The joys of another caravan holiday...
I’VE just had a holiday in one lounge/kitchen with five cupboards – each cupboard door requiring a different technique to open it.
They weren’t actually cupboards, but rooms. For this was ‘caravan land’, or ‘static caravan land’, to be accurate. I’m sure Bilbo Baggins, Frodo and friends from the Shire would have luxuriated in the space. However, after a week with my husband, our two fully grown friends and their nine-month-old Springer spaniel Jack, let’s just say there was very little we didn’t know about each other.
To add to the treat, we’d chosen a week in which the Westcountry saw some of the heaviest storms it has seen this year, which meant we were confined to quarters for much of the time.
I was a little on edge before the holiday, anyway, as it was with the very same friends I have written about before in this column.
Yes, that’s right, the couple who we joined on their mini-moon (prehoneymoon) in which the husband suffered a heart attack. Then the following year there was the ill-fated barge holiday in France, once more in storms, in which an out of control barge, supposedly being steered by an Eastern European family, henceforth known as ‘Bouncing Checks’, careered into us whilst we were static in the lock, breaking off a piece of our bow.
Oh, and the over-excitable Klargester toilet meant that none of us got a good night’s sleep as it erupted every time someone attempted a sneaky midnight tinkle… and then decided to back up ALARMINGLY! We got a group discount therapy session after that incident.
Then… (oh yes, there’s more…) last year we took our first static caravan holiday together in deepest Cornwall, and on arrival the husband with the heart condition discovered he had left his medication at home.
We’re not talking a couple of packs of Nurofen and Paracetamol. We’re talking heavy-duty stuff that goes into double figures!
Now you might be thinking there is no joy to be got from the second kick of a mule, so whatever possessed us to consider a holiday with these same friends again?
Well, I like to be positive. Glass half-full and all that. Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place. Although I suspect Roy Sullivan, the United States park ranger in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, would have something to say about that. He was hit by lightning on seven occasions and lived to tell the tale.
Anyway, we were offered the caravan a few months ago and all said: “Yes, let’s do it, what could possibly go wrong this time?”
Well, I’ll tell you what. Whilst walking with Jack on Woodbury Common the week before the holiday, he was bitten on the back of a leg by an adder!
Now snake bites are an emergency. With treatment, most dogs recover, but some bites are very serious, cause severe illness and in some cases death.
I’m pleased to say Jack was kept calm and taken straight to the vets, anti-venom and pain-killers administered with a warning to keep an eye on the wound to make sure no infection started up.
Thankfully, being young and strong with boundless energy, he recovered quickly and the holiday was able to go ahead – all of us convinced that things would be plain sailing from then on.
Sailing being the operative word, as the rain and winds were so strong we more or less sailed down the A30 to the campsite!
There has been no mention of another holiday together yet. But, if there is, I’m telling you – there won’t be any flights involved.
You might be thinking there is no joy to be got from the second kick of a mule, so whatever possessed us to consider a holiday with these same friends again?