Never count your chickens before they’ve hatched.

I actually finished work a week early because my Dad had been a bit unwell after a fall, and I had realised, that, if I left it another week, I could not get to see him a couple more times. I wanted to ensure that he was safe and being properly attended to before I left. Obviously, I was not going to spend all the week with him, but it was better to have this full week to get properly prepared, rather than the three days I would have had otherwise.

Being at home meant that I had plenty of time to pack and get everything sorted out in my mind and be at peace before I leave, but, our small farm is never without both its attractions and also its chores, and so, on Saturday morning, a request from Wife to help her sort out the croft and clear some hedging, so that she could graze it with sheep, found me with the chain saw, in intermittent showers, cutting down four old elders and then trimming back 100 yards of untamed Hawthorn and Ash hedgerow. For a desk driver, this was pretty tiring work and reminded me that some parts, mostly my back, shoulders and knees are definitely beginning to know their age. The real problem of clearing this area was that it made it even more obvious that the area we have adjacent to it, surrounded by 5foot high wire netting, is what was originally our “fruit cage”, but over the years had become swallowed up by a return to nature. We also kept our chickens in there, but they were all taken by a fox and a weasel about 10 years ago and never replaced. Wife had actually caught a weasel pulling a chicken through the hen hatch door and fought a tug of war with it, which the weasel incredibly stayed around for and won! We have always planted our own home grown trees on the farm, grown from seeds, and here, in about 1995, in a brick cold frame, which should have been for courgettes and such like, we had put about a dozen plastic pots containing conkers and some Maple seeds we had picked up in Cirencester Park. About half of those had been planted out, but when I left for Germany in 1997, the rest had been left and forgotten. Now they were closely packed, 6 metre high, small trees, some lying down for a couple of metres before arching upwards. In addition, the elders had spread from the croft and the ash seeds had produced about 6 saplings; the gooseberries had gone wild before going huge, and the whole of the ground cover had been replaced by willow herb and nettles. It was actually a miniature domestic deciduous jungle, but with clearing the croft, it was now exposed for the mess it had become. It had always been my intention to clear this sooner or later, preferably later rather than sooner, but now that it was on view, I felt it had to be tackled.

On Sunday, thankfully, it poured with rain, so the fruit cage was not really an option and I started to pack the bike, very carefully thinking about everything I need and don’t need, because there is a real space problem for 3 months living off a motorcycle. In a car you just bung it all in, and in the camper, anything goes, but in three panniers, it all has to fit and be essential. One side pannier has just emergency kit, a ground winch to haul it upright if I should be unfortunate enough to drop it (it has been known), jump leads, securing straps, a high-viz overjacket, a high-viz mountain sack, whistle, flashlight etc, and my wet weather covers. The other side pannier has most of my camping stuff, sleeping bag, bivvy sack, mozzy net, cooker and pans, and a water bag. The top box has to be reserved for a spare helmet, my painting things, laptop and tent. Finally, strapped on top of that, is my trusty “Oxford” bag in which my clothes and personal stuff will live; pretty much three of everything, one to wash, one to wear and one for emergency. (I decided to adopt the Army habit on clothes use, rather than the Navy. (On submarines, it is rumoured that, because of the lack of space and laundry facilities, it is recommended to wear ones underpants right way round, first week, back to front second week, and then repeat, inside out, for the third and fourth week respectively. This need does not arise with a motorcycle and frequent launderettes and, the alternative method, i.e..4 weeks the right way round and correct side out may have been a habit of early teenage life, it most certainly is not now!) All went well, and the pile of stuff, which I had laid out on the trestle pasting table, gradually disappeared. I have had to leave out my gallon fuel can which worries me a bit, but, as an empty can, it takes up too much space. I hope I don’t live to regret that. Anyway, all was packed well and ready for off.

On Tuesday, the weather had settled, and the question of the fruit cage was raised, with Wife suggesting that, if I “lopped of the saplings (saplings!?) she might like to get a few chickens again, which would soon clear the ground weeds from their pecking and scratting. Well, suffice to say that the nettles and willow herb were actually no problem at all, because, when you have felled, logged and finally sorted out 8 trees in a confined area, the undergrowth becomes a thing of the past, an irrelevance. Most of the day was dry with few showers, and Tuesday evening, after a hot soak to relieve the pain, I sat down and decided that I would repair the zips of my fleece pockets which had been annoying me for months. I had my passport, with my U.S. visa in, in the inside pocket, because at work, I had to carry formal identity at all times. I put it into the back left hand pocket of my jeans and sat down to repair the zips. On Wednesday morning, the final clear up was on and, by lunchtime, all that was left of the jungle was a pile of logs, some trimmed gooseberry bushes, and the chicken hut. I phoned the bank to order some US and Canadian dollars for Friday. “Don’t forget some form of I.D.” the cashier had said, “either a passport or your bank card will do”. No problem. Passport in back pocket, all ready.

Now I like chickens, don’t get me wrong, but, in retrospect, the best thing that could have ever happened was that the chicken hut had caught alight with the bonfire on which we burned the top branches and twigs off the trees, but it didn’t. Instead, we (we?) decided that it would be nice to re-stock with chickens NOW, so we also totally secured the fence and wired up any holes, and decided to go to the local auction at Clitheroe on Wednesday night, the so-called “Fur and Feather” auction because it’s when they sell all the poultry and other birds, rabbits, and ferrets etc. So, quick wash and change, and off to the market about 6 o’clock. The market was very busy; there were lots of people there and a lot of fur and feather. Ducks, chickens of all kinds, geese, quails, plenty of choice. We looked down the cages for our “trio” of hens and saw several cages of good birds, some nice Wellsommers and some point of lay Warrens. There were also a lot of rather scraggy birds in, but on the scale of things, birds at auction are pretty cheap, usually about £2 to £6 a bird, and some of the scraggy ones will go for about 50pence. Farmers bring them in knowing that they will get a few pence for them, usually sold to ethnic groups who, by hearsay it is said, use them either for sacrificial purposes or as very cheap food, and some who just like to buy live meat as they did in their own countries. The auction started then, a mass of people and languages all mashed to together, slowly moving along the alleyway between the bars of the cattle pens, almost themselves like a herd of animals being encouraged down the run by the auctioneers feed bucket. We ended up with rather more than I expected in the way of chickens, but I don’t have to look after them, and 9 chickens and a cockerel isn’t exactly overcrowding! It was fun night, but Fur and Feather always is, although usually I go to look at all the other miscellaneous stuff that is sold there and get a bacon butty, which, sadly, because of the intent of our purpose and being locked in a mass of people, I sadly missed out on this time.

On Friday afternoon, I almost forgot to go to the bank, but at 3;45, suddenly did, and remembered to check for I.D., passport?…..No?…..Yes, of course……passport back left pocket of jeans?…..NO!…Passport not in back pocket of jeans! I think passport may be in car, though why it should be there I don’t know, but then time is going on, so pop down to bank with usual bank card.

