It’s funny how two words can invoke different feelings at different times of the year. “Wake Up!” in January immediately leads to thoughts of “must I?”, yet on a sunny bank holiday weekend last August, the response was altogether more positive. For this was the theme of Greenbelt 2022.

As with our previous visit to Greenbelt as parents, I deliberately set myself low expectations and instead prayed that God would guide me to meet with people He wanted me to meet, and to end up at sessions on the programme that were suitable. But first, to get there. We thought we might need to draw lots to decide who would be left behind, but there was surprisingly more space than expected once the top box, boot and footwells were filled. As with our adventure earlier that month, we headed up the M5, M42… but this time onto the M6 (a bit like the M6 toll, but with one difference… 12 quid!). We parked up, were given our wristbands (our kids had “under 18” in large letters on theirs – I presume in case they tried to go to the bar?) and headed to a huddle of tents in a hollow to camp with friends.

The first evening was all about settling in – introducing the kids to portaloos, reheating some food from our freezer at home for our tea, then heading into the main festival area full of new lights and sounds for the wee ones. By the time we returned to our tents (via the tent of Milk and Honey where we picked up milk and… eggs), our youngest was nearly asleep on my shoulders, so we tucked them up into bed. As I sat cross legged doing the washing up with an amazing view, someone from our neighbouring huddle popped over to ask if we had some washing up liquid. Turned out to be someone I went to Kenya with 20 years ago, who was also camping there with her family! We had a quick chat, then as the light faded we sat in the camp with friends, munching on chocolate buttons.

Our eldest took the title of the festival a bit too literally at 6am the next morning, culminating in shouting “why should I shush?”. Sorry other campers. We got the coffee on the brew as early as we could, queued for the loos, then whilst the grown ups in our party headed off to listen to Caroline Lucas, I headed to the kids tent for “Godly play” which was retelling the creation story. As part of that the kids were asked “which was your favourite day… or the most important day”. My youngest said “the final day, where there is nothing”, which was represented by a plain white board. And then when we did a creative activity afterwards, they chose to paint a rainbow, as white light is made up of “everything – all of the colours”. First profound thought of the festival for me. Nothing is everything.

After some more coffee, we put our heads together and came up with a bit of a plan. The kids wanted to do archery and tomahawk throwing. Children and sharp flying objects; bring it on… what’s the worst that could happen? We went to the main lawn to try to find the archery, but it had changed venue, so we stopped for a spot of lunch overlooking the lawn. There were several people playing football and one hit me as someone scored a goal (I’m brave, I didn’t cry!). After they apologised they decided “we need to move our goal”. Second profound thought of the festival – what goals do I need to move, where success for me could harm someone else?

At risk of getting lost in a mire of deep thought, we went to find some axes and arrows. We were the only ones there, so Kiri threw a few axes (proper sharp ones), our youngest threw a few axes (foam ones with velcro), and I did a bit of archery with our eldest. We saw a squirrel (also known as “dinner”) as I had bow and arrow in hand, but I focused on the static target rather on success which could harm something else.

I’d managed to make it through to the afternoon of the first whole day without engaging in a single talk. Whilst Kiri headed off to listen to Nadia Bolz Weber (in a very small venue), I took the kids to see an immense bubble show where huge, iridescent balloons just called to be popped, however there were very clear rules set in place with a rope between us and the show – the “beauty zone” was the other side of the rope, but if the bubbles came over to our side, they were fair game in the “kill zone”.

And then I had a bit of time for me – I decided to go to a guided meditation session. The venue was the other side of the earth – literally – as there was a huge earth suspended over one of the paths. Looking around there was a certain demographic at that session and I wasn’t it! As I lay down amongst spiders and nettley grass in the Shelter venue, my last thought as I drifted off to sleep was “it’s a bit bizarre that they’re playing weird animal noises, but as I’ve never done a guided meditation before, I’ll roll with it”. Turned out it was just a kid making dinosaur noises outside! As I came round from my sleep, I pondered on how much I was getting from the festival when totally ignoring the programming – it was telling me to “Wake Up!”, and here I was falling asleep!

Sausages for tea back at the tent went down very well and my parents in law popped by with freshly frozen icepacks from Fifi. It was a clearer, colder night that the previous one, but with a lovely sunset whilst washing up. With the kids down it was eventually wine, chocolate and crib time with the distant sound of Kae Tempest in the background on the main stage. We played until we could see the cards no longer, then headed to bed.

Communion on the Sunday has historically been one of the creative high points of Greenbelt and this year didn’t disappoint. The focus was the climate crisis and between the giant globes that were bouncing around the crowd, a disturbing and chilling re-imagination of “all things bright and beautiful”, Harry Baker’s “Impossible” and potentially radioactively charged, bright purple Ka drink to accompany the bread we broke together it was a thought-provoking feast for senses, mind and body.

After communion, I had a last minute change of plan and spontaneously decided to go to a conversation about capitalism and work in the “Rebel Rouser” venue, set in some woodland. The sound check where they encouraged speakers to get really close to the mic as it was set up for punk music set the tone, as a PhD student and economist explored some of the concepts of where power, boundaries and exploitation are perceived to lie in the chain of “work”. There were some interesting soundbites to chew on:

• “the availability of cheap labour (even in the UK in small sweat shops) is a barrier to automation”
• “colonisation of creativity” (in reference to things like the TFL quotes at tube stations that started off as a creative idea, now being corporately managed)
• “what is the effect of a never satisfied desire for growth and profit in a finite world?”

However, the thing that I felt was lacking was balance. What I love about Greenbelt is that you normally hear both (or many) sides of a story; this felt quite one-sided in its proposed solutions of “changing the owners” and “unionising”. What was topical back in August is even more so now, as we face the most strike action in the country since the 1970s… but a breadth of opinion would have been appreciated. I’ll admit I left early to join the kids and Kiri who were building shelters on the edge of the woodland.

Having taken out a small mortgage to pay for icecreams for the kids, we settle down for a session at the main stage with Martyn Joseph. He opened the set with his anthem of hope “Here come the young” before apologising that the rest of his songs were so miserable that they would make Leonard Cohen sound like Julie Andrews. I have to disagree – the topics they touched upon were raw and real, but not miserable. This glass is half full, this half is heartbreakingly beautiful. And the purpose of power is to give it away. These are songs that reveal an alternative way to live. I think the dragonfly (often symbolic of new life) circling around over our heads might have agreed.

Those deep thoughts had returned, so once again we sought out axes. Having been on a spoon carving course a few weeks earlier where we used carving axes, here we were throwing them. Kiri and I love axes… is that normal? The axe throwing was right next to (parallel, not perpendicular for obvious reasons) the motorhome field, where we were reunited with Fifi and treated to dinner. The topic of conversation was about potential post-Fifi options. Whilst possibly not that tactful to talk about within earshot of Fifi, it was exciting to hear my parents in law talking about maybe going down the route of an electric campervan next.

