I got home late last Friday, spent the weekend trying to adjust to not being on holiday, then on Monday started my second year of university.
The trip was wonderful; everything since, less so.
Anyway, here's how the trip went. I will be adding to this a bit at a time until it's complete.
(I was away three weeks so it might take a while.)
Day One: Cardiff to Coventry
Having devoted the best part of the day to carefully cleaning, loading and organising the van, mainly to steady my nerves, steel my resolve, and outright procrastinate, I finally left Cardiff at 4.30pm.
Arriving at Meriden just after sunset, it was still light enough to observe the Friday night queue at the chip shop that overlooks the village green. From my covid-cautious Welsh perspective, the queue looked very unmasked and socially undistanced, so I stayed well clear.
Took a snap of the monument that marks the erstwhile centre of England to declare the holiday open, and got out of there.
Entering Coventry, I parked in a quiet street near a big Morrisons, ate a sandwich in lieu of dinner, and went to bed. Only to be woken some time later by one of a group of loud drunk blokes punching - yes, punching - the van (the Welsh flag sticker on the back, perhaps?) as they walked past. Welcome to England.
Day Two: Coventry
For me, stealth camping in an unconverted Ford Transit involves a lot of worry about not only big things like surviving the night without being attacked, vandalised or burgled, but everyday things like where and when I might find the next lavatory, which is why I'm grateful for the ubiquity of large supermarkets and McDonalds. 'Last wee' and 'first wee' take up a lot of my room in my mind, despite having emergency measures stowed in the van.
But breakfast (£2 for a takeaway coffee and a bacon roll) and a WC are a mere dual carriageway-crossing away at Morrisons this morning. Ah, the luxury. After a quick rub down with wet wipes and a splash of water back at base, I'm ready to explore. A road sign says I'm only a mile away from the city centre, so I decide to walk, and am immediately soaked in a sudden downpour. A fellow pedestrian gives me a grin and makes a wry comment as she struggles to get her umbrella out of her bag. Strangers talk to each other here! I like Coventry already.
By chance, I penetrate the ring road just where a carnival procession is starting. I follow the parade into the city centre. There's a lovely vibe, and I enjoy the music, the smiles, the extravagant costumes. The event's also handy for navigation purposes, because as usual I've got no map and haven't a clue where anything is. But when everything's enclosed by a 2.25 mile long ring road, you can't get that lost, can you?
Apart from the drunk bloke punching the van, and the eyewatering town planning and architecture, first impressions of Coventry are great!
I'm deposited very close to the
bombed out cathedral, so go and investigate. It's a profoundly moving sight, full of resonance and meaning. I stay there a while, drinking it all in.
The replacement cathedral is beautiful too and I can't resist a thorough nose around. But this isn't why I'm here. I'm here for the 2-Tone. I'd already been excited to see the happy smiling faces of The Specials peering out at me from the foyer of a cinema as I walked into town. More Specials please!
The Herbert Art Gallery & Museum turns out to be just around the corner from the cathedral. At the front desk I ask where the 2-Tone exhibition is.
"Have you booked?" comes the heart-sinking reply.
"Last time I checked your website you didn't need to," I quaver.
The rules have changed, she tells me. Covid and all that.
I explain I've come all the way from Cardiff and don't have a smartphone so can't get online to make a booking. She pencils me in for the next available session, in an hour and a half. Praise be for lovely museum staff! To pass the time, I wander round the permanent exhibition about Coventry on the ground floor (did you know Coventry has a sword?), then get drawn in to an intriguing temporary exhibition upstairs about how artists interpret the natural world, but only manage to see a tiny bit of that before it's 2-Tone o'clock.
I stay in that wonderful black and white space until closing time. The exhibition is fascinating, rejuvenating, inspiring. The music is brilliant. And there's nothing like being judged by Terry Hall when you're trying to study the contents of a display case.
After that, my usually rock-solid sense of direction deserts me and I wander round in the rain trying and failing to find the Canal Basin, where the famous Chalkie Davies album cover shots took place. Eventually I give up and go 'home', back to the van, which I move to a better, less punchy location. I like Coventry so much I'm going to stay another night.
Day Three: Coventry to Quorn
The first thing I discover this bright and sunny Sunday morning is that the route to the Canal Basin is right next to the amazing mural of rain I'd been gazing at in the rain the previous night. If I'd turned my head to the right I would've seen the words 'Canal Basin' written in huge letters on a bridge over the ring road.
