It’s raining today

February 18, 2018February 18, 2018 | Mairead

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(Not actually a casino…)

It’s raining today and has been since the middle of the night. We are near Bordeaux, in a supermarket car park. We drove for a couple of hours in foggy misty rain to get here and I went for a nap as soon as we had settled. It’s still raining now and because it’s a Sunday the supermarket has been closed since before lunch so not a lot happening around us. We do seem to be near an airport because I can hear low flying airplane noise. I’ll go out when it eases and take some photos of the empty car park and see if I can make it look interesting!

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(Ruby)

That’s the thing I like most about going somewhere I’ve never been before, noticing ordinary things…

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(The trolleys are green)

For instance here it’s the colour of the trolleys, I hadn’t really noticed that trolleys are different colours in different supermarkets. The trees, there are trees. And the absence of people. It would be unusual to find a supermarket car park in Ireland this deserted on a Sunday afternoon. When we moved to Greystones first the big supermarkets didn’t open on a Sunday at all, the car park was where learner drivers went to practice and the odd car boot sale was held.

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(A tree)

I back in and I’ve done my best with the photos! Just checked my weather app – it looks like it will be raining until nightfall. Then i noticed it’s exactly the same temperature here (11℃) as Greystones, Wicklow, Dublin, Cashel, Cloyne and Celbridge and it’s raining in all those places too except for Cashel. Breaking News: The weather is better in Cashel, Co. Tipperary than the south of France! Maybe I should do a weather report once a week comparing weather in those places in Ireland with wherever we are at the time. Could it be the best weather is always some place in Ireland? Could be…

From a rainy Casino supermarket car park, Mairead.

Once upon a time we had no water…

February 17, 2018 | Mairead

Lots of people ask me how Denis and I can live together, in such a small space, without killing each other. I’m not sure I have ever given an adequate answer, mainly because I don’t know. So I thought it might be interesting to notice on this trip what we do. Today I got some useful information… it’s a long story, bear with me.

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(Our back garden tonight)

As I was saying we planned to be taking the slow journey through France, as long as the weather was kind… and the weather was grand, but we hadn’t taken into account a particular side effect of weather – water pipe safety. Yesterday we travelled for about an hour from the ferry at Cherbourg and arrived in the town of Isigny sur Mer at dusk. We planned to fill up with water and stay for the night. While in Cork the previous Sunday we had filled our drinking water tank but we forgot that there’s a safety thingy in the van that protects against frozen pipes – by dumping all the drinking water! It only happens if the temperature inside the van goes below 8 degrees. Must have gone below 8 degrees while we were on the ferry because when we got off in Cherbourg the tank was empty. We might have left 100 litres of Cork water in the English channel… sorry.

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(Autumn)

Not really a problem, we would get drinking water at the aire in Isigny sur Mer. But we couldn’t! This is a bit of a sweeping statement but it might still be true: in winter the French turn off the drinking water taps at their aires. To be honest we’ve only tried two this morning but two out of two is enough for me to start making sweeping statements. Still, not a huge problem, we do have a couple of two litre bottles of water I bought in Lidl when the whole of Greystones was on a boil water notice. That will keep us going for a bit, but I think we need to reassess, regroup and let go of the original plan.

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(Spotted on our way to the supermarche)

When you decide on a plan and then set it in motion it takes on a life of its own. Every decision that follows fits neatly into the plan and before you know it there’s a machine trundling down the road to get water where none exists. The machine in this case is a camper van plus two humans. When the water at the second tap an hour south of the first tap was also turned off the two humans approached a crossroads (metaphorically). One of them was doing all they could to keep the machine moving with the original plan, i.e. on to a third tap, while the other human was doing all she could to throw out the original plan and come up with a new one.

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(Here we are)

It turns out we have very different patterns when it comes to finding a solution. Denis focusses on making the present plan work (tenacious). I focus on coming up with a new plan (creative). Even thought this is a metaphorical crossroads it felt exactly like we were pulling in opposite directions and it was very uncomfortable. Discomfort makes me grumpy and blamey (not a real word but I think you know what I mean…?) It wasn’t very peaceful. I’ll spare you the back and forth that went on until silence descended. Not peaceful silence. Then something changed. (Incidentally I would not have understood what changed had I not been writing about it. Thank you, writing, I love you!)