We headed back to our tent via Milk and Honey where we bought milk and… bacon (one day we’ll get the correct shopping list) and once we’d done the evening jobs, I settled down with Harry Baker’s book, revisiting “Impossible”. As the light dropped, our circle of camping chairs grew until we had a lovely crowd, with the main topic of conversation turning to food van recommendations; something we hadn’t sampled by this stage. We listened intently, and were amazed at the feelings that raw tomatoes can invoke in others. Eye opening!

I’d like to say I was woken by my alarm the next morning (it being a Monday), but our oldest was already awake by then. Cream off the top of the milk in coffee and a bacon sarnie made the early start acceptable, and then there were decisions – do I go to listen to Richard Dawkins, or a conversation with the authors of Young, Woke and Christian? Dawkins won, so as Kiri headed to the “Ta dah” and “Make and Create” marquees with the kids, I settled down to listen to a conversation between Giles Fraser and Richard Dawkins.

I guess the key topic covered was that of truth. There was plenty of exploration of topics around science and religion and actually how there is collaboration on issues of mutual importance like the climate crisis, but Dawkins was keen to stress that it’s also important to talk about fundamental questions we disagree on too, which is where he came onto truth. He stated that scientific truth is the only truth, but acknowledged that this won’t have the answer to moral questions. Fraser suggested that his definition of truth may be too narrow, asking “is it true that torture is wrong?”. Dawkins responded that they share the same sentiment, but wouldn’t he use “truth” in that context – it’s neither true nor false, but a matter of moral assessment and law; it could be justified in some circumstances.

Fraser then challenged Dawkins on a statement he had made in 2021 on how it is immoral to birth someone with downs syndrome, and gave him a chance to retract the statement. Dawkins did not, and requested to move on, saying that it was an unfortunate choice of words that had been taken out of context. Then he said that even if it were not in the best interests of humanity, hypothetically he would rather focus on a truth, than a lie that would be good for the world. And he gave what I perceived to be a telling response when Fraser suggested that the God Dawkins doesn’t believe in is the conservative, fundamentalist cartoon of God, rather than a rich, nuanced, theologically-complex God. His response firstly was “The American audience I write for is much bigger than the British audience”… followed by “I can’t get to grips with what your God is, if it’s not the fundamental God.”

Then just as the conversation turned towards spirituality and Dawkins said how important it is, but how difficult a word to understand it is, the time was up… but not before a member of the l’Arche community (where people with and without intellectual disabilities live and work together) invited Dawkins to share a meal with them.

The afternoon activities were much less thought-provoking, but equally enjoyable. After lunch with the kids, we all headed back to the main stage for an hour with Harry and Chris – poetry, music, deep love, joy and authenticity (as well as a moment where they expressed their excitement at being a support act for “Dicky Dawks”). We had a bit of a wander, having a game of giant draughts, and then headed off to see some good old fashioned (but not dated) magic and circus skills courtesy of Tommy Trilby.

As a treat that afternoon we had tea from the various food vans around site, between us managing to sample pizza, halloumi fries, onion bhajis and macaroni cheese. Once replete, we headed back to the tents to grab the kids’ stuff which we took to Fifi, giving them a final evening of adventure whilst Kiri and I could have a bit of a date night. We chose to go to the Hope and Anchor – an alcohol-free bar, where each evening there was a mystery guest. This final evening it was the authors of Young, Woke and Christian chatting about the chapters that each of them had written. They also played a round of “Cards against Mundanity” – a means of bringing structure to promote honest, open conversation against topics where participants will likely disagree. Kind of what Greenbelt is all about.

We stayed for most of it, but we had an appointment with a beer and some music at the main stage. With a pint of Piggin Saint freshly pulled from the Jesus Arms, we enjoyed a fantastic show put on by Wildwood Kin; a family folk trio from Dartmoor. Tight, inventive vocal harmonies and solid, creative rhythm sections are two things that musically float our boats and we certainly weren’t disappointed. Add in the “honest bants” (which were at one point described as “pleasantly awkward”) and lack of slickness and it was the perfect combination. It felt like we were sharing the corner of a rustic country pub with them rather than a large stage at a festival. What contrast there had been on that one stage in one day!

And then suddenly it was all over; the final morning we returned our empty milk bottles to Milk and Honey (having never managed to see the honey), packed up the car and returned to life and reality. Did the festival wake us up? I’m not sure, but as with every Greenbelt we’ve attended to date, it certainly gave us plenty of food for thought to carry back into our everyday routine.

Ever since our wee ones stepped foot inside Fifi a few years ago, we’ve tried to figure out how it might work to take them away in her. Covid put a stop to our original plan in summer 2020 to do a mini road trip of northern France with them… and it’s somehow taken another 2 years to get our act together to attempt it again. Not northern France, but “up north” in the Peak District in mid August. Kiri would argue it’s Midlands really… but we headed north from home, so technically we can both be right! The occasion was a family get together in the area where my grandparents met 80 or so years ago.

So… first step in going north is to go south, right? Well, actually south is left from our front door, but in any case, we had to head to Hewish to pick up Fifi, which meant braving the southbound holiday traffic in a hot car on the M5. Finally we got to Fifi, swapped keys, got the kids’ car seats strapped into the back of Fifi, rescued our little one from flying through the fly screen on the door and we were off. Well, as far as home, where it was lunch time by now. So we grabbed a bite to eat, loaded the bikes onto the back of Fifi and threw the rest of our stuff into cupboards and we were off. Well, kind of. Might have been faster to walk.

At the 2 hour mark, we were yet to hit Birmingham. The youngest was asleep and we were crawling. We set our sights for Tamworth Services on the M42 for a bit of a breather in the journey… then took our sights off the signs for the services whilst we updated our fellow family travellers that we had set sights for the Services… and somehow ended up on the M6 toll road. There’s a lesson in there somewhere. Quite a costly lesson. However once we were on the A38 we realised we weren’t the only ones who might be navigationally-challenged. A white van ahead of us indicated left, got onto the slip road, then swerved into our lane at the last minute, stopped completely, then turned right. We learned two other lessons. One, how to wake up a small child in the back of the van. Two, that Fifi has very good brakes.

Our alternative to the services was the faithful yellow and blue friend of the motorhomer; Lidl. We’re still using the same “offline” satnav from our KIST 2EU travels and the Lidl POIs continue to be helpful. We had a quick game of tag in a quiet corner of the car park and a whip around the store where there weren’t any cucumbers, but there were 4 cookies with our names on! Was the journey then plain sailing from there? If your definition of “plain sailing” includes stunning rolling hills, fields of heather, evening sunlight on sundried grasses, us ignoring the sat nav and ending up going down a 1 in 5 hill (we’ve done steeper in Bertha who had worse brakes!), passing on the wisdom of how to have a poo in a motorhome toilet to the next generation… at which point both kids wanted to try… then yes, it was plain sailing! We’re so pleased we (and the kids!) were out of nappies before doing motorhoming with them!

