We left home about 9.30am, with the journey all mapped out ahead of us: lunch stop, pee stops, and stretching-of-legs stops. It was a seven hour trip so we were never going to be able to account for all eventualities, but apart from a motorway accident involving three cars and a pig… we managed to make good time.

The Girlfriend© drives as well, which makes travelling so much simpler, because we just swapped seats every couple of hours. It helps to alleviate the required concentration of being behind the wheel, and also keeps the tiredness at bay.

The caravan was The Girlfriend’s© idea, and so far it’s turned out to be a good one, but I probably would never have thought of it. Maybe I’m too used to my first world comforts because I would have had us booked into a hotel or – at the very least – an overpriced guest house.

I have only stayed in a caravan once, and that was well over thirty years ago. Things have certainly changed since then. This one has separate bedrooms, a gas oven, and even a couple of plumbed-in toilets. There’s wi-fi as well, but that’s one modern convenience I could have lived without for a few days.

Still, I’m able to upload this from the middle of a field in central England because of it, so there is that.