(We found water!)

But first… Many years ago these two humans were not living peacefully together. They had a lot of hard stuff going on and they were pulling apart at every crossroads. And then they stopped, I actually don’t know why they stopped, probably a combination of things, other people inspiring them, books teaching them, courses educating them. I don’t know, but things changed and they found common ground. One night, I think they were sitting on the sofa watching the telly, they came to an agreement on something… they wanted peace. And they were willing to do hard stuff to have peace.

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(Our first bbq on the road (thank you for teaching us, Moira!) and the orange/metal thing in the park is a game called disc golf – google it)

The thing that changed today was that as soon as we realised we weren’t at peace, we separately (and silently) stopped thinking we were right and the other person was wrong. Then we began to search together (awkwardly) for workable solutions to the problem. Then we drove to a place we knew had water… duh.

We are able to live together, in such a small space, without killing each other because we want peace, Mairead.

Crossing the Threshold

February 16, 2018 | Mairead

The ferry crossing from Rosslare in Ireland to Cherbourg in France takes about 17 hours. We sailed at 8.25pm yesterday and I was in bed by 9pm! I had a plan.

(That’s the sun…)

At the weekend I had noticed my weather forecasting app on the phone predicted windy weather for our sea crossing. On Monday I bought drugs (sea sickness ones) and then promptly went into denial about the weather, while hourly checking my app… On Wednesday my friend rang, the one who is a true believer in the secret of manifesting. If you don’t know about manifesting you’ll have to google it because it’s a long story. Suffice to say if you really want something to happen then first start imagining it is happening really clearly and feeling it really intensely. You might think this is naturally what people do when they want something but you’d be surprised how many people imagine really clearly and feel really intensely what they don’t want!

(I love the lines and angles)

I for instance was imagining gale force winds and feeling intensely sea sick green! And, I was standing on dry land… But here was my friend imagining calm seas and feeling intensely joyful to be starting a new journey… my new journey! I was oddly resistant to letting go of my gale force winds but she sounded like she was enjoying my journey waaay more than I was so it would be rude not to join her. What harm could it do, I had the drugs. And maybe I could have 24 hours of calm seas before I got on the boat! So each time I started imagining gale force winds I stopped myself and began imagining calm seas.

(Beautiful weathering…)

As we drove to Rosslare yesterday the wind buffeted the van but I had been stopping myself from imagining what I didn’t want for a good while by then and I wasn’t tempted to stop. When we arrived in Rosslare the wind had died down and when the time came to take the drugs (2 hours before sailing) I decided not to take them. I also didn’t eat anything and I didn’t drink the traditional glass of red wine. I listened as the captain told us it might be a little bumpy but he would be using the stabilisers (wonderful invention) and then I went to bed to the sound of car alarms going off in the car deck (top tip:disengage your car alarm when travelling by ferry).

(That’s a calm sea…)

I woke a few times during the night and it was bumpy, but not too bumpy and I was uncomfortable, but not too uncomfortable. I started remembering how wonderful it is to stand on dry land! And I remembered how I had been making myself sea sick on dry land! Oh dry land I will never treat you so badly, I will appreciate you and whisper kind thoughts to you as I walk on you! The thing is, dry land isn’t affected by how I think… I am! I need to be whispering kind thoughts to myself! And when I imagine, I need to imagine something I’d love!

In the meantime I am enjoying the calm seas. Yes, the sea is calm! Not bumpy, not uncomfortable, Mairead.

Trip to Portugal 2018

February 15, 2018 | Mairead

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(Car park near Rosslare)

Tonight we are leaving Ireland for three months. There is one week in March when we have to be in Lisbon but other than that we don’t know where we’re going or when we’ll arrive. What we do know is we are driving via France and northern Spain (although not the exact route) to beautiful Portugal. We will be travelling more slowly than in the past, weather permitting. Previously, we drove like the clappers until we got to Portugal and then slowed right down, but we have come to realise that every bit of the journey (from our front door to the southmost tip of western Europe) is part of the experience and there’s no need to rush any of it. Of course, if the temperature is below zero in France we might feel even amazing French coffee and croissants can’t justify driving slowly through the cold. Although to be honest the van isn’t ever cold. It’s a small space and doesn’t take much energy to make it toasty.