Finally, 9 hours after we first left home, we checked into our campsite just outside Bakewell at the time the kids would normally be in bed. They were sent off the playground whilst I prepared the standard motorhome fare of pasta, then we sent them packing off to share the fixed double bed in the rear of Fifi whilst I headed to do the washing up at the campsite sinks. I got into a lovely conversation with a local who gave me all of the tips for the local area. With my head spinning with facts, I clambered back into the van at the time I would normally be in bed… to find the kids were still awake! The lights were out in the van to see if that helped, and as I sat at the table I watched my first ever moonrise. Absolutely stunning. With one down and one still awake, we cracked open the wine and chocolate. In any other setting wine, chocolate and whispered conversations in dark could have been quite romantic! It was 11 by the time we got to bed.

We really have been spoiled with our previous Fifi adventures where it’s just been the two of us. The luxury of a lie in. Alas, not today. 6 o’clock. We managed to stay in bed until half past, but breakfast was necessary. We realised that there’s a lot more stuff to manoeuvre in a small space where there are 2 kids travelling with you and fewer free surfaces to use! As the campsite woke up around us (hopefully not caused by us), we scarpered just in case, driving to the agricultural centre car park in Bakewell which could facilitate motorhome parking. Online it previously seemed to imply that you could stay overnight for a pound… but there were clear signs in the car park forbidding overnight stays – glad we didn’t try it.

We unloaded our tired children onto bikes and pedalled our way onto the Monsal Trail towards Hassop Station. This was the venue where our kids would get to meet some of their great aunties and uncles, first cousins once removed (not sure who removed them) and second cousins that they’d never met before… as well as some closer family. After greeting everyone, two parties set off in the direction of Monsal Head; some on bikes and some on foot. We were in the cycling party; one of our kids on their bike, one on a bike seat and with another child on a bike too, progress was a little stop-start, but we overtook the walking party after a while.

I reckon that had the kids had a bit more sleep the night before, we might have gone a bit further, but we made it as far as the first tunnel and the Monsal Head viaduct; re-assuring our kids that the dank, dark tunnel they were cycling through did have light at the end of it! Icecream is always a good bargaining chip and in this case convinced our eldest to get back on the bike rather than staying put on the viaduct. It’s a good job we found one at Quackers; a cafe about half way back to Hassop Station.

The next few hours at Hassop Station provided a brilliant backdrop for a family get together. There were gifts from our Germany-based family (thank you Story Snug!), family albums from the 1930s and 1940s to pore over, a leisurely lunch with plenty of chair swapping, a chance to reconnect with wider family and a very patient teenager who seemed more than happy to play with the children! Who by this stage were absolutely exhausted, and still had to cycle a few miles back to Fifi!

We made it though, covered in dust. Bikes onto the bike rack. Gas off. Back to the campsite. Swift shower. Bite to eat. Kids into bed. Straight to sleep. Except that last one didn’t happen for both of the kids. An hour and a half later, our eldest was still loudly awake, at risk of waking our youngest. Should we maybe have abandoned our dream of being able to have an evening when we go on holiday with kids? Eventually it was beer and crib o’clock – once around the board, before we too settled down by 10.

We must be thankful for small blessings – we had a lie in until 0645! And that was followed by a very chilled breakfast, washing up (with a spider incident involving lots of scared grown men and a woman who saved the day saying “don’t worry boys, I’ll look after you”), playing on the campsite playground and emptying the loo. We’d agreed to meet my brother’s family at the splash park in Bakewell for some splashing and a picnic, so we stopped off at Aldi on the way, where we each chose one favourite item to take on a picnic. I’ll leave you to guess which of us might have chosen honey on bread, olives, smoked salmon and chocolate biscuits.

We arrived at the splash park after a quick game of pooh sticks, met the other family and got the kids into clothes ready to splash, at which point the water stopped. We were assured that it would only be off for 15 minutes… but Google told us otherwise – that it was off for a whole hour over lunch. So instead we consumed our picnic of champions and played on the playground until the water resumed. It’s amazing how water can entertain children for so long and it was lovely watching the cousins all playing together. However, all good things must come to an end – we lured the children away whilst they were still asking for more, with the promise of icecream. Skirting past the icecream van where cones and lollies were 4 quid a pop, past the huge fish in the river, past the lock bridge (not lock as in lock gate, but lock as in bridge with padlocks on) we found Co-op where for 4 quid we picked up 6 mini magnums and a large bottle of ginger ale. That’s more our style!

Once back at the campsite we tried a different tack after tea; we got our younger one to sleep on the fixed bed whilst the older one lay reading in the drop down bed. There was then a pivotal life moment; the teaching of crib to our eldest. In the background, the campsite was slowly settling down for the night. A little girl in pajamas waddled past our motorhome with icepacks wedged down her trousers and there were reports of the Macarena happening in the ladies toilets. You don’t get that when wild camping!
 

Luckily for us though, there is still coffee and bacon when on a campsite – both were needed following the 6am wakeup the next morning, but once again we had a quiet morning. It was cooler today with cloud cover as we picked up my parents from Hassop and drove to Bakewell. Our normal parking spot at the showground was taken; someone was reserving the spot for some friends who had bikes on the car roof which couldn’t fit under the height barrier of the main parking. We were too British to risk inconveniencing them by suggesting that maybe they could have just removed the bikes, and as we were not going to decapitate Fifi, we found a parking spot by the side of the road around the corner.

It was market day (which explained the busy parking) so we had a lovely wander around the stalls in town before going on a lunch hunt which ended in another picnic eaten al fresco in some gardens by the river. This was followed shortly afterwards with a Hope Valley icecream for all… well, nearly all – I decided to go for a Bakewell pudding instead. A few spots of refreshing rain arrived, to take the edge off the sweltering heat we’d been having, so we headed back to Fifi and returned my parents to Hassop. They very kindly offered to look after the kids if Kiri and I wanted to go for a cycle ride together at that stage, which in our sleepy delirium made us both chuckle… so we all sat down for a coffee, entertained by our little one who was dancing around, refusing to admit that a toilet stop was needed!

The campsite was quieter on our return (we must have frightened everyone off) and it was cool enough to eat our hot dogs outside before we adopted the same strategy as the previous night with getting the kids to sleep. Either the plan was a good one, or maybe they were too tired to resist, but there was no fight, leaving a little time for a game of Uno washed down with some local beer (including gluten free – what a find!).

