Welcome to 2020 – the year of the coronavirus pandemic.
Lest we forget, in March of this year the entire country was put into 'lockdown' – "Stay home, save lives, protect the NHS!", intoned Prime Minister Boris Johnson, shortly before he himself was rushed to intensive care with Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.
Against such a grim backdrop, it was against the odds that we would manage to fit in a trip this year at all. But by the summer, restrictions had eased enough for a trip to be feasible, and although face masks became an unwelcome but necessary feature of our trip, on the plus side the trains were a lot quieter than usual. I even managed to lean my bike against empty seats on the Circle Line carriage between Farringdon and Edgware Road – unheard of in normal times!
The surreality continued on the train from Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads – the announcements from the clearly exasperated train manager urged everyone to wear face masks at all times, "not just when we come through the carriage to check, please!", and he made a point of holding the train at Reading for ten minutes while they were "dealing with some social distancing issues". Poor chap.
Another effect of travelling in these unusual times was that all the campsites that I'd researched seemed to either still be closed, or dealing with backlogs of pre-bookings with no single-night stays allowed, so it was looking likely that we'd need to B&B most, if not all, nights. Better get the wallet out!