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(I love bunting!)

We travelled to Cork and Cashel last weekend and got a gas cylinder that we can fill up as we travel, the bottle connections we use in Ireland don’t work in the other countries of Europe. We use the gas for cooking and heating so we don’t want to run out. It was also an opportunity to take the camper out on a test run to see what we’d forgotten… It’s really easy to forget what we need when we are in our house. It’s also hard to pack for warmer weather when there’s snow on the ground. In the past I’ve ended up with too many fleeces and too few t-shirts.

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(Happy as a pig in… a messy van)

This will be our third year travelling away from winter in Ireland. We read the same news as you. We stay in contact with our family and friends via mobile phones and computers. We cook dinner (well, Denis does, I wash up!) We watch YouTube videos instead of television. We shop in supermarkets, including Aldi and Lidl! It’s very like living at home except for the view. Some days we wake up in a car park and some days we wake up in a forest. Some days the birds are singing outside, some days waves are crashing, some days there’s rain falling on our roof which always makes us smile. Because the one constant of this way of living is that nothing is the same as it is at home. Surely this rain isn’t the same as the stuff we complain about all the time in Ireland…?

But it is and the thing that makes all the difference is your point of view, Mairead.

What if life was just about being?

April 6, 2017July 6, 2017 | Mairead

(On the road to Nantes)

Today, Thursday, we are in Nantes, France with just three days left of this journey. We have been travelling back since Sunday morning from Lagos in the Algarve, Portugal. We spent Sunday night in a lovely car park in Estremoz, Portugal, near the Spanish border. Monday night we were in the beautiful city of Burgos, Spain (thank you to Angela for this suggestion, two years ago!) Tuesday night we were next to a huge lake near the town of Mimizan south of Bordeaux, France. Wednesday night we stayed in the town of Surgeres, France. For both Friday and Saturday night we will be at Mont St. Michel and on Sunday night we will be sailing home to arrive in Greystones on Monday. At this moment I am very, very tired and very, very grateful.

(Like two old friends by the lake)

I often think about the messages life brings us… not necessarily the hard messages, the illnesses or the problems. But the small warm and gentle encouraging messages. Messages that in a normal day, we can miss. When we started this journey I didn’t think I would be blogging but it turned out I couldn’t stop myself. I missed the extra something writing brought to the experience of travel. Now, I think I know what the extra something is… writing makes those messages visible. When I started with the first blog it had a step, Step 1. Write. I didn’t expect there would be more steps but a step turned up each day when I sat down to blog. Now that I see them all together I can see the gentle encouraging message life has been sending me.

(Write…)

Step 1. Write.
Step 2. Stop Talking to Fear.
Step 3. Repeat Step 2.
Step 4. Take it easy and find a way to enjoy the journey, whatever it brings.
Step 5. Take more tram rides.
Step 6. Do the work.
Step 7. Stay awake to the beauty.
Step 8. Acceptance, it’s not always possible to fit in.
Step 9. Gratitude… for the old, slow computer that is working.
Step 10. Live in the present.
Step 11. Make time for rest.
Step 12. Believe it, you are so, so beautiful.
Step 13. Always wait until Monday.
Step 14. Say thank you to your washing machine.
Step 15. Less junk, less storage.
Step 16. Listen, you are alive, isn’t that amazing?

(Beautiful Burgos)

I am human so I like to think that I’m not wasting my time flitting around in a camper van. I’d like to think I was accomplishing something… or at least bringing something useful into being… Now I think that the only thing I can be bringing into being is myself. Wouldn’t it be great if that was enough? Yes. Maybe it is.

Step 17. Be, Mairead.

The first step…

February 19, 2017February 19, 2017 | Mairead

(Cangas de Onis. Old Roman Bridge)

Home today (Wednesday) is a car park in Cangas de Onis, a very attractive town on the edge of the Picos mountain range in northern Spain. The sun is shining and it’s warm. On Tuesday home was the car park of a hostel in Bilbao, it was sunny and warm there too. On Monday it was a camper van park beside a lake in the south-west corner of France, it was grey and raining there. The day before, a different camper van park in Fontenay-le-Comte, which is about 50 km north of La Rochelle, it was cold and dark there. On Sunday we were sleeping on the Rosslare to Cherbourg ferry where it was wet, windy and surprisingly pleasant due to an amazing invention – the stabiliser. (From Wikipedia, stabiliser: gyroscopically controlled system used to reduce the rolling of a ship. It works.)

