Bertha's blog is moving!

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A blog of surprises

 It’s been a couple of months since my last post. There have been no big adventures but plenty of little ones and Bertha has definitely not been neglected. I now have a diesel heater which is complete luxury and a shower. There will be a separate post about the shower but this blog entry has a few surprises.

Surprise 1 – The countdown has started to the next big adventure, 5 weeks to be precise.

When I came back in November I really struggled to know what to do next, and some of you will be under the impression that after I weighed up my priorities that I got a grown up, sensible, full time job. And you’d be right, I did. Sort of. I am lucky enough that my contract includes a block of time off each summer so that I can do a proper travelling trip, wander, have freedom, all the things I need to balance out the fact I now have to wear a suit, proper shoes and brush my hair most days. So maybe Surprise 1 isn’t a huge surprise, I think it was inevitable that I’d go away again before too long.

Surprise 2 – I’m turning my compass upside down and heading south.

The furthest south I went last year was Lands End but this year I’ve decided that I fancy waking up to blue sky every day, walking along beaches wearing fewer than 5 layers and not carrying full waterproofs wherever I go. There is also another reason for Surprise 2, and that’s Surprise 3….

Surprise 3 - I’m not going alone.

I recently met Rich and Ted, a van dweller and his dog who were planning a long trip to Europe this summer. They were planning on heading south to Spain and Portugal.

At the time I was going to be off to Scandinavia, I’d even bought the maps ready and although my heater wasn’t specifically for that trip, if I was going to get one it made sense to have it fitted before I went. It started off as a bit of a joke, Rich told me I wouldn’t be needing my heater in Portugal and I told him he wouldn’t be needing his sun canopy in Norway, but then the idea grew.

We talked a lot about the upsides and downsides of going together, would it be less adventurous? Would we wander less? Would it be more of an extended holiday rather than a travelling trip? We came to the conclusion that it might be all of those things, but that it would also be fun to have company, to share the things we see and to be honest, he offered to put my kayak on his roof-rack and I was sold by that idea.

We’re both going to be self reliant so that if we want to go and wander alone we can do but having spent some time together and read each other’s travel blogs to get an idea of how we travel I’m fairly sure that the Pilot and Bertha won’t ever be too far apart. 2 solo travellers in convoy for 3 months. What could possibly go wrong?!

The first of 2017

I realise Bertha’s Blog has been quiet for the last few months, mainly because there have been a lack of adventures to write about - don’t worry, that’s only temporary as there is another big one in the planning for this summer :-) I did go away to Dartmoor over new year but apart from that it’s just been the odd night here and there. So this weekend, 2.5 weeks into my new job I decided I wanted to get away and go somewhere new.

For Christmas I was given a book by my sister on Hygge – the Danish way to live happily which is a bit of a trend at the moment after the Danes were rated ones of the happiest nations in the world. Hygge, pronounced ‘hooga’ roughly translates as ‘cosiness’. It’s about friendship, home made goodies, nature, soft lighting, good citizenship – all things you can’t really measure but that make you feel warm and fuzzy. If something is Hygge it’s said to be Hyggelig. I’ve been to Denmark a couple of times and there’s something about it that I love, but it’s hard to say exactly what that is so the Hygge book has been an interesting read. One part of the book is about buying things not as soon as you want them or can afford them, but to wait until you have a good reason to associate your purchase with. The example the book gives is that the author had seen a chair they liked. They could afford it, but the Hygge way was to wait, so they waited until the day they got promoted at work and then went to get the chair, so that when they sat in it they would always associate it with the day they got promoted.

Now I’ve unpacked my kitchen stuff post-lodger, my rolling pin had disappeared (who knows, I didn’t ask..) It was on my mind that I needed to replace it at some point and whilst I was in Stow on the Wold on Saturday after a bike ride tour of the Cotswolds I saw rolling pins in a shop. I could have just gone to Tesco and bought one but each time I used it, it would just be a rolling pin from Tesco. As Hygge was on my mind I went into the shop and bought one. It’s just a rolling pin, hardly the biggest purchase I’ve ever made but every time I make pizza bases, bash biscuits or roll pastry I’ll think of my weekend away in the Cotswolds. A Hyggelig rolling pin, how Danish.