On my return, I have a quick look around the cars and the dining room table where all my travel documents sit expectantly. Not there. Then I check my bedroom, old jeans pockets, no they’re in the wash, shirt pocket, likewise, linen basket, then more desperately, under the bed, all around the kitchen, all drawers, chests, wardrobes, jackets I haven’t even seen let alone worn for ages, still no sign. I check the garages, the workshop, the “boat shed” the outside shippons, the stables, under the cars, the grass, the croft where we felled the tress, the chicken house, even the ash of the bonfire, but sadly the passport is nowhere to be seen. And then I entered frantic mode. Everywhere I had checked, I checked again, and again; I found items I had not seen for years, but I wanted none of them; I just want my passport with the U.S.Visa inside it. After 8 hours of feeling sick with the realisation of the consequences of having lost this important document, I accepted that it was lost, and thinking carefully realised that I had indeed had it in the back pocket of my jeans when I went to the Fur and Feather auction. What made me more sick, in the light of the recent increase in Islamic terrorist attacks, was that I had been surrounded at the auction by at least a dozen Asian youngsters all apparently bidding for the cheap birds. You see, terrorism does this to people, it makes them suspicious of everyone around them, even though they were probably perfectly innocent young men, but nonetheless I could not help thinking that a 10 year British passport with a 10 year U.S. Visa inside it would be a perfect theft for would be terrorists, and it made me cringe to think of the possibilities. I phoned the Police to report it missing and got a crime incident number and then phoned the out of hours passport office to do the same. They were very kind, took the details and gave me an appointment at Liverpool to apply for a new passport, but told me that it would be a week before I could get one because it had been stolen and the fast tracking was only for new applications or renewals. If I had not been sixty, I would have cried; I damn near did!

That evening, a couple of local guys turned up to take my 17 year old Rover, which has finally died, to have a short but exciting new life as a “Banger Racer”. They strip out all the windows, seats, fittings and weld up doors, fit roll cages, move radiators about and finally race them round a sort of bumper car circuit to destruction. The Rover would enjoy that! It was still capable of 120m.p.h. just before the lower radiator pipe broke and the speedometer to gearbox linkage packed in. They loaded the car on to the recovery vehicle they had brought with them. I had already emptied it out but they did another check before it went. “You’re gonna want this mate” said the young man, waving a maroon passport at me. “It was stuck under the drivers seat electric motor”. I shamefacedly took my passport from him. But, I realised in horror, that the passport he showed me was one that I had had to report missing in August last year and it had been cancelled and replaced by the one that I had lost now. I just stood like Victor Meldrew, in awe, aghast at the irony of the discovery. Almost unbelievable that on the very day I have reported my passport missing, my last one should turn up. How the hell would I explain this to the passport office I felt so ashamed. I wouldn’t even know where to start this tale of unremitting carelessness. If a passport that was lost is thereafter found, it has to be returned to the Passport Office, rather an apt parable for the sinner I felt, being found, and returned to God! Perhaps, I should ignore it and burn it? Perhaps I should just cut it in half and put it in the filing cabinet in the Office until its 10 years was up? Then again, perhaps I should come clean and eat humble pie and admit that I had been the UKs number one prize idiot ? God, I felt a fool!. Standing there, speechless, with jaw dropped, and with old, and now useless passport in hand, the Rover disappeared off down the drive. I didn’t even say goodbye.

The nightmare continued. I started to realise that I would not now get away on the 6^th July, and that it may be several weeks before I could, but then if the total time was less than 90 days, I didn’t need a visa for the U.S.A. anyway. I ‘phoned the U.S. embassy to report the loss of their visa, as I thought it was an important security event and should be reported, but they were closed ‘til Monday morning. I ‘phoned the travel insurers who told me that “Yes, a lost passport causing delays in flights was covered, but not if it was lost before leaving the UK!” I e-mailed the travel agent in Montreal to inform them of the probable need to cancel and re-book, but to stand by until I knew when I might be able to get another passport. I spent a thoroughly f------ miserable bloody weekend, full of shame, disappointment, anger at myself for being so stupid and suspicion about immigrants, the latter of which was, quite possibly, totally unfounded and nothing at all to do with my own carelessness.

On Monday morning, I was till so worried about it falling into the wrong hands, that I phoned the U.S. embassy in London again, and when I finally got through to the Visa Section, on their £1.20 a minute advice line, the lady said it was of no importance to them, phone the police, they didn’t do replacements, and she would give me a new appointment on 27^th July to go through the whole process of application all over again. I declined politely in some degree of shock, because I had discovered that, although the U.S.government consider staying in Canada part of their 90 days visa allocation, the Canadians do not, so I could adjust my trip, spending my 90 days in the U.S. and leaving the last 20 days of my time, before the date of the return ticket, in Canada, which I would enjoy anyway.

The visit to the Passport Office in Liverpool was really such a relief. The cashier on desk 6 called me forward, a young woman, about Daughter’s age. I ate humble pie, and chattered senile 60 year old “so sorry stuff”, which I really meant, and I humbly handed in my old passport with the application for a new one and the lost or stolen declaration form. The new photos, which I had done on Monday morning, were only slightly better than the one in the old passport; slightly less criminal looking, but still not the ones I would choose to post on a dating site. She listened calmly and politely, and I felt so stupid. “You have been silly haven’t you?” she smiled, and I shrunk even more in humility and with no slight acknowledgement that she was absolutely spot on there. I had told her that I was due to fly on the 6^th, and she looked at her computer screen and said, “I’ll see what I can do”. “How about after 10?” she said. “Yes”, I said, “I’ll have to cancel the flight, but only delay by a week, that’ll be fine”. I breathed a sigh of relief that I would only have to cut short by 8 days. “No”, she said, “not the tenth, 10 tomorrow morning”. I couldn’t believe my ears. I could come back to Liverpool in the morning and collect a new passport, on the very day I had intended to depart for Gatwick. I could have kissed her, hugged her, bought her chocolates and flowers and paid for a dinner out for her and her choice of friend! YES! Fantastic! Goal! Result! Thank you God!. And thank you so very much to the lass on Number 6. ( who, of course I did none of the above to, or for, because taking flowers or choccies through the security screen at the passport office I suspect would be considered bribery or some such politically correct rubbish, and if I had acted on the immediate instinct and given her a big hug or a kiss across her counter, that would almost certainly have delayed my departure for a deal longer than a week, depending of course on the understanding of the Magistrate who would have dealt with my case. But, sweetheart, if you ever read this, and know who you were, I LOVE YOU!

The home improvement, and “repairs around the farm” plans, that I had put in place over the miserable weekend, to occupy myself and forget my disappointment, were all put on hold. The things I needed to do now, were re-pack my bike which I had totally unpacked on the fruitless search, empty the porta potti on the camper( 3 months left maturing would not have enhanced the living in it on my return ) and replace the clear broken panel on the chicken house roof. I bought that on the way home and did it at 6.45 on Tuesday morning in the rain. The bike I re-packed on Monday night. The passport was duly completed and collected on 10.30 on Tuesday morning and from Liverpool, I shot another 100 miles north to say good bye to Father and then returned home. The chickens laid their first two eggs, and I departed for Gatwick at 0320hrs on Wednesday morning.

I left my dollars from the bank on the hall chest!

Best wishes,

Doc.

Well....this is it, in a nutshell

So, the great trip is only about 2 weeks off. It's time to publish a rough guide for those of you who are my readers, to let you know the Grand Route. As much as possible will be done on local roads, with Highways and Freeways used only when I have to make up time. The rough dates when I expect to be in certain areas are shown, but the full details of each bit of the trip will be planned on the Satnav as I go, depending on local peoples' recommendations and my own whims and time. The only definite is the Motorcycle Rally week at Sturgis which is the first full week of August, and the half way point on 4th September, which is a measure of my progress to getting back in time to catch the flight home! Anyone who wants to meet me on the way round, somewhere close to my route, is welcome to contact me on the blog e-mail address, docsramblings@aol.com.

CLICK ON THE MAPS TO SEE DETAILS CLEARLY.

Outline of the trip with approximate dates at critical stop-offs.

