Return to Base Camp One
“You can touch the steering wheel, but leave everything else alone!” I was sitting at the driver’s seat of Grandad’s Ford Thames minibus beside the big old green canvas tent in the forest clearing. Around us were a number of grazing ponies, something else I’d been instructed not to touch. “They’re friendly as long as you keep your distance, but if you get too close they might bite you.” All the best things seemed to be off limits, but as always Grandad knew best. He’d made the journey south from the Midlands to set up Base Camp One in advance of our arrival, before heading a few miles east to an unspecified location somewhere near Winchester, where Henrietta, our elderly Ford Cortina Estate had broken down on a hill outside what I can only describe as an enormous mansion. Dad had knocked on the door and asked to make a couple of phone calls, while we were ushered into the kitchen and fed on biscuits and orange squash by the kindly owner. A while later Grandad appeared in the familiar creamy white minibus and whisked us away to our beds for the night. A recovery truck came for Henrietta later on. We’d only come 130 miles on that August day in 1975, but it seemed to have taken us forever.
I hadn’t wanted to leave our small town on the Romney Marsh. I loved it there – the place held every memory I treasured. On that fateful day the car was packed to the rafters, five of us stuffed inside it amongst the mountain of possessions that evidently weren’t entrusted to the removal company. Dad never bothered learning to drive, so my poor exasperated mother had decided to take lessons instead. She was a very competent but equally nervous driver and withdrew from the road once more as soon as it were humanly possible. In fact I don’t believe she’s driven a car of any kind in more than thirty-five years now. My best friend Paul came to wave us goodbye on that foggy summer afternoon; even at the age of nine we knew it seemed unlikely we’d ever see each other again. Together we’d climbed trees, played football and cycled furiously around the big green rectangle known locally as The Rype. Together we’d tried smoking the butts of his Dad’s roll-ups from an overflowing ashtray when everyone was out and built a den in the woods that nobody else could find. We knew every corner of that small edge of the world place where it seemed the summers would never end.
Mum hadn’t wanted to leave either; it was Dad, born and raised in Devon who wanted to reconnect with his Westcountry roots and so after a number of interviews at various schools we were one day told we would be moving to Falmouth in the summer., where he'd secured a position as a teacher at the school I'd be attending myself. I only vaguely knew where Cornwall was. In fact I thought it was called “Cormall.” I really wasn’t keen on moving, but you don’t get to play a part in the decision making when you’re nine. Everything was about to change forever.
And so we found ourselves here at Base Camp One in the New Forest at the start of a zigzag journey west that took two weeks to complete. From here we went at very short notice to Base Camp Two; home to an apparently horrified great aunt in nearby Romsey, from where the other grandparents took over. My grandmother arrived from Barnstaple (because Dad’s father had also never bothered with the business of getting behind the wheel), at which point there was very probably a showdown with Great Aunt Maud that went over my head, before we were whisked away to Base Camp Three, namely North Devon in convoy with Henrietta, who had now been restored by a local garage to her former coughing wheezing self. I believe we spent a week there – one morning in the bathroom I sang “Happy Birthday” to my nonplussed five year old brother, but it seemed everyone else had neglected to tell him what day it was.
From North Devon we went of course to Base Camp Four in South Devon. Obvious eh? Bet you thought we were going to finally head over the border to the new home didn’t you? Not quite yet – we had to go to Dartmoor to see our Great Grandmother first. More of that in another story to follow. But finally, after a couple of nights at the edge of the moor we crept over the Tamar and slowly drove the remaining sixty-five miles to our new home in this mysterious foreign land. Forty-seven years later, I’m getting used to it, although I’m still regarded as an outsider by my in laws, and strangers often seem to think I’m just down from London for the week. Or sometimes they ask if I’m from Australia. When I lived in Falmouth, there were plenty of outsiders like me who’d come from elsewhere, but in Redruth, pretty much everyone is as Cornish as the tin mines, Skinner's Ales and Barnecutt’s pasties.
