Back on the road again

According to Neil Gaiman, ‘Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath resistant, solar operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them.’  And I think he is right.

It feels that ink and paper is being replaced by e-Books, potentially saving thousands of trees, although sales have been falling.  This got me thinking, will this mean the end of the campsite book swap, a feature of most good sites?  These range from a dusty shelf in a corner of a room with half a dozen novels from the last century to a tidy book case bulging with a range of current novels.  How much longer will I be able to browse the rows of dog-eared paperbacks on the off-chance that something will take my eye?

To say I like reading is an understatement, I always have a novel on the go; with a book I am never bored, trains can be delayed, dentists can make me wait and I am entertained.  On trips away in our campervan I always have a few books tucked away in case I get through my current book; we might have a wet day and be van-bound or I might want to soak up some sunshine, either way I will want to also spend the time travelling in my head through the pages of a novel.

In 2009 my partner and I took a late gap year and travelled around southern Europe in our camper van.  One of my concerns was how to ensure I had enough reading material as I knew it was not possible to carry the 75 books I needed during the twelve months on the road in our small VW.  Think back to those days; e-Books had started to appear on the scene but were not so ubiquitous and paperbacks seemed the only way to go.  Using every space I could in the van, I found room for about 20 books of various sizes and genres, left parcels of others for our lovely son to mail out or bring in his suitcase when feasible and hoped to buy, borrow or swap the rest along the way.  With this simple plan I unwittingly opened myself up to interesting and fun experiences that I will always treasure.

Memorable swaps during our time away include the Fay Weldon I was persuaded to try by a Dutch gentleman who, in to his tidy ‘van, describing himself as a story teller with regular ‘gigs’ in different countries.  A motorcyclist gave me the fantastic Robert Harris’ Pompeii on an Austrian site not long after we had visited that beautiful area.  Another campsite swap re-kindled my interest in Graham Greene’s novels with a well thumbed copy of The Human Factor and an exciting Val McDermid crime novel set in Manchester and found on a well-stocked and English-owned camp site in southern France bought back memories of home.

My modus operandi was to wander over to an unsuspecting UK motorhome on a campsite with the handful of books I had to offer.  When the book swapping went well we would chat about books we had enjoyed for a while and I would leave with a couple of interesting novels to read.  However, these productive encounters were rare and I was astonished to find there is a non-reading community out there.  I remember one lovely couple we met in France who ransacked their caravan to find me a book to read and eventually unearthed an exceptionally tatty copy of Denis Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out that had not seen the light of day since around 1966; I didn’t want to offend such helpful people and so took the novel off their hands.

Books were also often a good starting point for wider conversations; we met a cyclist from the Netherlands who came over to chat because I was reading Geert Mak’s In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century.  Apparently this marvellous collection of travel and history writing is a best seller in the Netherlands and the evening ended up with us sharing a bottle of homemade schnapps (from another friendly camper) and putting the world to rights.  In Slovenia, I noticed the young receptionist at a camp site was reading an English novel; I was so impressed with his command of a second language and talked to him about English novels, giving him a couple of books I had finished with when we left.  Another lively conversation with a lovely couple in southern Spain who were living permanently in their RV, started when they put a pile of books out on their pitch with a sign saying help yourself.

When we reached Spain on our 12-month trip, the book swapping became much easier, as campsites which had plenty of ‘winter migrants’ from the UK would often have a shelf of books available to swap and I would be able to leave the novels I had read and take away something new to read.  These book swap shelves are generally a relaxed places on a camp site; I could spend as long as I wanted browsing the choices to find something to my taste.

Not so on one camp site in southern Spain that will remain nameless, as we may still be on their wanted list.  This site had taken the provision of reading material to another level.  They had a library room, full of books in English and many other European languages that was strictly run by a retired librarian from Scandinavia, who spent her winters on the site.  She used a computer to monitor the borrowing and returning of the extensive selection of books and relaxed swapping of books was forbidden.  This worked fine for those who were spending months on the site but didn’t work well for me as we didn’t intend to stay long enough to finish a novel.  I gave a false name and vehicle registration and we left the camp site with one stolen novel, although in my defence I did donate two books in exchange to their library.

Choosing to take an e-Book on our long-term trip might have meant I read the books I wanted to read but I would have missed the opportunity to interact with new people, try some authors I would never have considered and experience the unexpected.  Not to mention what would have happened when I spilt my coffee over my e-Book!

I have been writing travel articles about noticing the small things recently and so when I came across this quote from Dr Seuss it hit the right note.  As much as I love the mountains and the big wide skies and far-reaching views that walking in the mountains and fells provide, I do get as much enjoyment from those harder to see things and you are just as likely to find me searching the ground when I am walking, as well as admiring the view.

My eye sight has never been very good and I have worn specs all my life [apart from a few years as a teenager when I was too vain to wear them and missed a lot].  Consequently, bird watching isn’t a hobby I am very good at on my own; however, my hearing is still almost perfect.  Fortunately, Mr BOTRA has eagle eyes [but poor hearing] and so together we make a great bird watching team as we have the senses required to spot birds and animals [learning to recognise more bird calls beyond the easy ones is on my list of skills to learn when paid work ends].

