Packing and going
Going on a big adventure is a little bit like doing DIY. All you really want is the wall painted a new colour, but you know there’s a whole load of preparation you have to do first. Packing up the house was that prep work that made me wonder if the whole job was worth doing after all. Why do we have so much crap? It’s not even like we had to clear out the whole house, just a few cupboards upstairs.
But it got done, bags appeared in the living room ready to pack into the car. Bags of shoes, bags of clothes, bags of kids’ games, more bags of clothes, an electric piano, laptops, a box of books, a bag of waterproofs. Four people for five months comes to a lot of stuff. Especially when I seem to think I’m going to metamorphosise while I’m away into someone who dresses in clothes other than jeans and a T-shirt. I’ve packed dresses that I haven’t worn in five years, but then, I tell myself, I don’t know what the next few months have in store, I might need them. If they don’t get worn, I promise myself, they won’t come home.
The bags fitted in the car, which was a start. A better start than leaving London which took three goes. First we had to turn back to retrieve some essential component from the mess of black boxes and wires under the telly that Steve had left plugged in. Then we were off again, only to get a text to say Joel had left his bunny at the friends’ house he’d stayed at the night before. Spain without bunny was not an option. So we turned back again. And then we were off.
Not to Spain quite yet. First there was a family Easter at my parents with walks in the rain and friends’ visiting to say goodbye. It is the goodbyes that make this adventure feel like a bigger deal. We’ll be back in five months, but until then contact with friends will be through small screens, rather than belly laughs in pubs or snatched moments at the school gates.
Holly is feeling this the most. It could be her acute eight-year-old sense for melodrama but she is understandably nervous about going to a school where she knows no-one and doesn’t speak the language. I hear her. She now has her own email so she can stay in touch with friends back home. The emoji overload has begun.
And so we’re off. The 24-hour boat trip from Portsmouth to Bilbao is a mix of excitement, large swells and lying in bed wondering about muster stations and whether six lifeboats really is enough for a boat this big. I’d like to put my heightened anxiety down to Holly having just studied the Titanic in forensic detail, but I think it’s also a sign of ageing that goes along with my adjusted eyesight, fading hearing and occasional memory blanks.
My worries, predictably, aren’t relevant. We wake to calm seas and barely enough time to grab a cup of tea and a blueberry muffin — oh the sugar and carb overload of a long self-contained trip — before we have a date with the on-board cinema for Coco. And what a lovely film that is. Mexico has got it so right with their Day of the Dead and the celebration of the lives of friends and family that future generations will never know. And covering everything in orange marigolds is always a brilliant idea.
And then, with not a dolphin or whale to be spotted, our journey across the Bay of Biscay ends with the sight of the beautiful green mountains of northern Spain and our adventure on land begins.