Normally when you strike camp that’s the end of the holiday… but given we’d got quite a long drive to return Fifi we had decided to tack on an extra night near Hewish. By this stage we’d got into the swing of mornings and were resigned to the reality of no lie ins. The journey back home to drop off bikes was fairly uneventful. At one point we took a left hand corner a little too fast (not for the van… but for the drawer catches). A drawer slid open with a bang, surprising the kids. The solution? Take the next right hand corner a little faster than normal. It worked. In totally unrelated news, a couple of minutes later there was a plaintive call of “Mummy, I feel sick”. Oops.

A service station stop solved sickness sorrows, although with the playground shut, we had to find alternate amusement in the form of a chain curtain and hearing a child coming out of Waitrose moaning “but Mummy, I absolutely must have some olives”. After a bite to eat, everyone’s stomachs were settled enough and we dropped off the bikes and panniers at home and once again headed south – this time to Brean. We trundled down a single track road with passing places, then onto a slightly wider road (where we met a double decker bus!) before finally arrive at Diamond Farm Holiday Park where we pitched up in a spot next to the River Axe in a part of the campsite with no marked pitches or hookup.

We just had time to turn the gas on (for the fridge) and pop to the campsite shop for an icecream when the thunder started… and then big spots of rain. We retired to the van to appreciate the storm whilst the muscle memory of being in a motorhome in the rain flooded back. Cooking tea was a balancing act of circulating air to let steam out, but trying to prevent rain coming in. There’s something really lovely about hearing the rain ping off the roof of a motorhome whilst you’re all cosy inside, with no reason to go outside. We didn’t fancy walking to the sinks to wash up, so we just did it in the van, watching the field getting more and more waterlogged.

When the youngest went to bed, we let our oldest stay up to play Uno (under strict instructions of “we don’t talk about Uno, no no no” to the youngest in case it’s seen as unfair) which led to some incredibly creative wildcard rules. Never before have we had an Uno rule that “when you play a 1, if you see and name a bird, you get another go, otherwise you miss your next go”. Sadly the birds seemed to stay away on my go! Once both kids were in bed we had a drinking water conundrum – do we fill up a 2 litre bottle in the dark and dry (the rain had paused), or wait until the morning, pre-coffee, when it would potentially be raining? I splashed across the field.

I needn’t have worried though – when we woke the next morning it was dull, but dry. Everything was packed into bags and Fifi was cleaned, then we headed to the campsite waste area to “empty stuff” whilst Kiri and the kids had a quick play. And then to the beach! Well… we tried at least. The only car parks we found were paid for on a per day basis rather than by the hour and with the dearest at £16 and the cheapest £6, I stayed in the van whilst Kiri and the kids got out to see the sea for a few minutes (not that it’s easy to see without binoculars at Brean!). Everyone was bundled back into the van and we headed off to find the elusive Sainsburys petrol station from our last trip where we topped up, glad that the price of diesel had fallen to “just” 182.9p per litre. Ouch.

When we returned Fifi, we just about managed to fit everything back into our car and were just doing one last check around Fifi when we found a cupboard with 3 more bags in it. We debated whether to leave one of the kids behind in Hewish, but settled on all just being a bit squished for the final leg of the adventure. And then we were home – arriving just as a broadband engineer was knocking on our door. As that would have been a bit of a rubbish end to a blog post, we decided to finish the holiday with one last icecream. There’s always space for icecream.

Finally, we made it to Greece. It might have taken two years for it to happen, but we made it there in the May half term. And it’s strange how much things can change in two years – hold luggage for small child… no longer necessary. Masks suddenly mandatory. Crazy queues at Bristol airport due to staff shortages with the 3rd (4th? 5th?) wave of Covid. But we did it – with a minor delay where we had to go back to the house to pick up a bag with nappies in. I tried to convince the kids as we turned round that they’d just had the holiday, but they weren’t buying it. We were off to Greece!

The journey to Greece was a blur – a cabin bag audit for the 11 of us to maximise use of space, an alarm set for 0245, removing a pair of compasses from cabin luggage just in time, a Casio watch with broken strap sacrificed at security checks, a very early coffee and sausage butty, a bit of a funny turn (my body played the “nope” card just before check in – if you don’t know what that means, it’s worth playing the game “Exploding Kittens“), mixed mask messages… and then suddenly out into the hot dry air of Zakynthos.

A stamp in the passport marked our arrival; the first travelling we’ve done post-Brexit… but old habits die hard, and nearly everyone on the flight wandered through the “EU” channel. Then the pace changed. A basking lazy lizard, darted into the shadows of the car rental place. We meandered around Greek roads (Kiri driving on the right!) until we reached a steep side road down to our villas for the week. And then? The swimming pool welcomed us. This wasn’t to be our usual brand of adventurous holiday; instead a chance to just be. Good food (thanks Jake!). Good company (thanks family!). Good weather (thanks God!). The only downside were the noisy peacocks on a nearby hillside. Who knew they sang so badly?

The next few days blurred into one – waking up, throwing open the shutters at the end of our bed and watching the sun rise as swallows darted over the pool. We lay on various beaches, swimming in the clear waters with the kids and snorkelling with the fish (we were the ones wearing snorkels… not the fish, obviously). We shared amazing food – souvlaki, tzatziki, hummus, olives, pitta, moussaka, oranges straight from the tree, baklava. Oh my, let me pause on the baklava. We bought a huge one from a bakery, where I could only manage a sixth. It had sweet, deep, floral flavours and it’s only been this good when friends have brought it back from Egypt. The 3 generations swam and played in the pool (I lost the game of pool chicken with my nephew where we each tried to be the last one to get out!). Then evenings were spent with the older ones playing games, chatting and listening to the playlist in the dusk, punctuated with the odd “Is that one of our kids? No, just a peacock”… or a random moment where the playlist was playing Ruby and suddenly the phone assistant piped up “Item added to shopping basket”. There was no TV (there was one, but the best I could get in tuning it was the Disney channel in black and white and in German), but that didn’t matter.

We did have a few low-key adventures though. One day we piled into a coach in Argassi (the nearest settlement… which I was convinced for the first few days was called “Gassi” and people were just saying “Our Gassi”) to be taken to the other side of the island. As we drove through the nightclub district with pizza houses, chicken houses and McDonald’s the conversation turned to tourism; something that has sat uncomfortably with me and Kiri throughout our various travels. We totally get the need for trade and tourism as a source of income, and I guess it’s only natural to give punters what they want, and many punters want their British home comforts, but with sun. But it’s not really us. I accept that we are tourists. I’d like to think that we seek authenticity though… but then that leads to unanswerable questions about what it is to be authentic!

In any case, an hour later as I clambered up a ladder into a boat with one hand, clutching 4 Cornettos, a small child and a bag of wet swim gear in the other I realised how much I was rocking the tourist look. We were on a turtle boat trip, where we saw a turtle through the bottom of our boat (it was glass bottomed, rather than leaky), experienced Whitney Houston played at full volume in a sea cave, swam in clear waters (not with the turtles this time) and refused to sing as we passed the island that features in the film Mamma Mia.

