Thank you for joining us again, and we hope that you and those you love have survived the pandemic unharmed.

For this trip we will be staying in the UK, touring parts of Yorkshire & Northumberland, close to the lands of flat caps and whippets. It would have been lovely if we could have been going to southern France, or the Dordogne area, but like everybody else we have to adapt to the situation as it unfolds. So no European mainland for us until we sail down to Spain at the end of August for couple of months (fingers crossed).

Motorhoming is very different here in the UK as there are no free dedicated overnight camping areas, and as 'wild camping' is positively discouraged, I have had to book the whole month-long trip in advance which I do object to, as it removes all the flexibility which is such an important part of the lifestyle. Deposits or full payments have had to be made to the campsites we will visit along the way as well as bookings made at the pubs in the ‘Britstop’ scheme that we shall stay at. The pubs are a much more flexible affair, but I wanted to make sure we were booked in at our planned destinations as they do have limited numbers of motorhome spaces allocated within their car parks.

Lots of things have been in the news since our last little trip back in September, many of them too depressing to mention really. Brexit was a hot one of course, and the fallout from it still grinds on.

Thanks to Dominic Cummings who persuaded Boris the Clown that the Nation Health Executive were too incompetent to deliver the vaccine programme, and what was needed was a taskforce of 200 business people and specialists who know what they're doing to do the job. Thus the governments always-too-slow-off-the-mark covid dithering became a great success and our vaccine programme is achieving terrific results, no thanks to certain EU states who continue to undermine everything we try to do.

Poor old Prince Philip failed to reach his 100^th birthday, but does at least leave a legacy of a lifetime of loyal service to our queen and the nation. It’s a shame that kind of loyalty hasn’t rubbed off on his grandson, the Ginger Whinger, and his wife Megan Me-Me. What a pair of irritating, selfish, self-centred fruitcakes they are. Every time he speaks I'm thankful he was only ever ‘the spare’.

Locally, Ely hosted this years annual University Boat Race on the River Great Ouse due to the coronavirus risks if it were to be held on the River Thames in London. The Chef and I walked down to he start line and along the river for a spell just to be nosey before everything was locked down at 12:00 to get ready for the race.

Our local football team, Cambridge United have just been successful in going up to Football League One, having for many years in the recent past languished in the Conference League which is very easy to slip in to but extreemly difficult to get out of. The team's physiotherapist, Hans Kneesundbach, said it's the best he's seen the team play for a long time.

Finally we have the coronavirus sweeping through India and causing many deaths, so many in fact that they’re struggling to cremate the bodies. At least the Environmentalists haven’t been tactless enough to complain that the smoke from the funeral pyres is damaging the ozone layer.

Over 20,000 Indians, who are now UK citizens, scrambled back to the UK perhaps having just managed to arrange a quick marriage of their daughters to their local cousins before the ban on flights from India came in to force. Not surprisingly many of them were infected with the Indian variant, and many didn't quarantine at home (presumably having also travelled from the airport on public transport) once they arrived back, so now our nation's exit progress from lockdown could be jeopardised.

Meanwhile I’ve just bought myself a new compact camera, and decommissioned the SLR camera as it's getting hard work dragging that around in hot weather.

As for our personal safety I have created a small plastic storage box full of G101, face masks, sanitizer, gloves and a UV lamp for sterilising. The box is sealed and will sit in the rear garage locker of the vehicle for the foreseeable future. As we’re spending the next month in the north of England where many Asian immigrants settled, we'll need to be vigilant, maybe even resorting to playing ‘Dodge the Turban’.

Off we go then ................................................................