Ali had never been to the New Forest, but suggested it when we were wondering where next to go in the van. And that’s the great thing about having a campervan – it takes you to places you might otherwise ignore, stopping along the way for the odd night here and there in our own little world of base camps. That alone breaks the longer journey up and makes it interesting. Perhaps after all my parents were pioneers of the slow road. “B Road Britain with Brenda” has a nice ring to it; I’d better find a publisher quickly.
And so last week I returned to Base Camp One for the first time since that summer day when I was a small boy sitting at the wheel of my Grandad’s minibus, being told to leave the levers and buttons alone. This time I was driving Brenda, our own home on wheels, with all of the levers and buttons under my command and parking at the edge of a clearing on a camping ground, where we watched the ponies come to graze quietly each morning. It brought those memories of an unusual adventure flooding back. The red trim inside the lovely Ford Thames camper that he’d bought brand new before I was even born. Moths careering into paraffin lamps over and over again and learning nothing from the experience. The reassuring hiss of the Trangia kettle boiling on the camp stove; the spitting and popping of the sausages in the pan. Strong sugary tea in tin mugs that were too hot to hold. That enormous old green canvas tent that they’d pitched at the sides of lochs in the Scottish Highlands when my mother was a child, and those horrible camp beds with the sprung legs that would never go into their slots without a fight. Putting the first leg in was simple, but the second required brute force almost completely beyond the capabilities of small boys. I dreaded nothing more than trying to put those beds together. They were beds with a bad attitude.
It struck me then that my parents, both of whom are rapidly approaching eighty were the same age then that my own children are now. To my older eyes they seemed so young and full of plans for the future. Where did all of those years go? How on earth did that small boy arrive so quickly in the second half of his fifties? Blink and another ten years will fly by in an instant. If that’s not a reminder to enjoy the journey and make lots of base camps as we go, then I’m not sure what is. Time to get the atlas out and work out the next plan for a meandering voyage from A to Z via most of the rest of the alphabet in a big red van that was built for the slow lane.
Return to Base Camp One
“You can touch the steering wheel, but leave everything else alone!” I was sitting at the driver’s seat of Grandad’s Ford Thames minibus beside the big old green canvas tent in the forest clearing. Around us were a number of grazing ponies, something else I’d been instructed not to touch. “They’re friendly as long as you keep your distance, but if you get too close they might bite you.” All the best things seemed to be off limits, but as always Grandad knew best. He’d made the journey south from the Midlands to set up Base Camp One in advance of our arrival, before heading a few miles east to an unspecified location somewhere near Winchester, where Henrietta, our elderly Ford Cortina Estate had broken down on a hill outside what I can only describe as an enormous mansion. Dad had knocked on the door and asked to make a couple of phone calls, while we were ushered into the kitchen and fed on biscuits and orange squash by the kindly owner. A while later Grandad appeared in the familiar creamy white minibus and whisked us away to our beds for the night. A recovery truck came for Henrietta later on. We’d only come 130 miles on that August day in 1975, but it seemed to have taken us forever.
I hadn’t wanted to leave our small town on the Romney Marsh. I loved it there – the place held every memory I treasured. On that fateful day the car was packed to the rafters, five of us stuffed inside it amongst the mountain of possessions that evidently weren’t entrusted to the removal company. Dad never bothered learning to drive, so my poor exasperated mother had decided to take lessons instead. She was a very competent but equally nervous driver and withdrew from the road once more as soon as it were humanly possible. In fact I don’t believe she’s driven a car of any kind in more than thirty-five years now. My best friend Paul came to wave us goodbye on that foggy summer afternoon; even at the age of nine we knew it seemed unlikely we’d ever see each other again. Together we’d climbed trees, played football and cycled furiously around the big green rectangle known locally as The Rype. Together we’d tried smoking the butts of his Dad’s roll-ups from an overflowing ashtray when everyone was out and built a den in the woods that nobody else could find. We knew every corner of that small edge of the world place where it seemed the summers would never end.