On another day we wandered through the streets of the city of Zakynthos. We saw the plush thrones, gold leaf, ornate carvings and intricate murals inside an Orthodox Church, where many were taking the non-Covid-safe choice of kissing paintings. We were offered a “very best price” coffee and milkshake in one of the squares and we marvelled at how “pedestrianised” seems to have a different meaning in Greek when it comes to streets. Our plan had been to eat at a taverna in town, however having earlier in the week eaten at our “local” taverna (Agnadi) to celebrate a big birthday, we realised that we’d be hard pressed to beat it for view, quality of food, or welcome. We also bought a stunning olive wood bowl that had been turned by one of the owners and made a promise to our future selves to work with wood.

And then there was the day of the road trip with banging tunes. First stop was Aristeon olive press where we were introduced to the process of extracting oil from olives – we were fascinated by the business model of farmers paying for the pressing service by the press keeping a percentage of the oil. We were shocked though that the second press of the waste from virgin olive oil uses petrol as a solvent to extract further oil… that’s done on the mainland. With the car weighed down by as much olive oil as we’d be permitted to carry in cabin bags on the return flight, our next stop took us up into the hills to Agrodesmos cheese factory. This clearly wasn’t on the regular tourist trail. A huge rusty saw hung outside an industrial unit and after a short wait, a member of staff bruskly ushered us through a sterile, dark corridor. I thought I’d seen this horror movie before… but obviously not, because at the end of the corridor was a room where feta was being salted. We then got to taste a selection of cheese, one of which had been marinated in Ouzo. We expressed surprise. The straight faced response was “of course”. Well there we go. Feta and Ouzo.

This is probably the time for me to make an admission. I’m conflicted about feta. I don’t know whether I like it or not. As a big slab on top of a greek salad? No thanks. In little bits within a greek salad? Yes please. In moussaka? Take it or leave it. In a spinach pie? Yes please. I think it’s probably a combination of a texture thing (I don’t like crumbly cheeses) as well as a flavour thing (it needs to be balanced with the correct other flavours). Maybe it’s also a quantity thing? Anyway, back to the story – thanks for indulging me.

Our final stop on the tour was Callinico winery. We were casually told to look around and then have a taste. Left to our own devices, we found some bottles that were the same age as us, as well as a violet carpenter bee. Not a violent carpenter bee – that’s something totally different. The guy serving us the tastes of white, rose and red smashed a glass in the process… and then knocked over a couple of bottles. Maybe, like the olive press, he was paid in the wares that he sold? It was the end of the month!

And then suddenly (via an unpleasant moment where I had my face in the sea next to one of our kids and they announced loudly “I’m having a wee!”), we were on our last evening, reflecting on highlights and dreaming about the next family adventure in a few years time. The sweet spot that ticked the boxes of the various families involved sun, sea, good food and culture. So maybe Croatia? Could we add in an extra element of adventure and have a race to get there by different modes of transport?

Our final morning involved consuming as much of the leftover food as possible before wending our way to the airport. Our oldest was swabbed for explosives as we went through security (clearly the most suspicious of our party) and we stocked up on lollies to help with ear pressure on the plane (to clarify, they’re to suck, which helps the ears to pop… you don’t stick them in your ears!). The flight was uneventful – clear skies as we took off and flew north over Albania, Montenegro and Croatia. It was only the beginning of June, but we could see many wide river beds with just a trickle of blue in the middle. The descent was rather more eventful with our youngest not wishing to wear a seatbelt… we apologised to the other passengers profusely for the noise. We were then at the receiving end of an apology at border control after long queues, with the explanation “it’s what’s called Windows 7”.

The kids were both asleep by the time we got home, so we carried them up to bed, checked the garden (the tomato plants had all been eaten, even the backups in the cold frame), appreciated the ability to flush toilet roll down the loo and then settled down to watch a documentary for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. I think we’ve turned middle aged!

We’ve never seen Fifi’s home before. Fifi belongs to my parents in law and is hired out for public use by the motorhome holiday company. In March this year, we left the kids with my parents in law and headed down to Hewish to pick Fifi up. There we had an amazing welcome from Nicola and Jordan and a lovely chat about our previous adventures in Fifi and how we could be trusted with her as we were old hands at this motorhoming stuff. And then we tried to start her with the wrong key. And then forgot to take off the handbrake before departing. Isn’t there a saying about pride and fall or something?

Our first stop was Lidl where we both stocked up with supplies, but also had lunch in the car park. Kiri remarked that it reminded her of old times – I think she might have been commenting on the fancy cheese we’d just bought, but it could have been the consuming of lunch in a Lidl car park. Lunch was swiftly polished off and we hit the M5, observing the new style pylons being installed in the fields and getting excited when we passed an Autotrail Chinook (it wasn’t Bertha). It was to be the start of a few days were we looked both back and forward, yet as we overtook a van daubed in messages of support for Ukraine which had just returned from delivering humanitarian aid, we also could not escape the present.

The first overnight was in a pub car park on the edge of Dartmoor, at first with just chickens and goats for company, but soon we were joined by other motorhomes. At 6 we popped into the pub for a couple of draught ales (Otter and Dartmoor Legend) which accompanied a burger and Irish stew – a small price to pay for an overnight stay. By the time we were replete it was 7:15 and we were both ready for bed, but decided it was a bit too early to turn in for the night. So we had a game of Uno Flip, some quiet prayer time and then we lowered the top bed (which we were testing out in preparation for a summer trip in Fifi with the kids). We were asleep soon after 8 – both stupidly and sensibly early!

Having not slept “up top” in a motorhome for nearly 7 years, we’d forgotten what it was like to have to climb down a cold ladder for the loo in the night, but that aside, we had a blissful, uninterrupted 10 hours in bed. Our pace didn’t pick up that much as we had an unhurried morning, doing our customary Worldle, Wordle and Heardle… before a horrible thought that we might not have put the fridge on gas and the milk might have curdled. We had. The milk was fine and the coffee that we had before our bacon butty hit the spot. We liked the style of the pub and hospitality for motorhomes. Over the pandemic we’ve been supporting a social enterprise called the Long Table; making sure everyone has access to food and encouraging community through shared food – wouldn’t it be great if at some point in our lives we could set up something like that for motorhomers?

Our plan for the day was to drive across Dartmoor to Lydford Gorge. As a child we used to drive down to Plymouth to see relatives. As a university student a friend took me across the moors in his Triumph Spitfire and I remember with fondness the rugged moorland and raw landscape. I was looking forward to a scenic drive. We pulled off and drove down the main road before beginning to head towards the moor. There was a sign warning of a narrow bridge and another bridge not suitable for long vehicles. Ah, but we can do this. We managed the bridge not suitable for long vehicles with ease, but I felt a little more uneasy as we counted down the miles to the narrow bridge. I was right to. As soon as it came into sight, I realised I had been too ambitious. 3 point turn, embarrassed faces and a circumnavigation of the moor that was in sight, but tantalisingly out of reach. Next time we’ll do our homework in advance!