The Basin's crawling with a curious mixture of camouflage and colour when I get there - I've stumbled upon a Commonwealth Cultural Mela & Rakshabadhan. A pleasant anticipatory buzz is in the air and there are dignitaries, beauty queens and military personnel milling around.
I wander across to inspect some narrowboats and see what they're selling - they've got arts and crafts displayed along their sides. Utterly unable to resist the wares of Fern Floating Fine Art, I buy two prints. They're beautiful, look:
(The magpie is in honour of my balcony buddies back home.)
I stretch my legs along the tow path, enjoying the peace and quiet, then circle back on the other bank, pausing at the Basin to watch some bhangra, which always cheers me up. Got to say, I'm still loving Coventry.
Back at the Herbert, I do the nature exhibition properly. There's a lot to love, not least Lisa Reihana's spellbinding In Pursuit of Venus, a mechanical robo-pigeon, a big pink print of the lichen patterns on a stone, and an unsettling video of confused wild animals wondering why they've been let loose in motel rooms.
Having comprehensively done the Herbert, I'm now free to strike out to find my final Coventry must-see, the Music Museum. It's not in the city centre but I studied Google Maps before I left home and am pretty sure I can locate it. The rough sketch I drew of the route is in the van somewhere - the museum's off the ring road to the east. Easy.
I walk back to the van through the city's concrete heart, to see the Lady Godiva statue, and to bid farewell to this place I've grown fond of, despite its aesthetic challenges.
Hours, maybe days, later, I have driven round the ring road one hundred thousand times and tried every possible exit to the east and the north east and the south too, some more than once. I've crossed motorways, driven past the airport, accidentally detoured through a bus depot, found a Roman villa in a rural location, watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. But still no Music Museum. Where is it???
Eventually it occurs to me to look at the map I drew. The first thing I notice is where I've written down that the museum only opens Thursday to Saturday. I don't care, I'm determined to find it anyway even if it is late Sunday afternoon. With the piece of paper balanced on my lap, I hit the ring road once more time.
Now it's simple - you go up the road you thought it was on then turn left at the green bit, dummy! I drive past the museum, triumphant yet disappointed, and keep going, heading for Leicester.
There, I find the ring road situation even more horrifying than the one in Coventry. After a couple of unhappy circuits, I drive into the city centre purely by chance, see that I am never going to get a parking space, and decide to implement Plan B - go a little bit further out, find a free parking bit, and walk or bike back in.
Sadly, Leicester is conspiring against me tonight. Compared to Coventry, it's vast. It feels like the busiest place on earth. It's also getting late, an empty stomach is making me fraught, and I can't find anywhere to park that feels ok. I give up on my idea of saying hello to Richard III, grab a dirty McDonalds, and drive on.
I head for Quorn, purely for its name.
Day Four: Quorn to Retford
If you're wondering where Quorn is, there's a pretty comprehensive explanation here.
My rule of thumb for stealth camping in residential areas is to never park too close to houses - always by a wall or a hedge, never a window; avoid anywhere noisy/bright/busy or dark/deserted; and try to blend in by parking near other vans if possible. Then in the morning, just step out and bluff it like you've just rolled up, if there's anyone around to notice. I've picked a street next to the garden of a near-empty pub, and get a good night's sleep.
On the way to the public conveniences this morning I discover that the village has a beautiful park, which I'd love to explore. But Quorn feels weirdly hostile. The notices in the short stay car park do not exactly invite you to linger, threatening you with fines if you stay too long but omitting to tell you how long you can stay for. They seem inordinately proud of their gaol. And somebody thought it was a good idea to re-install the village stocks.
Furthermore the toilets turn out to be coin-entry (an outrage), and the staff in the cafe where I grab a takeaway coffee are stony-faced, possibly because it's really busy and I'm the only takeaway customer who's bothered to put a mask on in this small, cramped space.
The combined effect is very GO AWAY.
I go away.
Matlock Bath is sort of on the way to where I'm going (viz, vaguely north) so I decide to head there next. I have happy memories of it from childhood involving
illuminations,
The Best Disco Album In The World, and an
arctic fox.
It's a stinking hot morning and I'm feeling grimy so when I get there I park up, draw the curtains and have an all-over sponge bath. I learned how to do this without dousing the van interior on my travels in Europe; it's a useful skill. Fragrant and refreshed, I step out into a glorious afternoon. Unfortunately the lovely day means Matlock Bath is packed. I duck and dodge along the narrow pavements, trying to avoid the unmasked hordes.
