Friends and Neighbours

[mbenne]

Just returned from a two week holiday and tested positive for covid so I'm in isolation. No idea if its just the general heat or the effects of covid but I woke at 4am feeling very hot so I watered the garden before sitting down to check emails and found link to Brightonbelle
TEABUS - FIRST TRIP: NORTH NORFOLK. Really enjoyed the post and it made me want to be up and about asap. I also realised just how much I've missed being in the van this year. But this has been an exceptional year for my wife and I, accompanying our two sons on deferred holidays and taking our Grandson away too. Since Christmas we've been away, on and off, for almost 10 weeks and have done no more than a few days in the Cali. We've already declined an invite to stay with our Daughter in Law's family in Hungary and struggling to fit in a trip to Wallingford to celebrate a fellow camper's first week of retirement - there's no way we can turn this trip down since we were instrumental in convincing him to buy his first van last year lol.

All this made me realise how lucky we are to have good friends and neighbours. Without them we'd have returned home to find a porch full of unopened mail, pizza delivery fliers, charity bags, dead house plants and overgrown lawns! Don't get me wrong, we have reciprocal arrangements and we are due to do a 3 week stint in August but in spite of this I feel that they've already done their fare share!

How does everyone else cope with domestic arrangements when on extended holiday trips?

 

[Jay586]

I keep a few hens & was going to not have any more, so we could go away but have missed having a decent egg, so got some more. So back to a dayvan idea for me...

 

[Brightonbelle]

Thanks Mbenne! That’s made my day. Glad to know that trip reports are worth writing. I’ve written them for years on TA (which I’ll continue to do for non Cali trips). Have decided to do Cali trips on here and non Cali trips it’ll depend on how long and where to. I’ll probably just experiment and see what works. I use a different avatar on TA - teabus (now the name of our Cali - it’s a long story !).
We’re meant to be going away tomorrow for the rest of the week and I’ve just booked North Norfolk for five days in August (back to lovely Burnham Deepdale). I’ll do a blog of that because it’ll be my first trip coping in the Cali without my husband.

I know exactly what you mean about home ‘stuff’. We don’t have any pets and being new to the area can’t call on any favours. Watering the garden bothers me the most. The poor plants were parched after our only six day trip away! I think we may buy a watering system. The lawn is taken care of - way pay someone to do it as is window cleaning. Cleaning the house and Cali we do between us. It’s easy as it’s a brand new house. Even so it all seems to take ages when we’ve been away!