Dates are all flexible depending on interest, weather and any en route problems.

The Eleven phases of the trip are as follows:-

1) Arrive Montreal,travel to Boston (via Ben and Jerry's!) and on to Niagara Falls.

2) Niagara Falls, via Cleveland,Toledo,Chicago,Milwaukee, then south west to Des Moines and Wintersett to see The Bridges of Madison County.

3) Wintersett to Rapid City,via a week at the great Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and Mount Rushmore, The Badlands, South Dakota, via Billings, Wyoming to Yellowstone National Park for about 4 days.

4) Yellowstone, over the Rockies via Twin Falls and Boise, Idaho and Oregon to the Pacific at Crescent City,California..

5) Crescent City, 800 miles on The Pacific Highway, via San Francisco to Los Angeles.

6) L.A. to Californian Redwood Forests, through Death Valley, MY HALF WAY POINT, along the northern edge of the Senora Desert,Arizona, to Phoenix, via Flagstaff (Route 66) to Grand Canyon.

7) Grand Canyon through Utah,Zion Canyon National Park, then back south through New Mexico to Las Cruces to end this leg at Carisbad, south west Texas.

8) Carisbad,Texas, to San Antonio, The Alamo, Austin, Forth Worth,Witchita Falls, across the Oklahoma panhandle to Dodge City, Kansas.

9) Dodge,Witchita, Pittsburg,Springfield, to Nashville.

10) Nashville to the Appalachian Mountains, along The Blue Ridge Mountain Highway to see the autumn in North Carolina and West Virginia, then dropping down into Richmond and to Jamestown, the start of the British move to North America.

11) Jamestown, Norfolk,Washington D.C., Baltimore,Philadeplphia,to New York, and then to return via Albany, Rutland and Burlington, across the border back to Montreal.

Best wishes.

Doc

Baron von Münchausen or Boys Own Paper?

Don’t expect pictures in this one…...it is, as you will see, a deadly serious analysis of what lies before me.

I am suffering with a case of very cold feet in the last 10 days, not literally you understand, but rather with regards to my ever nearing trek to the United States. Today it is 37 days off, and counting. I have had some misgivings about it before, as I previously mentioned. (February blog “I have a dream…”) The truth is that it really was just all a dream and then I suddenly decided to make it reality. Now some elements of it seem to be threatening nightmares instead. My family and friends will know, some to their pain and cost, that, some of my dreams are ill thought out with regard to their consequences, some are very carefully planned and executed ruthlessly, and some are just simple (though sometimes quite complex) fantasies that are best left locked in my head. This one seems to be a combination of all those three. It is true that the consequences of anything going really pear shaped could be disastrous both in expense and such things as medical care and flights and time and collecting the pieces (or ashes at worst!). It is true that it has been pretty carefully planned and so far executed ruthlessly to bring it about, and it is also true that there are fantasies as to how I had always envisaged myself making this trip and the fun that “we” would have and the stories “we” would accumulate to relate in coming years. The honest truth of this part though, is that the “we” is me in my early twenties, two stone lighter, no wrinkles, with long brown hair in a pony tail, hedonistic and full of adventure, and “her”, an ethereal, an ephemeral, a similar twenties beauty, an exciting, intelligent adoring sex goddess, my companion through the explorations of day and night, a soul mate and help meat, packed in close behind me on the pillion of my low, custom built, Arlen Ness chopper. Now do you see what I mean by the fantasies best locked in my head? The actual facts are that, when I was that age, I couldn’t ride a motorbike, I wasn’t hedonistic and adventurous, at least not outwardly, my hair, though long, was never long enough to tie back, and I was struggling to make it through medical school, even if I had some fantasies. Other little glitches in the picture were that I could never have found the time, let alone the money, and I have never recognised adoring sex goddesses until it was too late to realise that I had one in tow. So, now, grey, short haired, slightly portly(though definitely not fat!), I am still hedonistic but generally incapable (hot chocolate or Horlicks is about as hedonistic as I seem to get) even if I still yearn for adventure, I find I am embarking into a less than fantasy world alone. I cannot persuade the sex goddess of the last 33 years to leave home for much longer than a fortnight every two years or so, let alone ride pillion for 14,000 miles, and without compromising the whole balance of those 33 years, and, most essentially, the right of access to my workshop and garage, I cannot advertise for a suitable replacement ( who should, of course, fill the description of the above companion…..see my e-mail address if you’re interested, or form an orderly queue up our drive on one of the next two Saturday mornings for interview!) I have persuaded Wife and indeed Daughter to fly out for a week or so each, for a short part of the trip, but with Wife, it will probably have to be the beaches of California with the bike parked up and a decent hotel, and with Daughter, maybe we will hit Sturgis, where we can have a good fun time either together or doing our own things. Anyway, pleasant as I am sure those weeks will be, it still leaves at least 11 weeks of travelling alone. It is really on that subject that I have had some monstrous nightmares, made worse by V, my ex-sister in law, and then by Euan McGregor and Charlie Boorman, and finally by Eion Crighton, about whom, considerably more later.

Now, two weeks ago on Saturday, we went to the dedication of Amy at the Liberal Jewish synagogue in Nottingham. She is the daughter of J, my nephew,( he of graphic design and my fabulous logos fame) and his wife L. J’s mother is V. Well, we had all returned in the early afternoon to J and L’s house, a hobbit burrow in an ecological development 12 miles outside Nottingham, and we were sitting in their energy-gathering, enviro-friendly conservatory enjoying the sumptuous fare and drinking some very pleasant wine, when the topic of my imminent trip was raised with some interest. I heard myself going through the usual stuff, probably quite boring to most of the family by now….”Yes…about 14 weeks, it’s about 14,000 miles, …No, it’ll be anti-clockwise from Boston, sort of ‘sticking round the edge’…Yes, camping most of the time but motels if it’s pissing it down….I’ll be O.K. as long as I don’t drop it…..No, I’m going to try to avoid Tornado Alley”…Rustle of polite laughter.… Outside, between showers of light rain, the sun powered the water heaters and re-charged the electric cells, the grass grew quietly and lush over their roof , munching away at the carbon dioxide, the reed bed outside quietly sucked up the sewage and fed the remains into the pond, and the children played enthusiastically on the swings in the garden when suddenly, in this palace of the peaceful new age, in the silence that followed my brief exposition, and quite out of the blue, V said “Are you going to buy a gun when you’re over there, in case of trouble?” Well, that hit me a bit between the eyes, because, although I had not voiced it, or seriously considered it, it had crossed the distant recesses of my mind that I could encounter some such problem somewhere on such a big journey and where, as we all know from the films, everybody carries guns all the time and is not averse to using them. I had already decided to take my oldest cheapest watch, not to carry much cash, to record the numbers of my credit cards and make notes of how to contact my mobile phone provider in case I were to be mugged. I had already made a mental note to be a total chicken and give up without a murmur in the face of real and present danger, I had even ( and this is from one of the deepest dungeons of my mind) thought to carry a tube of K-Y Jelly in my leathers just in case “the worse than death scenario” were to rear its ugly head, but the thought of buying a gun had never really entered my head. I mean, it’s not the first time that this sort of thought of “what would you do if …had crossed my mind. If for example you caught a burglar in your house, if some bastard really hurt your daughter or wife, if your child was abused by some psycho-wierdo ,if you were threatened in the street by a knife waving youth, and, even years before, if a bunch of rockers turned up to wreck your youth club hop, if you were marooned alone on a desert island with ….., No, sorry, that’s from the other “what if” files. I had a flick knife when I was a teenager. I bought it in Italy when the family was on holiday and smuggled it home in the bottom of my suitcase. I had, in fact still have, my Senior Scout’s 7 inch blade sheath knife, but I never carried either of them in public. I have a shotgun and firearms licence and have two rifles and two shotguns. I have shot target rifles and shot many different pistols with the, now defunct, Lancashire Police Gun Club at their range in the multi-storey car park at the Blackpool Police Station. I carried a 9mm Browning pistol when on operational tour in Bosnia with the Royal Artillery, and beat off nine other reservist officers in a competition shoot at Chilwell when we were training before deployment. Now, however, someone was actually asking me whether I would carry a weapon on my dream trip….presumably being prepared to use it. I joked it off and replied “No, of course not, but I might keep a knife down my sleeping bag”. How stupid! Of course I wouldn’t. What the hell would I do with a knife in my sleeping bag, except perhaps nick my dick when I rolled over. I have always believed that you shouldn’t pretend to know what you are doing with a weapon if you really doubt if you could use it. I mean, almost anybody could probably take a knife off me, especially if there was more than one anybody. What a bloody silly reply to have made; do I really believe somewhere that I am potentially that brave or perhaps that stupid. No, nice smile, lots of gentle quiet talk, acquiescence and hope you get out alive the other end. Attack is only a last ditch hope for chickens facing an inevitable Kiev. Maybe then, and only then, just before I reach for the K-Y Jelly.