As I reach the Jubilee Bridge, one of my walking sandals breaks. I shuffle back to the van and swap them for flip flops. Now my visit to Matlock Bath involves sightseeing AND shopping for shoes. But the guy in the hippie trousers shop tells me nobody sells shoes here, just tourist stuff - he used to, but people kept nicking them and leaving behind odd-sized pairs, so he stopped.
In flip flops - luckily, they are off-road flip flops - I traverse the cliff path and find glorious views at the top.
Now the quest is on to buy a new pair of walking sandals. I drive to East Midlands Designer Outlet (which rates a whopping 4 out of 5 on TripAdvisor - for context, Vatican City rates 4.5) but no luck there, every pair my size is either horrible or expensive. I treat myself to dinner in the Pizza Express because I'm on holiday, then start thinking about where to stop for the night.
Ollerton looks convenient on the map, but on arrival I keep going because intuition tells me a big fat no*. I roll into Retford just as it's getting dark and find a good spot in a secluded, leafy, non-residential side road close to the town centre where a few other vans have been left for the night.
After settling in I discover it's a shortcut for boy racers and furthermore I have the distinct feeling I've parked somewhere haunted. It feels so creepy I half expect to hear the howling of wolves and zombies clawing at the windows.
It's a long night.
* I haven't been able to stop thinking about Ollerton since the day I drove through it and I don't know
why.
Day Five: Retford to Richmond
I avoid motorways like the plague, preferring to cruise at a dignified 50mph, on B-roads where possible, to take in the sights and avail myself of interesting detours as I find them.
Which is how I end up wandering around a town called Thorne. On my way through, I see there is an excellent charity shop and a free public toilet, so I have to stop.
(Weasel's No.1 rule of stealth camping is never walk past an available toilet. Weasel's No.2 rule is same but charity shops).
Further exploration of Thorne reveals a pleasant, largely unspoiled town centre, a park with ducklings and intriguing graffiti on a picnic table, a canal, a lovely old church, and a walk-in Covid testing centre where the security guy on the door greets an attendee he knows with a hearty handshake.
As with every place I go, I weigh up whether or not I'd live here; Thorne gets a cautious thumbs up.
Obviously I don't have satnav (I don't even have a smartphone) so I am navigating this trip with a 2016 AA Road Atlas of Great Britain and Ireland. This section of the journey is tricky, as where I'm heading today skips across several non-consecutive pages and it's a very big book to wrangle while driving.
Trying to remember the numbers of B-roads and the names of towns en route that may or may not be on road signs further along is fraught, and it's easier to surrender to happenstance. 'Vaguely north west' will do.
A good decision, because otherwise I would not get to appreciate this amazing roadside artwork. It's probably a Goldsworthy:
And I get to make my inaugural visit Boston Spa, where someone leaves a pass-agg note on my windscreen for parking outside their house, the charity shops are uptight, and the woman in the public toilet cubicle before me thought it was a good place to smoke a cigarette.
Even though the lady in the supermarket deli is lovely when I go to buy lunch, sorry, Boston Spa, it's a thumbs down from me.
Fair play, I say, it's best to keep the riff raff out.
I set off on foot to find the temple, then enjoy a pleasant hour or so getting lost in the woods that surround it:
The views across the dales are stunning and I want to stay here forever. But I can't - I'm not rich - and so instead I sit in a field and commune with some sheep for a while, soaking up the sun and the silence.
It's blissful. So blissful I even get my notebook out and try some sketching:
Tearing myself away at last, I drive back into Masham and join the extremely long queue at the chip shop in the exquisite village square and dine al fresco on the steps of the war memorial, making the most of the sun before it dips below the horizon:
I'd love to stay here tonight - it's so pretty - but something compels me to keep moving, so I follow the road north. The light is softly fading into a pastel sunset, there are forever views across rolling hills. It might just be an excess of unfamiliar vitamin D but I feel so, so happy.
Rolling into Richmond, I spot a long stay car park that looks good to overnight in. I tuck the van into a quiet corner, then go and have a quick look on foot at the town centre.
I find a perfect old cobbled market square, and a castle. How come Yorkshire is so beautiful? I need to have a proper look round in the morning.
The sunset is perfect, and I sleep like a baby in the thick black silence that follows.