We had an early lunch on arrival at Lydford Gorge so we wouldn’t be ravine-ous (sorry) before exploring as many of the paths as we could that were open. It was out of season for visitors, but in season for those managing the woodland, restoring paths and clearing away remnants of winter storms. Who knows – maybe managing woodland will feature in our future? Kiri certainly looked enviously at the huge chainsaw a worker was wielding in a picture at the entrance to the gorge. Oh, and the Whitelady Waterfall was just as impressive as I remember as a child.

What followed was a lovely leisurely drive up to the car park of the Yarde Orchard cafe; a rural spot on the Tarka Trail near Torrington next to a disused railway station. We checked in with the kids (just to allay fears, they were with grandparents – we didn’t leave them on their own!) and had a hot chocolate at the cafe before wandering along the railway line; now part of the Sustrans network. We had the luxury of uninterrupted time to read before making tea, so I got stuck into reading a political book, whilst Kiri read the book of Amos. So nothing too heavy really. A burger completed the day, followed by a game of crib and another early night.

Birdsong. A much less abrupt alarm call in the morning than a child. With no fixed timings for the day, we took our time over another fry up, read through Amos together (a prophecy of impending judgement for all nations… but ultimately restoration in the end) and chatted about the current state of the world… feeling very much that there is big stuff on the horizon (which I’m not saying is judgement), but knowing that ultimately there is restoration in the end. This trip away really felt like an oasis. Like we were able to take precious time away from the storm to reflect and recharge – almost like being in the eye of a storm.

A winding road through Barnstaple and over the hills took us towards the Valley of the Rocks, where we drove around the roundabout the wrong way (for old times’ sake) and parked up. This time the white lady we sought was not in the shape of a waterfall, but a gap between rocks at the top of cliff and we climbed up to take a closer look. Whilst Lee Abbey and the surrounding area was a formative place for both of us as we grew up, we’d never been there together until now.

The next few hours were brilliant. We wandered along the toll road to Lee Abbey and down to the beach, looking back and sharing memories of our very different but significant experiences of this special place. It was too cold to paddle, but we scrambled on rocks and reminisced. When I first came to this place, my Mum was the age that I am now. That made me feel old! We tried to wander back to Fifi via the scenic route through the woods, but came across fallen trees at every turn. After pushing our way through the first few, we soon realised that it probably wasn’t the most sensible of ideas to continue to press on, so we headed back up the road and took a minor detour to the wood store that kindled (get it!) Kiri’s love affair with axes and chainsaws.

We thought we’d top up with some supplies on the way to our campsite for the night, so set the course in the satnav for Sainsburys in Barstaple… but couldn’t work out how to get to it. This is the satnav that took us around Europe (so not new-fangled and internet-enabled), yet we couldn’t get to Sainsburys – we could see it… but it was tantalisingly the other side of a park. So we gave up and went to Asda. We then had a lovely drive where once again our conversation was incredibly deep and philosophical. We always wave at other motorhomes… but sometimes find ourselves waving at horse-carrying vehicles. What is it that makes these vehicles not motorhomes, if they have sleeping compartments? If there’s a satellite dish on top, should we wave? What about if there’s a canoe on top?

Our musings were cut short by a shut road. No short cuts for us. Initially we were happy that we’d be spending a little more time on an A road… but then the satnav moved us onto a B road… then an unnamed road… then there was a telecommunications van totally blocking the road. We reversed Fifi, turned around and took the alternative, alternative route… where the sides of the hedges were brushing Fifi… and we went through a ford! Well that was an unexpected adventure. I think we need a bit more practice at this motorhoming malarkey!

We finally arrived at a lovely farm where found a pitch that suited us (plenty to choose from), filled up with fresh water (our “wild camping” of the last two nights had been on slightly less than half a tank), hooked up the electrics and got tea on the go. Then the standard Fifi routine of crib and another early night. This is the life.

It certainly wasn’t -2 degrees in the van when we woke the next morning (memories of Serbia in Bertha), but it was cold enough for us to hop out of bed to turn on the heater, then get back into bed until Fifi had warmed up. Once warm, it was breakfast and packing things away as we wanted to pop in on some elderly relatives (ahem!) in Somerset on the way back. We had a swift cup of tea and slice of cake in the garden (we’ll come again!) before raising Fifi’s sails and setting her on a course for home.

We knew we were cutting things tight and we needed to return her with a full tank of fuel, but once again the satnav failed to deliver with regards to the Sainsburys petrol station – we got as far as Sainsburys… but couldn’t work out how to get to the associated petrol station. Once again we gave up on Sainsburys… this time saved by Morrisons. Fifi was returned, we hopped into our little car and headed back to relieve the grandparents who described their time with our kids as “life-giving”.

Yep, that’s a good way of describing our break too.

With the pandemic still in full flow (albeit with hope on the horizon), when a chance appeared for Kiri and I to escape with Fifi for a few nights in the summer, we leaped at it! The grandparents arrived, we packed our things and hopped into Fifi, ready for a quick escape! Kiri pushed back the driver’s seat… but then couldn’t get it forward again. 10 minutes later after levering the mechanism back into place with a short plank, we tried again. Only this time we’d forgotten the key – good start!

With a slightly rosier outlook for the pandemic, we chose to venture further afield in Fifi than last year, but still heeding the advice of the Pet Shop Boys. We arrived in Brecon, stopped at Aldi to stock up the fridge (reduced lamb burgers, brioche rolls and local beer), then found our car park for the night. It had a big sign saying “no camping”, but we know that one! All it means is that we couldn’t put out an awning, camping chairs, barbecue etc – and that was fine by us. The car park was in a lovely quiet spot right next to the river and whilst it was deserted when we arrived, others joined once it was free to stay (between 6pm and 8am). We got cracking with tea and found the reason that the rolls were reduced; lovely and mouldy inside… but the rest of tea was good. It meant that we had to head into town to hunt for bread that evening, but it was a lovely stroll along the promenade and back to nicely set us up for an evening of beer and crib before being in bed soon after 9.

The night was fairly uneventful – we were only woken by rain once, and then again when I rolled over in my sleep, knocked the bottom of the spring-loaded blind and it shot up, but otherwise it was quiet. The alarm went off at an incredibly civilised 7:55am for us to get another parking ticket, then we had a leisurely cooked breakfast with the fresh bread.

We’ve said before that when we were travelling and we arrived at a new place, we’d always seek somewhere high, to get a feel for the lie of the land and several years on, we haven’t changed (at least not in that respect). It was a short drive to Pen y Fan from Brecon, where we changed into our walking gear and set off.