Now making matters worse, I have recently been lent a DVD of Euan McGregor and Charlie Boorman’s great trip, “The Long Way Round”. Truly this is fantastic stuff and really worth watching, whether you are a motorcycle enthusiast or not. For those of you who don’t know of it, it was produced as a television series and tells their story of a 22,000 mile mammoth trip from London to New York. Their trip took them across Europe, Eastern Europe, Mongolia, Siberia and southern Russia, across to Alaska and across the U.S to New York. They went on two BMW motor bikes, with helmet and bike cameras, and to their enormous credit, did the vast majority of it entirely unassisted, although they were followed and filmed by an equally intrepid biker cameraman from Holland. They also had a film producer and crew and support vehicles following them, although, admittedly some variable distance behind them. The cost must have been astronomical, only something that two film stars could have considered, although they visited several Unicef houses on the way round to promote the charity and, I believe, that the film has been sold with the profit to support them. Euan and Charlie are both highly experienced motorcyclists, far, far more skilled than I am, with many more years of experience including off road riding. They are also a lot younger, probably about 15 years younger. Even they had terrible problems, largely across Mongolia and Siberia, encountering deserts, mud, floods, rivers, broken roads, and significant breakdowns. They fell off numerous times, they helped each other out of the tricky bits, they supported each other, boosted each others morale, visited numerous homes where they were royally entertained, slept and fed, from Yurts to mafia style mansions. They were escorted by police security escorts across dangerous territories in Siberia through prior arrangement by the Embassy in London. They went on specialist bike riding courses, had specialist film input, specially prepared bikes and luggage carriers and lastly, before they went, they went on a full day’s firearms and escape and evasion course, in case they came across any real hostilities.. Then, while they were sat in a dusty lay-by in God-knows-where, a car drew up alongside them. The back window rolled down and a geezer, with smiley gold teeth, bad breath and a 5 day 5o’clock shadow, pointed a pistol at the cameraman and nicked all his papers, all his cameras, his passport and credit cards and all his cash, and drove off in a cloud of dust, never to be seen again. The point of this is that, if two film stars, known even in these remote parts, and supported by an entire team, can be ripped off at gun-point, what hope for the rest of us?

For two weeks, since watching this, my feet started to get cold. Here am I, at 60, and I am considering embarking on a 14,000 mile trip, and no help, no support team, no endless cash in case of trouble and nobody to boost my morale or share my Yurt with me. Am I mad?

Then, this last weekend, as if to add to my problems, I received the bi-monthly magazine of a British motorcycle group of which I am a member. I was fascinated by a front cover headline which read “75 year old conquers the Sahara”. This turned out to be the extracts from the diary of one, Eion Crighton, a 75 year old who decided to raise money for his favourite charity by riding his motorbike 7,000 miles over 5 weeks, from a well known motorcycle show in Peterborough to return to another show ground at Paddock Wood. Now, I have to say, that either, this guy is either incredibly fit and strong and capable, beyond anything that most really fit men are in their thirties, or he is incredibly stupid and inconceivably lucky, or he is the reincarnation of The Baron von Munchausen off on one last trip. I accept that my Harley is not the bike for this sort of trip, but he did it on what appears to be a 15 year old, beautiful condition Kawasaki 550GT, and what is remarkable about the pictures, is that it really isn’t very big and he isn’t smothered over in bags and additional kit over and above his standard panniers and top box. At one stage he says that he stopped to pick up 30, two litre bottles of water. Thirty mind! (There is now way I could load the Harley up with 30 two litre bottles…..they’d have to be hung on with binder twine from every available part, and I’d end up looking like a giant Harley with giant shingles.) He is also dressed in what appears to be a pair of jodhpurs, a scarlet leather jacket and World War II Commando boots. He looks like a sort of 1980’s Post Office delivery man, or a sort of gay Mad Max beyond Thunderdome. Whatever he’s taking, I could do with a few bottles of it! It certainly isn’t slivo. My guess would be ecstasy or LSD, but, who knows, perhaps it really is all absolute gospel truth. And if it really is, or, actually, even if it isn’t, good luck to him…it’s a ripping yarn! Whatever, this article does not belong in a motorcycle magazine. It really is the stuff of Boys’ Own Paper ( God rest it’s soul). Even Indiana Jones did not have any more to cope with! I have to quote some chunks of this, so, all credit to him, this is Eion Crighton’s own account, in his own words, copied here from the magazine, for which I don’t have permission, but I hope it helps to sell his book in due course when he finally publishes.

There are three episodes in particular that grabbed me (where I won’t say).

“My tank and two reserve tanks were virtually empty and at 1.30 a.m. I drifted into Cadiz on the smell of the fuel. I couldn’t find anywhere open and ended up in the docks where a kind truck driver told me where to find a fuel station that was open. I pulled in, put the bike on the stand and looked at the unleaded fuel pumps. Then I noticed an elderly man in the office looking at me very intently through what I thought to be armoured glass.

I had a funny feeling that something wrong was behind me and I turned slowly around. There were three chaps standing there, all of whom had knives and although they did not speak English, French or Arabic, they made their demands very plain. They wanted my wallet.

Now, I come from a Scottish family, brought up in Scotland with certain Scottish traits. Naturally, I refused and they became very hostile. In the end they made it quite plain that they intended to cut my throat. Now I have served in the forces, been trained by Israeli Commando Division and served in the Middle East, and working on what I had always been taught, three to one was a nice, safe bet for success”. (I mean, you just would feel confident with just those odds wouldn’t you ?)

“Our discussions came to an abrupt end. The older one said something to his colleague who took his finger across his own throat and looked at me. I told him to piss off. The next thing I knew, he lunged at me with a knife, which I managed to forestall from actually going into my shoulder and chest above my heart. Unfortunately for him, it meant that he was standing for that split second with his legs well apart. I managed to restrain his wrist and held the knife off, although it had already cut my shirt slightly”….(Must have taken his Captain Scarlet jacket off)…. “My knee, having been used to many similar troubles in dockyards round the world, seemed to have a will of its own. The poor chap gasped loudly and sank down in front of me, his knife falling from his hand as he clasped his nether regions.

