Holiday Prep

So. We’re off on our holiday soon. It’s fair to say that this trip is a bit of a departure for us – pretty much all our holidays have been spent staying with family, which means very little planning other than booking flights. Our upcoming trip has been months in the planning which makes it sound as though we’re trekking overland across a continent rather than taking a few trains and a ferry but then again, I am a bit of an overthinker…

Phew. I _think_ I've now finally booked and printed all our reservation (train, bus, ferry) for our holiday next week. Thanks to @seatsixtyone for the valuable information on how to get from Scotland to Naples by (mostly) train

— Sally Hinchcliffe (@sallyhinch) April 7, 2024

The whole genesis of the holiday came when I was reading something or other about Pompeii and thinking about how I’d wanted to see it as a child – and then realising I actually still did want to see it as an adult and what is more, it is still there to be seen. I also knew I didn’t want to fly there – love miles to the US are one thing, but I’ve sworn off short haul flights – so it was off to the Man in Seat 61 to find out whether getting there by train would be in any way practical.

Even with his sage advice, this has proved a bit of an endeavour – indeed the whole holiday is starting to feel more like a work project than anything else. It’s not just the travel side of things, but it does seem if you want to go and see a specific thing these days you really need to do your homework first. And I’ve also been speed reading Mary Beard’s book on Pompeii so I know more about what we’re looking at when we get there. Unfortunately this plus work pressures up until last week have meant that I’ve not had time to learn any Italian (I’m reminded of the time we went to Northern Greece to help take part in a warbler survey and I’d slightly overstated my ability to identify migrant birds by ear, so we spent the run up to the trip learning warbler calls instead of any Greek) so I’m hoping that a working knowledge of French and a bit of Spanish will be enough to get by.

Anyway, as of now – with a couple of days to go before the grand depart – I’m finally starting to feel I can tentatively look forward to the holiday. Every ticket that needs to be booked is booked, the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle being our seat reservations on the Deutsche Bahn train to Bologna, every ‘paperless’ reservation printed out (you can trust your phone battery to be alive and display the relevant ticket at the crucial moment if you want to). And the garden, crucially, is in safe hands, or rather paws

Looks like the garden will be in good hands… pic.twitter.com/5a4PJfcq6y

— Sally Hinchcliffe (@sallyhinch) April 5, 2024

Meanwhile, if you’d like a weekend away in lovely Dumfries and Galloway, with minimal planning and maximum amounts of relaxed cycling during the late May Bank Holiday weekend (often the time of year when we have our ‘summer’) can I suggest you get yourself booked onto the KM Rally? Once run by the wiry old boys (and a few gals) in lycra of the local CTC group, it’s been handed over to a local village trust to take it forward. I’ve been helping out planning the routes, including a special family-friendly edition for those with kids or who just want short rides, and it’s shaping up to be a great deal of fun. There will be camping in the local church field, meals (and packed lunches) provided, and miles and miles of mostly empty albeit very potholed roads. There’s even a brand new cycle path to enjoy.

Something to look forward to on my return.