip tray now empty, I headed down towards the shore again, now a few yards further away on the receding tide. As I took my shots, the rain drove in from behind me, and while I could protect the camera with the trusty purloined hotel shower cap, keeping myself dry was more of a challenge. Like the proverbial six year old, I had brought the wrong coat with me, and before long the rain had joined me inside its lining. It was time to go and find the ice cream that I knew was lurking in the freezer compartment of Brenda’s new fridge. She’s a very resourceful van at times you know.