Fortunately flowers don’t move as much as birds and animals and so I get a lot of pleasure from finding beautiful flowers wherever we travel.  I try to identify them, photograph them and occasionally very badly sketch them.  The process of identification forces me to stop and really look at the detail of the plant I am interested in; the colour and number of petals, the shape of the leaves and check for any fragrance or hairs.

I have looked at apps for identification of plants but find these wanting and continue to use a book to identify plants, although I am still looking for a good wild flower key for southern Europe.  I find sketches and diagrams easier to use for identification than photographs.  Any recommendations would be welcome!

‘The sanitary facilities will be closed between 11.00 and 12.00 for cleaning’ is a familiar sign to anyone who has used a club campsite in the UK and this can be very irritating.   Of course, I would be the first to complain if the toilets and showers were not in a spit-spot condition and [as a former Youth Hostel warden] I do understand how much easier the task of sanitising the conveniences is if there are no campers wandering in and out while you mop the floor.  But, I am on holiday and don’t want to get up at the crack of dawn; after a leisurely breakfast it can often be 11.00 when I am hoping to use the ladies one last time before setting off on a walk and confronting one of these signs on the door is maddening.

All I am asking for is a little consideration for the paying guests, who, let us remember, keep the campsite in business.  Good club sites will leave the disabled toilet open while they clean the main facilities and this is a welcome compromise; however, not all camp sites are run with this amount of thoughtfulness and I have stayed on at least one club site that has two sanitary blocks but will still close both for the full hour.

Away from club sites, there are many different approaches to how to get the toilets and showers clean after they have been used and abused by hot and sweaty campers.  One solution, of course, is to not bother carrying out any cleaning at all, but these are few and far between and are not camp sites we stay at for more than one night, or return to for another holiday.

A lovely site on the Gargano peninsular in Italy used an industrial size hose pipe to vigorously sluice out the showers and toilets once a day.  They did not close the facilities during this process, but you only used them at your own risk.

In Mediterranean countries, you also often see signs telling you that the facilities are closed between 04.00 and 05.00 and on one level this seems a good plan; the toilets can be cleaned while the campers are all fast asleep in their tents and campervans.  However, I always feel concerned for the cleaners who have to work such unsociable hours.  Presumably this works well in warmer climes as it enables the cleaning to take place before it gets too hot to care about polishing chrome and scrubbing tiles.

Another popular way for campsite owners to ensure their facilities are immaculate is to work around the campers, cleaning the sanitary blocks while they are in use.  This can work satisfactorily, so long as either the site is not busy or they opt to get the mop and bucket out during a quieter period.  One Polish campsite [charmingly called Camping 51] stands out for the impeccable state of its toilet and shower blocks, as the elderly female owner could be found cloth in one hand, bleach in the other at every hour of every day, dedicating her life to ensuring a germ-free environment.  Her constant presence somewhere in the sanitary blocks caused Mr BOTRA to take up joyful whistling during his ablutions, to be sure that she knew he was there and avoid any possible embarrassing encounters.

One of the many reasons touring campsites in our campervan is fun is that every site is unique and has its own way of doing things but we do sometimes have to ask why.  One beautiful campsite on Luneburg Heath in Northern Germany had spotless facilities that were open at all times, with one important exception; they closed and locked the dish-washing area at 20.00 each evening, not re-opening it until 07.00 the next day.   As we don’t eat our evening meal until around 19.30 or later on holiday [and we are not alone in this] the choice was to either stack up the dishes for the next morning or rush to start the washing up as soon as the last forkful had been eaten.  Not surprisingly, this often resulted in a very busy washing up area at 19.55 every evening, as everyone tried to beat the imposed curfew.

Restricted access with key pads and locks for the sanitary facilities is becoming more and more common at campsites in England.  These provide endless opportunities for irritating the camper; with so many pin numbers to remember, keeping in mind the random selection of numbers and letters for the toilets has no chance of sticking in my mind and forgetting to take the key on a trip to the shower is an entertaining game we play..

Limiting access to the toilets can be understandable on a site with a footpath running through it or one that is next to an attraction or park.  On other sites there is no excuse for keeping the toilets and showers under lock and key, I have stayed at sites with locked facilities where there is not even have a house within 500 metres and no passing pedestrians who might decide to spend a penny.

Some camp sites provide very specialist facilities and my favourite sign is one generally found on coastal and riverside sites in southern Europe, where they have a sink marked for fish washing only.   Although I’ve never witnessed any actual fish washing, I am grateful to a site for providing these specific facilities; no one wants to wash their laundry in a sink where gutting and boning of the days catch has recently occurred.

Finally, I am sure there are two camps regarding the provision of piped music in campsite facilities and I am generally in the pro-camp.  However, there are times when the melodies seem incongruous; I’m thinking now of a favourite camp site in Cortina in the peace of quiet of the Italian Dolomites which inexplicably played  pan pipe music from South America on a continuous loop.