To my horror, I looked up to see his colleague leering over me with his knife approaching my throat. I pulled back suddenly and the blade disappeared out of sight, under my chin! It must have been very, very close to my throat! Surprisingly enough this chap lost his balance and the next thing I knew was that my heavy motorcycle boot was in full flight and contacted the chap’s Khyber Pass. He shot forward, unable to save himself and landed, facedown on the concrete pump ledge. Poor chap!

I spun round, by then in temper”…. (No!...surely not!) …. “and lunged at the third one but he turned, legged it down the road and disappeared up a dark alleyway! I think it was the shortest fight I have ever had in my life and the first for about 5 years. The outcome however, had so amused me that my laughter kept me wide awake for the rest of the night over a very tortuous mountain route that I had to take in the dark”

Well, have you got the picture of this chap yet? But wait, dear Reader there is more to come! Away, to the Atlas Mountains in Morrocco….

………“About an hour and a half later I saw dust on the horizon. It turned out to be three vehicles of a desert patrol which was obviously not Moroccan because it contained some very badly turned-out troops, all badly disciplined and behaving more like pirates than I had ever seen in my life.

They were upset that I had filmed them”…. (Well, of course, you would take photos of them wouldn’t you!) ….“and forced me to hand over my three cameras. The films were taken out and the cameras actually thrown down on the ground. I was interrogated in very broken French, and every question was punctuated with a blow on my back with the butt of their guns”. (No multiple broken ribs then …clearly no 75 year old osteoporotic bones here!) “Cutting a nasty story short, I was turned around and permitted to return to Morocco after I had shown them my Omani Arabic service driving licence”. (Made all the difference that then?...must remember to get one of those for tight corners) “I am convinced that it had saved me from being interned in one of their prison camps for which I was obviously very grateful! It certainly gave me some credibility in their eyes” ( Seems more likely that the old wives tale that if you mess with a madman, you mess with the devil, may be a more rational explanation, but who needs rational with a tale this gripping!)

And finally, Indiana Eion, or Crocodile Crighton, as he surely must become known for these deeds of daring-do, exceeds all boundaries of courage and true British ‘stiffupperlipmanship’….choppers at dusk in Casablanca….say it again Sam!

“The next day I set off north again for Casablanca, reaching a small town some 100 miles north after dark and again finding a very nice hotel right on the beach. As I took a walk along the beach I saw two young lads coming towards me. They looked friendly and I had no reason to suspect otherwise, but, unfortunately, they decided to ask for my telephone and my wallet. What they thought was my telephone was, in fact, a combination knife set with some tools. I told them that they couldn’t have anything of the sort so they took out two large flick knives and became aggressive. I said ‘Look, I will show you but you won’t want it’. It took a while getting the knife out, which they thought was the telephone, and by the time I had got it out from behind my back, I had opened two blades, leaning down as I did so I pulled out my commando knife from inside my boot”…... (I don’t know how the hell he got through the immigration and Customs services with these, but clearly they must have recognised a true hero on a mission)

“I stood up and took a violent leap towards them, screaming as I did so and they backed off, looked at each other and ran about 20 or 30 yards away from me. Amusingly, they discussed the situation, put their knives away and came over with their hands raised towards me, apologising in French and saying that they wouldn’t take anything from me but advising me not to go into any of the quieter areas of town. We ended on good terms so I made my way back to my hotel.”(We need this guy…he’s the perfect answer to the knife culture of today’s youth…put him on the streets and he’ll play them at their own game, scare the living shit out of them and turn them instantly into good upright citizens or even baby super-grasses)

Well, there you are, that’s my problem, V asks me do I need to buy a gun, Euan and Charlie get threatened by a gun and Crocodile Crighton just finds it all over the place as easily as Casanova in Venice. Are you surprised I have got cold feet? Add to that, that it is two thirds of the distance Euan and Charlie covered, twice the distance that Indiana rode, and even though most of it is likely to be on tarmacked roads in a supposedly civilised country, it has the biggest gun culture in the world, maniacs carrying as much weaponry as the British Army who massacre entire High Schools, Hells Angel gangs who eat baby bikers like me or thrash their balls off with bicycle chains, and I’ve seen the films too…chainsaw massacres, things in sheets with scissors for fingers or nails like knives, The Mob who bury you in concrete for looking at a girl in a bar the wrong way….need I say more? AND, I’m by myself….I’ve gone off my head in the past because I was by myself! So, what is my conclusion from all this? Well, certainly not the double bladed knife in the back of my trousers and commando knife in my boot. It would be just my luck to drop the bike, stab my arse and wreck my already damaged right ankle. Probably not the pull your opponent in close and knee him in the balls approach either. I already have some arthritic changes in my knees , and I would probably try it on some thug who carries his double bladed knife in the front of his trousers. So, the pistol? Probably not. I am a doctor after all and although I am, of course, a lethal weapon with a pistol. I couldn’t bear the guilt of seriously injuring someone less skilled. No, it can’t be any of these things. It has to be safe, yet totally disabling, the skill of my life’s work, listening and talking…yep…I’ve got it…write a blog and bore them to death.

Best wishes,

Doc

Finally, a foot-note to Eion Crighton. Eion, if you were ever read to this, as I said, you are either, quite the most fantastic old man, or you are far superior blagger to me. You have my greatest admiration whichever it is. It is quite clear that this wasn’t the standard Saga Holiday package. Perhaps you can advise on future excursions which I might join…always providing that you ride as bodyguard of course. I am reminded of the Steppenwolf song, Born to be Wild…..”get your motor running, get out on the Highway, looking for adventure, in whatever comes our way” Ride safe, ride free old man!. I hope you can do so for many years yet.

Final, final footnote: This is the final word of advice from Eion to adventurous motorcyclists. “Make certain before you leave that your bike is in pristine condition and that your brakes have new pads, that there are no weak areas and that you are carrying spare cables with you. One last point I would say to anybody, is that it is dangerous to ride at night because the patrols and roadblocks will fire at you if you come at them with your headlight on at speed”

(Well that’s O.K. then. Perhaps, in addition to the spare sets of cables, a couple of dozen pairs of disposable underpants might prove useful; my dear late mother always seemed to think clean underpants were essential in case you found yourself in hospital. Night patrols and roadblocks eh? Well, it may not be cricket, and I still don’t think I’ll buy a pistol, but perhaps I do need to fix some sort of ex–military GPMG (general purpose machine gun) to my front fairing? I’m sure they must be available over the counter in Texas or Alabama if I ask nicely?)

SEE THE PICTURES BETTER IF YOU WANT

I think that most of you who read this can see the pictures in full size or, if not full, certainly better size if you want to, by a single right click on the picture. Then click left button on "Open link in a new tab" You will get the full picture and can close it by clicking on the cross on the top right. Best wishes to you all and enjoy the Bank Holiday weekend.

Best wishes

Doc

Pinnacle of success.

