It's all in the planning

Best Beloved and I need another road trip. We enjoy epic journeys. Route 66. Nashville. Singapore and Malaysia. But we aren't keen on flying anymore. The year we went to Singapore I think we spent 45 hours in the air and this tends to put a damper on things, unless you are flying first class of course!

So I came up with the idea of doing Land's End to John O'Groats, taking about four weeks to do it. A kind of Route 66 without the neon signs, kitschy Americana and miles and miles of open road and dust. We thought it would be nice to do this road trip in a motor home, leaving just after Easter and so I set about planning the three weeks, mapping out our route and deciding on stopping off points where there were good caravan sites and places of interest to visit.

I purchased a large laminated map of Great Britain, stuck it up on the wall in the music room and began to trace our journey. I created a spreadsheet called "UK Top to Toe" and on it was each day costed out in terms of petrol, meals, campsite fees and entrance to stately homes etc. I was a little staggered by the total at the bottom and began to wonder if it might not be cheaper to fly to America and do the Mississippi Top to Toe instead! But we were committed to holidaying in the UK, having decided that we would boycott America until Donald Trump stop banning our friends and relatives from visiting the US because of their connection to countries he does not have a vested interest in. (Interpret that as you please!)

By the 6th of January I had pretty much finished the planning stages and we set about selecting the motor home that would be our home from home. We found just what we wanted from a dealer not too far away and Best Beloved gave me the go ahead to book it. "You'd like to book a motor home? Certainly, what dates were you thinking of? April? 2018, I assume you mean? This year? I'm sorry the earliest we could do is September and I don't have 4 consecutive weeks available. I could do next February or March if that is any good." I tried another dealer down in Doncaster. Nothing. The one in Hull? Nothing. No-one near or far had availability until the autumn and very few could give us a full 4 weeks. I could feel my epic journey slipping away from me. What were we going to do?

Back to the drawing board where the spreadsheet had a new field added called hotels and lodgings. I began to look at where we might stay en route, not really wanting to visit any seedy hotels with bedbugs and damp sheets! (Not that there are such things in the UK, that's more a Route 66 memory.) Sadly the Land's End to John O'Groats trip had to be postponed as unfeasible, too expensive and clearly not for 2017.

But Best Beloved and I need a road trip so we are going on one, only it isn't so much a road trip as a visit to three counties in three weeks. And we have decided that this road trip is going to have a theme. We are going to look for the beauty in ordinary things. Some of you know that we have both re-awakened our love of painting and we both love to take photos so we are going to make this an art trip and try to see Britain through the eyes of an artist, looking for those things that stir a creative response in us. Feel free to join us on this journey. Henry has stayed behind to look after the house and water the garden. Although with our luck Britain will have the wettest spring in history! In which case you are going to see lots of photos of raindrops and rainbows!