My travels...
Jeni Bell falls back in love with the short break
It’s easy to get swept up in ideas of far-flung adventures and epic overseas journeys. You know the ones: the holidays that aren’t actually holidays at all. The ones that take meticulous planning, with maps spread out over tables, notepads, guidebooks, a calculator for budgets and more than one empty bottle of red!
Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had our fair share of ‘big’ trips, and we’ve loved them all, especially the 12 months spent living on the road in the UK, or in the middle of nowhere exploring French vineyards and mountain ranges.
They’re wonderful but, after all the prepping, days without showers, miles on the road and a few hours’ worth of breakdowns, we’ve always felt like another holiday was needed just to recover from the whole thing.
It wasn’t until a recent-ish spontaneous weekend trip away that I remembered what it was that made me fall in love with campervanning in the first place. With our ’van parked under a sprawling shady tree on a picturesque campsite where countless songbirds trilled in the trees and a band of New Forest ponies ambled undisturbed across the pitches, I remembered the sheer joy of lazy weekends away. No packing, no planning, just finishing work on a Friday, pitching up on a familiar campsite and letting the everyday stresses melt away.
Luckily for us, we have some real beauty spots almost on our doorstep; with the New Forest only a 20-minute drive and the dramatic Dorset coastline a little less than an hour away, we really are spoilt for choice.
These weekends have been some of my favourite adventures. A day pitched at Kimmeridge Bay, in Dorset, being one of them. We’ve spent many a summer here snorkelling, exploring the magical (if somewhat chilly) underwater world before heading back to one of the small farm campsites in the rolling green hills.
In the winter the dramatic coastlines are a joy to explore, with well-marked trails along the coastal paths, abandoned villages, sort of secret beaches and plenty of sheep poop for the dog to anoint herself in.
The New Forest is another hideaway with campsites that allow us to tuck ourselves well away in the trees, so I can pretend to be a real woman of the woods – with facilities! There’s something truly satisfying about falling asleep under the canopy of ancient woodland, with the owls hooting away and forest creatures scurrying about. Although being woken up at the crack of dawn by a New Forest pony with an itch that can, apparently, only be scratched by the wing mirror of our elderly Talbot, was just a touch unnerving – but who says a short weekend away can’t be an adventure?
These local trips take the pressure off us. There’s no racing around, feeling bad if we don’t tick everything off the cultural checklist; a local trip allows us to do it all in our own time or just do nothing at all.
So, it doesn’t matter if the weather’s dismal, or we oversleep, or we just fancy a day lounging on the campsite watching the ponies in the woods, or listening to the waves crash on the coast (or, more likely, the rain lashing at the windows), because it’s just down the road, and there will be plenty of other weekends for us to wander back in the ’van. For me, these quick trips are a fundamental aspect of our campervan travel. A fully restorative experience with all the pleasure of being away in the ’van minus the stress of budgets, plans and packing, but still including the wine.