The road from Strasbourg to Paris is pretty straight forward, Metz, Reims, Paris, only once again the remarkable thing for an Englishman is that it is just a delight to be driving rather than a chore. Although there was an increasing amount of traffic as we neared the capital, there were no hold ups, a few fast tracked road works, good surface, and still, superb weather. Even the Peripherique, the Paris ring road, was constantly moving well, although it was the beginning of the evening rush hour when we arrived on the Friday in late afternoon. When we had stopped overnight in Austria two nights before, I had looked on the internet and found a campsite on the western edge of Paris, just off the Peripherique, and although I had not been able to phone then to book ahead, I thought we would take a chance and go. So Thomas the Satnav was now guiding us effortlessly around the ring, off multiple junctions, to the back roads of the western Parisian suberbs. “Prepare to leave highway in point four of a mile”, “leave highway in 300yards”, in a hundred yards keep right”. This would have been a major effort with a road map, and we would have needed a street map to have actually known where we were going. Father was amazed at Thomas’s accuracy. I was used to it, but grateful to have it. And so, after about an hour of south and west Paris, at 5.30, we finally were told “In 100yards reach destination”, and there in front of us was the green iron archway over the entrance to the municipal campsite. Now don’t ask me exactly where it was. I followed a post code on the internet and saw the rough area on the large scale map; suffice to know that we had arrived and Thomas knew where we were. We entered the park and drew up at the bureau of the concierge to see if we could book in. It was closed. A sign on the window stated that the office hours were 9.00 to 4.00 daily and 10.00 to 3.00 on weekends. Damn! What to do? Well, the barriers were up and people were coming and going, so perhaps try and sort it tomorrow morning? We drove in. The first thing that we noticed was that there were many small holiday chalets on the site, arranged along small loop roads. It was beautifully laid out with wooded areas and grassy camping areas, but as we travelled around the chalets were almost everywhere. We saw no caravans and no free sites to park. Not that it was crowded, there were plenty of free grassy areas, just no obvious plots for mobile caravans. Up one side road however, we came across several, camped near each other with a couple of chalets. I stopped to ask. This seemed clearly to be the local permitted gypsy encampment, and their French seemed to me probably as strange as mine did to them. However they were very friendly and I understood that they just said “park up where you want, it’s alright for a night or two” or something to that effect. They pointed across the clearing towards some more chalets and a low building and so we followed their directions and saw that the low building was a large shower and toilet block, and there was some room alongside this to pull in alongside some empty holiday chalets, so we did. The weather was still lovely and the park was quiet and peaceful. I had had some apprehension about the proximity of the “gypsy” group, but they were perfectly friendly and welcoming and we spent a good night there. The most enjoyable part of the stay being the shower block! I won’t say that we were filthy, because we weren’t. We had been having basin washes in the camper for two weeks, including hair washes, but because of the difficulty of filling up with water from a tap, we had had to be sparse in our use of water and so we had not been able to use the shower. This block was a bit old, but had large tiled showers, even a disabled one with a seat on the wall. The floor however was slippery, and the showers were delightfully fierce, but would have almost blown Father away! It meant a rather undignified effort of showering together which both of us found a bit embarrassing to start with I think, but it was the only way and it was so nice to feel really clean and fresh again. Because the floor was so slippery I had to hold Father up both in the shower and when drying him, and we really could have done with a third assistant! I was glad however that we had gone there in dressing gowns and slippers and not fully dressed. Just a simple non-slip floor would have made all the difference. Enough of the showers! Just use your imagination. After an excellent dinner of shepherd’s pie and salad, and a very peaceful night, we woke as usual at about 7.00 and were ready to go into the Saturday morning Parisian traffic for the last objective. I was hoping to take Father up the Eiffel tower, as he had taken me, almost 50 years ago. As we left for the gate, we filled up the water tanks and went to the office, to sort out our stay. Closed of course, but the barrier was open!
I had planned it so that we would drive just about 15 miles directly east to the Eiffel tower. I noticed two large parking signs on the Paris map close by and thought that we may be able to park there and I could take Father the last mile in the wheelchair. We followed the last mile of the journey on the west bank of the Seine with the tower in sight on our right ahead of us, Thomas having a lie in this morning as I simply followed the signs and looked out for car parks. We drove past the tower and followed signs for the coach park. I didn’t want the same problem I had had in Canterbury to spoil the end of the trip as it had the beginning. It was just after twenty past eight, and on the east side of the tower is a long pathway approach through a lawned tree lined area, and at the end of that a parking and dropping off area for coaches. As we drove into this it was clear that there were a lot of free spaces and I easily pulled into one. I went to a kiosk close by to ask if they had some change for the meter and if it was alright to park there. The official stated “D’accord. C’est libre aujourd’hui, c’est libre le weekend” Free at the weekends! How refreshing is that! There’s a lot to be learned here about Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité…Ken Livingstone and Canterbury Council pay attention!
Father felt that he could walk the 300 yards to the base of the tower, and we strolled up the plane lined avenue to the four great bases of the superb soaring steel spire, marvelling once more at the engineering which for its day, and probably even now, was a masterpiece of construction and design. There were already quite a lot of people waiting, mostly tour groups at the entrances to the tower bases, so I sat Father on a bench in the centre in the sun where he could watch my progress down a queue and when it opened at nine o’clock and I had got to almost the front of the queue, I beckoned him over. We still had one of those winding barrier things to pass through, the sort of thing that makes you feel you’re already at the front but actually winds another 50 yards of tightly packed people into a deceptively small space. Suddenly, magnifique! 'Un gentil home officiel ' beckoned us out of the barrier and he guided us straight to the side disabled entrance and straight to the bottom of the lift. So, there’s a lesson to all you young families…don’t leave the old folk at home..they’ll get you fast passes to all the places you want to visit, and possibly have a disabled passenger parking permit too! I don’t really remember very much about going up the Eiffel Tower as a child. I seem to remember the views from the top, but not the actual actual. Now, for a sixty year old, and even more for a ninety five year old, it is quite an unnerving experience, especially if you look out sideways as you go. It's not the height or the rapid ascent, but the effect that passing the steel girders so fast has on your balance. It throws your eyes into vertical nystagmus, and your vestibular organs turn on their heads! ( it can make you very giddy). We had a break at the second floor and took a short stroll to adjust. Father told me to go to the top and he would stay there and wait for me to return. I refused. We had done this together and would finish together whether it was here or at the top. He decided to do it, for me I think, but none the less, he was up for it. We entered the small cage that shoots you vertically though the centre of the upper two thirds of the tower. I held him facing me and told him to focus on my shoulder for 30 seconds.(I focused on his!) And so we made it, neither of us giddy anymore, on to the steel balcony at the top. Here, on the shady side it was chilly in a light wind, but on the sunny side it was fantastic and we looked out together over the city and the river spread out like a carpet below. Together, fifty years on, and with the role responsibilities reversed, we stood once again on the top of the pinnacle of Europe. It was a great moment and we had a hug. We met a delightful couple from California who I asked to take a photograph of us. They were astonished at Father’s age ( and actually mine too, but I don’t know quite what that says! They did not specify “What really sixty”, or “what only sixty” Perhaps it just says how polite Californians are when they are touring Europe?) After about 20 minutes walking the balcony, we descended again to the second floor and had coffee and a cake at the café, and then returned to the camper, all done and dusted, and objectives achieved by 11.30. Father was chuffed to bits that we had done it. He kept on saying “ I just couldn’t have done it without you” to which my simple reply was that I wouldn’t have done it without you, which I suppose is true of my whole lifetime relationship with him!
Our ferry home from Calais was booked for the following day at 11.00a.m., but, with all objectives achieved, an early finish at the Eiffel Tower and a fine day, we decided to go for the 200mile trip to Calais now, and see whether we could get an early ferry. Despite a leisurely trip and a stop for a picnic lunch, we arrived at just after four in the afternoon and they kindly swapped us to the 4.45 ferry. The only hiccup was the inspection by Immigration, previously related, but that was a part of a streamlined process of our embarkation, and once again, when we got on board, P and O ferries had arranged for us to park right adjacent to the passenger lift on the lorry deck, which made life so simple and comfortable. Thank you P and O for a really great service. The rest as they say, is history, well actually boring, but that isn’t the accepted expression. We stopped at Milton Keynes overnight as it had been a tiring day and there was no rush. It started to rain of course as we went north of Stoke on Trent, just to make us feel at home, and has persisted, pretty well ever since, over the last four weeks. Father was back in Windermere to a welcome reception from his friends and in time for lunch. I was back at the farm by half past one. Door to door distance? 3,542 miles. Bosnia or bust?....No worries!