Mum hadn’t wanted to leave either; it was Dad, born and raised in Devon who wanted to reconnect with his Westcountry roots and so after a number of interviews at various schools we were one day told we would be moving to Falmouth in the summer., where he'd secured a position as a teacher at the school I'd be attending myself. I only vaguely knew where Cornwall was. In fact I thought it was called “Cormall.” I really wasn’t keen on moving, but you don’t get to play a part in the decision making when you’re nine. Everything was about to change forever.
And so we found ourselves here at Base Camp One in the New Forest at the start of a zigzag journey west that took two weeks to complete. From here we went at very short notice to Base Camp Two; home to an apparently horrified great aunt in nearby Romsey, from where the other grandparents took over. My grandmother arrived from Barnstaple (because Dad’s father had also never bothered with the business of getting behind the wheel), at which point there was very probably a showdown with Great Aunt Maud that went over my head, before we were whisked away to Base Camp Three, namely North Devon in convoy with Henrietta, who had now been restored by a local garage to her former coughing wheezing self. I believe we spent a week there – one morning in the bathroom I sang “Happy Birthday” to my nonplussed five year old brother, but it seemed everyone else had neglected to tell him what day it was.
From North Devon we went of course to Base Camp Four in South Devon. Obvious eh? Bet you thought we were going to finally head over the border to the new home didn’t you? Not quite yet – we had to go to Dartmoor to see our Great Grandmother first. More of that in another story to follow. But finally, after a couple of nights at the edge of the moor we crept over the Tamar and slowly drove the remaining sixty-five miles to our new home in this mysterious foreign land. Forty-seven years later, I’m getting used to it, although I’m still regarded as an outsider by my in laws, and strangers often seem to think I’m just down from London for the week. Or sometimes they ask if I’m from Australia. When I lived in Falmouth, there were plenty of outsiders like me who’d come from elsewhere, but in Redruth, pretty much everyone is as Cornish as the tin mines, Skinner's Ales and Barnecutt’s pasties.
Ali had never been to the New Forest, but suggested it when we were wondering where next to go in the van. And that’s the great thing about having a campervan – it takes you to places you might otherwise ignore, stopping along the way for the odd night here and there in our own little world of base camps. That alone breaks the longer journey up and makes it interesting. Perhaps after all my parents were pioneers of the slow road. “B Road Britain with Brenda” has a nice ring to it; I’d better find a publisher quickly.
And so last week I returned to Base Camp One for the first time since that summer day when I was a small boy sitting at the wheel of my Grandad’s minibus, being told to leave the levers and buttons alone. This time I was driving Brenda, our own home on wheels, with all of the levers and buttons under my command and parking at the edge of a clearing on a camping ground, where we watched the ponies come to graze quietly each morning. It brought those memories of an unusual adventure flooding back. The red trim inside the lovely Ford Thames camper that he’d bought brand new before I was even born. Moths careering into paraffin lamps over and over again and learning nothing from the experience. The reassuring hiss of the Trangia kettle boiling on the camp stove; the spitting and popping of the sausages in the pan. Strong sugary tea in tin mugs that were too hot to hold. That enormous old green canvas tent that they’d pitched at the sides of lochs in the Scottish Highlands when my mother was a child, and those horrible camp beds with the sprung legs that would never go into their slots without a fight. Putting the first leg in was simple, but the second required brute force almost completely beyond the capabilities of small boys. I dreaded nothing more than trying to put those beds together. They were beds with a bad attitude.
It struck me then that my parents, both of whom are rapidly approaching eighty were the same age then that my own children are now. To my older eyes they seemed so young and full of plans for the future. Where did all of those years go? How on earth did that small boy arrive so quickly in the second half of his fifties? Blink and another ten years will fly by in an instant. If that’s not a reminder to enjoy the journey and make lots of base camps as we go, then I’m not sure what is. Time to get the atlas out and work out the next plan for a meandering voyage from A to Z via most of the rest of the alphabet in a big red van that was built for the slow lane.