(View from the bridge)

I decided before leaving not to blog… because I didn’t know how to write about the other kind of journey, the one last year where lots of things happened… but they didn’t happen to me so they weren’t my story to tell.

(Lac d’Azur south west France)

Now I find myself on this other journey through France and Spain and eventually Portugal and I realise I miss the writing. Without it I feel like I’m ignoring some important extra sense of what’s going on. Of course I could just write in a notebook. Yes, I could just write in a notebook. Why don’t I just write in a notebook?

(Close up to the bridge)

I think I don’t write in a notebook because of a character flaw – I am a procrastinator. I put stuff off until tomorrow. I put things into the tomorrow tray… and the tomorrow tray is just an imaginary tray where no writing (or anything else) ever gets done. Stuff only gets done in the today tray, if you get my drift? Blogging, for me, has a deadline and although I don’t like deadlines I do respect them and they make me put stuff into the today tray… so blogging gets done.

Step 1. Write, Mairead.

Nice name, shame about the….

October 5, 2016 | Mairead

(I LOVE bunting. I have even been knitting bunting on this trip and there’s some on it’s way to Canada and Cashel…)

Remember I was saying there were all these wonderful free places to stay? Well, we’ve been mixing the free ones with the paying ones and everything was going well until last night… I will try to describe it, but my mother once told me if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all. Emm… the name was pretty. The End.

(I like close-ups, here’s a close up of a monument)

I woke at 4am with the (not very melodious) sound of cows mooing… there were no fields and no cows when we went to bed. So possibly there was a mart, where farmers bring livestock to sell to other farmers. When I woke again at seven there was no mooing and I had a sinking feeling that the mart was not a mart but instead might be another place where cows go…maybe an abattoir? I fell back to sleep and next time I woke it was time to get moving to someplace nicer, warmer and less attached to dead animals. I jumped out of bed and then jumped right back in again. It was freezing. Denis had installed an outdoor and indoor thermometer on the van when we came back from Portugal so I was inquisitive enough to hop out again and check if it was really as cold as it felt…

(Nooooooooooo! (File Picture))

I know water freezes at 0ºC so it wasn’t technically freezing… it was 1.5ºC… so very close to freezing! In fact there was ice on the windscreen. Could this place get any worse? I was now suffering from sleep deprivation and hypothermia and I was feeling a little grumpy but the best thing to do was to get out of beg, get on the road and leave so I grabbed the de-icer thingy and opened the van door. Well… if you ever though it was impossible to change a grumpy mood into an excited mood in less time than it takes to say WOW, then I am here to tell you it is possible.

(Looking up through the cloud at the town with the pretty name)

As I exited the van I happened to look up. At a cloud. Nothing exciting about a cloud, you’d think… but on the other side of this cloud was the town with the pretty name.

(Our overnight parking is somewhere under that cloud)

All is forgiven, Mairead.

Feeling the Sky

September 30, 2016 | Mairead

(Star rising)

I wish I could show you the sky last night. It was the same as the sky above you but maybe you weren’t outside. Or maybe you were busy and you forgot to look up. Anyway, last night the sun started to set at 7.30pm and by 8.30pm I was sitting outside. I thought of taking a picture but they just don’t look the same and anyway it’s the feeling of being outside combined with the looking up that makes the difference and no one’s invented the camera to reproduce that… yet.

(We are here)

It felt like I was surrounded by a warm blanket, a knitted one that lets the light in, but in small pin holes. The blanket was black and dark black in the places where the trees blocked the sky. Surrounded by the blanket I felt safe and loved. I read somewhere recently the exact amount of time it takes for the light from a star to reach our eyes on earth. I can’t remember the number now but it was big – years and years. I heard that before but a bit like forgetting to look up at the sky I forgot that we live on a small rock in the middle of a huge space…

(Coffee and cards)

I worry about lots of little things. Like being late for something. Like saying something stupid. Like insulting someone unintentionally. Like doing something that makes people think about me. I never consider that people might be thinking something lovely, I worry that they are thinking something unlovely. The thing is, people rarely think either lovely or unlovely things about others, they mainly think about themselves… like I do when I worry. I worry about big things too. Like the rough seas between Ireland and France. Like the health of my family. Like my children. Like the people who are living in war. Like the people who are escaping war to find peace.