Best wishes,

Doc.

Piccies to follow very soon. Watch this space.

Stop Press

You will of course realise that I am not writing all this stuff from the streets of Paris, or on the boat at Calais, or from a motorway stop on the way home, but rather from the camper, somewhere on Catterick Garrison. I am sorry it is late,of course, but maybe all travelogues would be like this if their authors had to work too! Some really current things have come up though ,which need to be said.
Firstly, Thank you to the Parking Officer for Canterbury Council who has grudgingly, with a strong reminder of how wrong I was, agreed to let me off my parking fine, sending me a photo of the sign board at the car park entrance showing that only PLG vehicles are allowed to park there and that, within the marked bays. My vehicle is a PLG vehicle, and they did not have any bays quite long enough. It seems it would be OK to park a car and a trailer there, but you should disconnect the trailer to fit in the bay behind your car. Anyway, I appreciate it. It did rather spoil the start of the trip.
Second, I managed to get a fantastic battery for the Harley from All American in Kidderminster. It kicks 135 cold start amps and is 2/3rds the size of the original Harley one. That is enough to start two Harleys at once! No troubles now then.
Third, A and I sadly said goodbye to our family 1973 MGB Roadster last Saturday....not for good we hope, but for better. A better life...T and H have "borrowed her for the summer" on condition that T keeps all tools for inspection and demolition of gadgets locked up. H has promised they will be confiscated if they appear.
Finally...big push this month for daughter H.....GO FOR IT darling...ALLSTOPS OUT...You can do it. Sorry, only the family will understand what this is about.

Best wishes,

Doc

Strasbourg and Paris, the long way home.

If you regard a holiday as a period when you go out drinking or clubbing ‘til the early hours and lie in ‘til lunchtime, a trip with Father and me to Bosnia would not suit your taste. Father usually goes to bed about 10 p.m.and in the countryside in Bosnia, when it’s dark, that seems fairly sensible. In the mornings, my body clock is so set in its ways that it almost always wakes me at 6.30a.m., so our holiday followed these sort of hours. All our hosts are around and about at these times too…..

So, in accordance with our normal practice, we were up, breakfasted, stowed away and on the road soon after 7.00 and heading rapidly out of the valley and over the mountain pass towards Mrkonjic Grad and Banja Luka.. It was our intention to return home via Strasbourg which is where our friends, A and S are now living. But for now, as the early morning sunshine burned off the mountain mist, we headed to Banja Luka to meet Ranka who had returned to the university and had asked us to see her once more when we were leaving. We texted her as we dropped down the steep beautiful Vrbas valley from the Čemernica Mountains. As we entered the city, she was there at the side of the first bus stop. With her she had brought her old flatmates, her two closest university friends, to meet us; we are obviously slight local peculiarities, oddities, a fact that I would actually find hard to deny! She introduced A and C, and with some fascination, clearly not having been anywhere near such a strange vehicle, they all clambered inside and we headed for the city centre. The girls were fascinated by the fact that we had a kitchen, bathroom, beds and kitchen all on wheels and were totally independent. Parking was just a bit of a problem and involved the three girls smiling sweetly and chatting up a blushing young parking attendant. Eventually, we squeezed in to a space on a demolition site car park, with a promise by the young official that he would personally take care of their mobile home. This involved the payment of €10.00, about a day’s wages for him, about the price I would expect to pay for a parking space at home. We set off for the pedestrian centre. I was quite surprised because the centre of Banja Luka was so much improved over what I remembered from my last visit about 6 years ago; normally we by-pass the centre. There were clean new pavements and streets, lots of new shops and restaurants and bustling crowds of people. No longer large pot holes and mortar craters, no longer many shell holes visible on the buildings, it could have been almost any European city. We sat in a corner café on the pavement over-looking the square, the past generations, the old gynaecologist, the old family doctor, and the new generation, lawyer, sociologist and psychologist, quite symbolic of the fading out of the old and the hopeful development of the new all around us. Quite suddenly, Ranka said that they were going to leave us for a little while and pop into the market. She thought she knew where there might be a Russian water pump like the one her dad had used to pump the water from the cistern and which I had coveted for wild camping. Such a pump would enable me to go off normal parks and draw water even from a river. Zarko had said that they were very difficult to get and, although he had found it in Banja Luka, he couldn’t remember where. They would not be long. It seems that Ranka had done a bit of research before we arrived and had spoken to some of the hardware stall holders in the large open market and they had put the word out. It was only about 15 minutes before they returned. “We’ve found the pumps” Ranka smiled. So after paying the bill we sat Father on a bench in the square while the three girls and I entered the busy market area. The range of things on sale in this market is extraordinary. You can buy almost anything that we would buy in a large retail park. In one area were the plumbing, heating and electrical stalls. Ranka lead me to the side of one of the stalls and there, under the table with all sorts of plumbing and bathroom stuff was “the” pump. Not only that, but two stalls away there was another one and yet another on a third stall. “Argue! ” she said. There was one new one, complete with spare washers, and Russian instruction booklet and warranty. That had to be the one. We ranged back and forth in the open view of the stall holders, some fascination at the three lovely leggy young women browsing around the plumbing stalls with a grizzled old Englishman. They were, as I have seen my own daughter, in “giggle mode”, and chattering away in Serbian and English and obviously being teased somewhat by the men on the stall. I don’t think they knew whether they were English or Serbian. Ranka translated after rapid exchanges of Serbian. We heard sixty euros at all three stalls, but then refused all three. We passed between them over about 15 minutes, carefully pretending to examine all three and discuss them between us, criticizing each pump for why it was not as good as the others or did not have quite the same properties and such rubbish. The giggles persisted. Finally we got the worst one to 25 Euros, which we spoke of quite loudly. We went to the new pump stall and offered “final price” 30 euros, and succeeded.. The girls were obviously pleased and felt the joy of finding success for their friend. I was delighted with my brilliant acquisition! We wandered back laughing to the square where Father was sitting quietly in the sunshine with an old Bosnian man next to him. He joked that he was still quite safe and had not been mugged or taken away. He remarked that the whole place feels so much more settled and safe this visit, echoing both our impressions. Father touched his cap and bade a very loud “good morning” to the old Bosnian next to him. He looked up bemused but oddly, replied “Dobra dan” appropriately and went back to his dozing in the sunshine. We wandered back across the precinct to where we had parked. I gave the girls a little pocket money to go and treat themselves to a great girls’ lunch and we said our goodbyes and had our hugs. I have invited Ranka and her friends to come to visit us for a holiday in Yorkshire next year, which they all jumped at. I am sure we can arrange this now things are more settled and there is a fairly good international air service to Germany at least. We moved off, waving to each other, amused as the young parking attendant moved in to continue to try to push his early morning luck.