About half way up we were overtaken by the army who were going at quite a pace, but we were in no rush. Whilst we started in sunshine, as we climbed the mountain we entered a cloud, where it was very wet. By the time we reached the peak, we were soaked, and couldn’t see much at all. Was that a metaphor for life at the moment where we don’t have a clear view of the lie of the land? However, there was a small, painted stone with the words “take time to make your soul happy”. Maybe that’s the message we should be taking from this?

It was amusing to see some graffiti on a stone at the top saying this was nothing compared to the Tatras mountains and we had to agree, but the descent was much more comfortable 7 years on following my knee operation a few years ago. After a soggy amble down the mountain, we broke into short-lived sunshine that turned to a torrential shower just as we arrived back in Fifi for lunch.

After lunch, we turned south, towards Pont y Pandy… nope, that’s not right… Font y Gary. Now why would we do that? Well, whilst we try to be optimists in life, we hadn’t expected England to be in the Euros semi-final, so had totally mistimed our trip away. We’d heard rumours that we’d have a good signal and electric hook up on a campsite in South Wales and given we wanted to avoid being in a bar (due to COVID) that seemed like a good solution. So we’d hastily booked a few days before.

So we arrived at the campsite, hooked up to electricity, turned on the gas, got the kettle on… now time to test the television. Wouldn’t tune. Tried again. Wouldn’t tune. Went outside to see if the aerial was pointing the right direction. No aerial. Started to panic – had it fallen off? Called for remote technical support – my Father in law confirmed there wasn’t meant to be an aerial. Hmmm, still no signal. Kiri didn’t like my alternative suggestion of watching a DVD of Midsomer Murders that we’d found by the TV, so we tried a different tack. We had free WiFi on the pitch (camping, not football), so we tried that – DHCP not working, so couldn’t get an IP address.

Now I was very uncomfortable being in a bar with cases on the rise, but Kiri was adament that we couldn’t miss the match, so we headed to the campsite bar (yep, it’s some campsite!) to find out if we had to book. We didn’t, but it was first come first served, so they suggested we arrive by 18:30 for an 20:00 kick off. Just time to grab fish and chips from the campsite entrance.

We arrived in the bar at bang on 18:30, to find it deserted. So we filled in the track and trace forms, ordered drinks on our phones and nursed them over several games of crib before the bar began to fill up at around 19:30. I won’t give any spoilers in case you missed the match, but there was a mix of English and Danish support in the bar and one group left disappointed. We had news from home that kids were asleep nice and early (following a 5:30 wake up that morning!) and to be honest, I didn’t want the match to go to extra time because I wanted to go to bed too! At least we had an option to have a lie in the following morning.

And that’s exactly was we did – it wasn’t solid sleep, but we remained horizontal until 9am which was a luxury. Just one night without an alarm was so restorative. And a slow-paced morning with no agenda was equally balm for the soul – bacon butties and coffee with a sea view in the sun. First question was whether we should shower (we decided it was best to as I had to go to work the next day as soon as we got home), and then the second question was how we should spend the rest of the day. After much deliberation, we moved to the car park next door (still in the grounds of Font y Gary) and then went for a wander along the South Wales coast path

We took our time wandering around the perimeter of Aberthaw power station – a beautiful post-industrial landscape being reclaimed by nature. It brought back memories of a photo walk I did at Folkestone Harbour Railway Station many years ago before it was restored, with amazing flora and fauna fighting back against concrete and rusting steel. And we saw a heron. Definitely not a pelican (don’t ask!). As we wandered we had long conversations about how to be church – the pandemic has got us questioning, deconstructing and exploring. We stopped for a protein bar and some Makka Pakka stone stacking on the beach, then headed back to Fifi for a well overdue lunch. Mountains? Tick. Sea? Tick. Just woodland to find now, and we’ve ticked off the three best types of landscape…

Sadly we’re out of practice with this whole motorhoming malarkey, and we’d forgotten to turn on the gas when we parked up, meaning the fridge had slowly been warming up whilst we’d been walking. It was such a shame that I had to therefore have icecream for lunch! It was also a shame that we had to have a game of adventure golf before we left the campsite – I mean, there was a dragon on the course and it would have been rude to drive away without getting a selfie with it…

Our drive back up to Gloucestershire took us on a couple of loops of Newport (I was navigating, and totally missed the petrol station!) before we arrived on a great campsite – well established, quiet and well thought-out. We emptied the loo and disposed of some recycling (we’re living the dream!) before tucking into one of our standard Bertha meals – pasta and veg in a tomato sauce… and just like the old days before kids, we could put olives, wine and chorizo in it. Nom.

After dinner, we stowed things away in preparation for a swift morning getaway, before settling down to read the bible together. It used to be a solid part of our Bertha travelling routine (normally straight after breakfast) and we miss that unhurried daily rhythm of grappling with what the words mean for our lives. We picked a section at random that talked about living a radical life of sacrifice and service to others and pondered on how we could live that with young kids… in the middle of a pandemic! We continued pondering as we played a game of Ligretto for old times sake. I tell you what, our reactions are a lot slower than they were 7 years ago!

Our 7am alarm would herald the last lie in for a while, so we grabbed a banana, tidied up, emptied the loo one last time and the grey waste before the short drive home. Our arrival home was timed to perfection – 2 minutes later and Fifi would have been facing off against a recycling lorry coming the other way, but that epic standoff (and resulting screenplay) would have to wait for another occasion. Instead, we hopped out, had an enthusiastic welcome home from the kids – it was so great to see them – and then after a swift handover I headed off to work.

So that’s twice we’ve been on a Fifi adventure just the two of us. Could we make it work with 4? She’s a six berth beast… so maybe our next Fifi blog post will be about the trials and tribulations of motorhoming with two little ones?!

And now once again for the infomercial. Do you want a selfie with a dragon? Do you want to sleep in a car park? Are you dreaming of football success? Actually, all of those are irrelevant to booking Fifi… but if you do fancy taking Fifi on her next adventure, why not visit the Motorhome Holiday Company website to find out more. Terms and conditions still apply; it will likely be time taken to make your soul happy, and you may end up buying your own.

Roof box back on the car? Tick. Box of cakes on the back seat of the car between the kids? Tick. Railway Children audiobook on CD in? Tick. Hitting traffic on the M5? Tick. All of us at various stages of a cold? Tick. Yep, you guessed it, our destination wasn’t Greece. We crawled with other holiday traffic towards the Gower, powered first by enthusiasm, then by chocolate buttons and diet coke (FIVE POUNDS at a service station!!!) – the chocolate buttons rationed – one every 15 minutes. That is every satnav 15 minutes it counted down rather than real 15 minutes. But it was worth it; we arrived at our campsite to find our tent already pitched and our tea already on the go. Within 15 minutes I was so laid back I fell off my camping chair onto my mother in law’s lap!