(Isn’t the postal system great, though?)

But then sometimes I don’t worry and I am not afraid… and when I am not afraid I am like I was sitting outside last night under the sky with the light of billions of stars reaching me on this small rock in the middle of a huge space and all is well. I am at peace. I am loved.

(Star setting)

I wished I could show you the sky last night so that you would feel at peace and you would know you are loved, Mairead.

Crossing Over to the Other Side

September 28, 2016 | Mairead

(Path around the lake beside the aires at St-Amand-Montrond)

It’s September, the sun is shining, I am sitting in McDonalds drinking coffee and sharing their lovely wifi and their lovely electricity. We’re back in France! We crossed over on Saturday night and it was some cross over! I had got used to the kind of crossing I like – calm, no waves, gentle lulling to sleep when you lie down. We’ve been on lots of ferries in the past five years and they’ve all been like that. (Mind you there was one about five years and two months ago that was rough so I suppose it was time.) Anyways, fifteen hours in it became calm, so all ended well and we docked in Cherbourg to sunshine and blue skies.

(There were quotes inside the door of every toilet at the first campsite… any idea what it says?)

From Cherbourg we drove south over the Loire river and spent our first two nights at a lakeside campsite between Orleans and Bourges. It was a quiet site with a handful of fishermen around a pretty lake. We chose this site in the usual way: pick a general area, look up one of the campsite books and pick one with facilities we want. Electricity and toilets are essential. If there’s a shop nearby that’s a nice bonus. If there’s a neighbourhood restaurant – triumph! This campsite had the basics and was close to a town so we figured the shop and the restaurant were very likely. We usually find this process works.

(Huge cathedral in Bourges)

This time we’re trying something new… we bought a book called Escapades in a Camping-Car. (Camping-Car is what the French call camper vans and motorhomes.) The book consists of 5 to 17 day circuits around nineteen areas in France. It shows interesting places to visit and campsites where you can stay. It also shows free stops, aires. Aires are places you can park overnight, not a campsite and usually there’s no electricity or toilets… but it’s free! The book is great with only one tiny problem – it’s in French. But on the plus side our French reading is improving.

(Pretty house in Bourges)

Yesterday morning we left our lakeside campsite at 8.30am and drove to the town of Bourges, where we parked in an aire. It’s often hard to find parking when we visit a town due to our size and we usually use a supermarket car park but this was better. From there we walked fifteen minutes into the town for a coffee. I also found a wool shop as I am knitting cheerful bunting on this trip and I was in danger of running out! Denis took the opportunity to get some mobile wifi from the Orange shop (we will get free updates if I mention them more than once in each blog… and a free t-shirt for every third mention, so watch for that!) They were very friendly in the Orange shop 😉

(While I was buying what I love – knitting yarn, Denis was buying what he loves – blue cheese!)

Actually, it’s something we are noticing this year…. the French are very friendly. Little things that make us believe the French really do love the Irish – thank you lovely Irish football supporters! We were in the petrol station buying the Camping-Car book when a French man, overhearing us talk as he walked into the shop, asked (in English) if we were Irish, he noticed we had left the petrol cover open on our car and wanted to tell us. Ok we didn’t have a car but still…. wasn’t that nice? And then in Bourges at the tourist office, where I went to locate the wool shop, the lady asked where we were from and beamed from ear to ear saying “ah Irlande!” Ok, not big things but last year in the tourist office in Carcassonne when I said I was from Ireland they said absolutely nothing… nothing. Silence. So I’m taking this as a win.

(Look! Even McDonalds love us!)

After coffee we moved an hour south of Bourges to St-Amand-Montrond… and another free parking spot. It’s beside a pretty lake, there are toilets and it’s a five-minute walk to a hypermarket and a McDonalds. And it’s free… We will be moving to a campsite tomorrow because we need electricity to charge the computer and phone batteries and a hot shower would be nice!

From McDonalds, nowhere near an Orange shop (there’s my free t-shirt…) Mairead.