The journey was easy with clear roads and lovely weather, our only real delays being firstly at the Croatian border control and then at the Slovenian. As usual they wanted to know why we had been in the previous country and what we were bringing out. The five litres of Slivovic were stowed quietly sleeping in my berth, and otherwise,with the exception of a prized Russian water pump(sad isn’t it!), we were coming out with much less than when we went in. (Oddly enough, here at the European border areas, there was no check at all on whether we had any hidden passengers, but at the port at Calais, our own Immigration Officers boarded and searched us. It seems that we are the only, and last, bastion of illegal immigration. There, they pulled us over into an inspection area and the friendly officer, who checked all our accommodation areas to ensure we were not people smugglers, said that 13 was the record for a camper van so far, with the people hidden behind false fronts to the fridge and cooker and in the blanket boxes and under beds in place of mattresses with cardboard covers over them!.....now there’s an idea for a partly retired doctor to fund his ramblings. I would not have thought about it unless informed how it can be done) Anyway, we haven’t got to Calais yet, so back to Jesince at the Slovenian border. This was a different border crossing from the one’s we had done before, because instead of returning through Graz in Austria, we were going via Ljubljana,through Villach, Salzburg, Munich and Stuttgart and then dropping slightly south into Strasbourg, a more westerly route and one which we had not traveled before…I thought at least. The actual route itself is slightly irrelevant, you know, motorways, A-class roads, mountains, tunnels, large pastures, forests etc. All very nice and we made good progress in lovely weather, but an irritating trip as Father seemed confused quite a lot of the time. He always remarks on places as we pass through them, he had done on the way down, he always does. Actually, I like that because it means he is enjoying it and watching things, and he knows the route by heart almost. Going this way however, he kept on saying, things like “That’s were we stopped for petrol” and “We stopped for lunch there” and “we change routes soon”. I kept gently telling him that this was a new route for us and that we had not returned this way before via Strasbourg. “It all looks similar, but it’s new”. This was all a bit worrying, I thought he was a bit over tired. Then as we were coming in to Strasbourg he announced that this was the German bit and when we crossed the Rhine bridge we were in France. Well, O.K., he had to get something right!. “Yes, that’s right” I said, although I couldn’t really remember that myself until we arrived there, and even .then I couldn’t understand why I seemed to recognize it. As we neared the area that A and S live, guided by the Satnav, Father was pre-empting the dronal tone of Thomas the Satnav voice, “Left soon”, “This is the main road past their road” Fantastic memory this chap for his age! I have to confess now, and I have only just realized it as I wrote this and looked at the route on the map, it’s me who has gone bonkers, not the Aged Parent! I opened my European map and checked the route we travelled before I started to write. It was highlighted in yellow high-lighter pen. “That’s odd”, I thought, “I never looked at the route in the map this year, I simply set it up on the Satnav”. It was 10 seconds later that it hit me. This was the route we had come down to Bosnia 18 months ago when we stopped at A and S in Strasbourg on the outward journey. The old man had been absolutely spot on….he didn’t feel us driving on the left when he was always pointing that way…they were the places we stopped on the way out!...Now I feel dreadful. I’ll have to tell him. Yes, I really will; he knows he was right and I doubted him, I’ll sort it this weekend….unless he’s forgotten about it? Some chance!

Strasbourg, a really cosmopolitan city with peoples from Eastern and Western Europe, is a lovely old city, with quaint “quartiers” and a mixed language of French and German. The centre is compact, mostly on the French side of the river Rhine with an equal cosmopolitan mix of architecture. A and S are living on the edge of the centre in a ground floor, two bedroomed apartment on a small estate of three or four similar compact blocks. It is largely an area where new French immigrants are housed and is State owned. A and S are asylum seekers in France. They fled from Bosnia when they were outlawed by their own local communities for getting married. Neither of them could get work, accommodation was almost impossible and they were abused in the streets. I had met A when I served in 1999 and he was an interpreter. He was a good friend of N, and she told me about him some time before I met him, He is a very straight good honest man with eclectic beliefs and open mindedness. He is a man of deep and well constructed thought, and is a fascinating conversationalist. But, A is a Bosniac, a Moslem man, and S, a Serbian orthodox Christian. They fled three years ago, after the end of the wars, having both just fallen in love across their peer group boundaries. They had hoped to be able to go to Canada, but the Canadians wanted a minimum of a £5,000 bank roll to support them and that was way beyond their means, and finally, fairly desperate to escape they managed to get some sort of visa and escape to France, where they pleaded for asylum. Fortunately their application was accepted and they spent the next 12 months attending French lessons, political and social instruction, early job training and living in separate sex hostels with drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes and other homeless people. They met for a few hours each day determined to find their dream together, A always dreaming of being an artisan, and S, who was training to be a nurse, hoping to continue her training. Finally, when they had permission to stay and apply for citizenship, they found a flat to rent for a few months while the owner was away. A started work as a trainee baker, not quite what he had expected, but S was unable to transfer any of her training or qualifications as they were not recognized by France. She got a job as a care assistant. At last, they both had subsistence jobs and could plan a little. Finally, after almost 2 years, they were allocated this apartment, and restored it together to a superb open, modern, bijou flat. They were allowed to apply for citizenship, but that is still by no means guaranteed. S was pregnant by this time and expecting a baby girl….NOW. We had been all waiting to hear of her birth, and now, some 10 days late, it had still not happened. I was a bit concerned that it might be tiring and difficult for them to entertain us, but when we arrived, she was busy, bright and cheerful as ever with no feelings as if anything was about to happen. A’s sister, V, who had fled to Austria at the start of the War and is married and settled there, had come to help and brought her delightful 8 year old daughter. S’s mother was on a bus coming from Banja Luka and arriving that night. And we turned up. S was totally at ease, just delighted to see so many people she wanted to be with, and V was busy making an evening meal. A came back soon after with Mother, complete with bags of stuff, containing baby clothes, lots of Kymac, some illegally imported slivo, Bosnian beers, and some pre-prepared food. How she had coped with all that lot on the crowded, non-stop 24 hour bus, goodness knows, but had we known she was coming, I would have been delighted to have packed her behind our fridge. We spent a delightful evening together, sharing some memories, catching up on mutual friends, showing our photos of people they know back home, and of course, sipping slivo and coffee. (Only this time, in modest amounts! A drinks very little.) Father and I were parked on their street, just 100 metres away, and intended to sleep there. We wished them goodnight and hoped that S might start in labour during the night, she was due to be induced in 4 days time.. However, S. had a quiet night; I did not. Father is pretty deaf without his hearing aid, and so when he goes to bed he hears virtually nothing. He did not hear the cacophony of singing cats, which started at about 11.00pm, just as the clock in the bell tower 50 metres away sounded the hour. He did not hear the cats at the quarter, half and three quarter hours as the clock in the bell tower kept watch through the night. He did not hear this stone watchman notify every bloody quarter and every bloody hour through the night. At about 2.00, the cats went to bed and my mind got into the rhythm of the chimes, hardly stirring until the hour chimes of six, and that was just too many and I woke up fully, rather yearning for a good night on the Glamoc Polje. No, Father slept well and rose again ready for his porridge at 7.00. Some things went O.K. then!

Over a fabulous continental breakfast of cold meats, eggs, bread from our own boulanger, and Kymac of course, and with as much coffee as I could manage to push down me, we departed, sad of course that we hadn’t managed to meet little baby Uma, but pleased that A and S were so well and so secure now. We set off for Paris, several cans of Red Bull alongside the driver. I had one last mission for the Archer and Arrow together.

Next: Pinnacle of success.

Only two pictures for this bit. (No...really..there ARE only two pictures for this bit) I do manage to post them now but it seems a slow process... I still don’t fully understand exactly what I am doing yet and don’t know anyone to teach me, so bear with it…I'll maybe find an expert in the States!

Best wishes,

Doc