After a monumental negotiation with Dionysus in Zakynthos and Stavros at Easyjet (well, likely one of his staff) by my Father in Law, our big family holiday had been postponed until 2022 and instead we all descended on a campsite in South Wales, right by the sea. And it was definitely sea spray, not rain that was falling on us that first evening as we struggled to get the kids to sleep. Definitely. At 9:30 our kids were still awake, although even I was baffled as to what the right answer was when Kiri finally said to them “I don’t want to hear another word from you – do you understand?”. That, my friend is called a catch 22 situation!

Now our campsite had a quiet policy between 11pm and 9am which we thought might be a bit of a challenge based on our previous camping experiences… but that was 2 summers ago, so surely it would be better now? 5am. I’ll repeat that. 5am. At which point a grandparent suddenly appeared and whisked our eldest off into the motorhome, giving us a lie in until a more respectable 6:30. By then there was a steady stream of surfer traffic to the car park next to our tent, so it seemed reasonable to be awake then.

Over a cooked breakfast it was decided that as the beach and sea would feature greatly in this holiday, it might be good to get some wetsuits, but there weren’t any at the campsite shop. Time to ask one of the surf schools which had a hut in the car park. Hmmm, fishy – they apparently have a local agreement that none of them would sell or hire wetsuits – sounds like there’s some kind of back story there. They did recommend a shop in the nearest village which sounded promising though. We looked them up online (I’m still amazed that I can access the internet from a tent!) and reviews described them as a “friendly shop with friendly prices”. I think the reviewer might have a different definition of “friendly” to us – we popped in, then quickly popped out again deciding that £150 for a wetsuit was probably catering for a different market to us. Back at the campsite the tarpaulin and duck tape were looking like a good option…

The morning passed – a few of us snoozed at the campsite and few did bodyboarding and found starfish on the beach, before returning for a Welsh cake, then lunch, during which both of our children fell of their camping chairs. Just Kiri to go, and we’ve got a full house! And then plans for the afternoon. An exciting-looking hill; wild grassland, peppered with boulders, loomed over the campsite with Rhosilli the other side and most decided to climb it. I was in two minds, as I would have loved to have explored, but equally my cold was in full swing. I eventually chose to stay at camp and just sit. Sometimes I sit and think and sometimes I just sit. Actually, these days I rarely do either, so this was to be a treat of an afternoon.

The stillness was shattered. My nephew burst into camp – “Kiri fell and is hurt and her leg might be broken” – followed by my eldest. “I got stung by stinging nettles”. Thinking that this was a bit of a joke I didn’t respond particularly quickly until my sister in law arrived carrying our youngest and said “Kiri is actually hurt and there’s an ambulance on the way”. I switched into St Bernard mode, grabbing a blanket, paracetamol and a protein bar and set off at pace up the hill. Too fast. I stopped to admire the view and catch my breath. I set off again, this time pacing myself, until I found a sheepish Kiri, applying pressure to, and elevating her leg, whilst leaning on her Dad. Her sister had provided a lovely white top which was acting as a tourniquet / stemming the bleeding and I stepped in / lay down to provide extra elevation.

We kept Kiri chipper for half an hour until the paramedic arrived – watching the flashing blue lights coming down the valley (you’ve got to say that last sentence with a Welsh accent!), then watching him spend a lot of time at the bottom of the hill, before climbing with all his gear. When he finally arrived at our party, we let him rest then he did the standard checks. As he took my sister in law’s top off, his verdict was that the leg wasn’t broken, but the wound would need stitches, so he patched it up and we hobbled down the hill. Whilst our paramedic didn’t seem to have appreciated the hike (he’d apparently been enquiring about whether he could borrow a quad bike at the bottom of the hill), he did enjoy the view, saying that it made a change from drug dens in the city.

Our friendly paramedic agreed to drive his ambulance car to the campsite entrance so the kids could see it and we could check in with our kids (who were quite happy with their cousins, auntie, uncle and grandparents!), before heading off to the local MIU (minor injuries unit). We were initially told to go to Morristons (hadn’t realised supermarkets were diversifying!) – but local knowledge at the campsite suggested we instead went to Llanelli; just a Lidl bit further, but much quieter. Once there, only Kiri was allowed to go in due to COVID regulations, so once again I was left to just sit.
Once stitched up (4 very neat stitches, a free tetanus shot and instructions not to get it wet), we had a lovely sunset drive across the Gower peninsula to a supper of chicken mornay, wine and chocolate. 

The excitement bar had been set high early in the holiday with Kiri’s escapade, but a choice of bacon sarnies or salmon and cream cheese bagels the next morning meant it didn’t drop. And this second day was “operation beach”. The beach towel with a picture of Zakynthos gently mocked us as it accompanied us down to the beach where we had an idyllic morning of body boarding (I maintain that it is perfectly normal to body board whilst wearing a flat cap), building an immense sand castle, and creating a driftwood and pebble structure around a picnic mat. And the sun shone. So. Much. Sun. Who needs Greek sun when you have Welsh sun, eh?

We were to return to that spot on the beach a couple more times – after a fish and chip supper that evening, we headed back down to the beach to light a driftwood fire, toast marshmallows and watch the sunset. The stuff that memories are made of. And the following day when we were joined by Kiri’s brother and had expanded our tent empire, we again headed to that spot, only to find that it had turned into the barricades from Les Miserables (according to the random boy guarding it). So we just picked a spot nearby and restarted construction. The sun was still shining, but it was windier and the sea was further out, so I decided not to brave the sea; with or without a tarpaulin and duck tape covering, but others did.

We’d designated that the Monday would be Greece Day. Soon the body boards made way for cheese boards as the kids headed off to the campsite playground with grandparents and we sampled a beautiful feta – Meredith Dairy goats cheese. Yoghurty smooth with beautiful flavour… a mighty fine cheese… and newly stocked by the Fine Cheese Company. Other preparations began in earnest for the Greek feast – spanakopita was assembled and baked in the motorhome oven, lamb kebabs assembled, ouzo poured and olives out. All plans of an “egglympics” were forgotten as food became the focus. Eating, rather than playing with it! A happy place. Our toddler “helped” with the washing up, and once in bed with sodden clothes drying outside, we settled down to play cards in the fading light. Now how did I manage to get sunburned ankles?!

Our penultimate day had a slow morning, then a long conversation over how we should play the day given that we’d got lunch booked at a pub. I felt very strongly about this, and chose to share my opinion quite assertively:

The consensus was that we’d do a round walk, starting along the beach, which today had much smaller surf, but loads of jellyfish and shells along the waterline. We then proceeded to climb up through the dunes full of diverse wild flowers and walk along the cliffs (well, the littlest one was carried). And eventually we arrived at the pub. At least I think it was a pub – I haven’t been in one for such a long time.

Turns out that things have changed – we had to order our drinks and food from an app (and no, they didn’t arrive on a rollercoaster). So, we order our drinks first – a couple of our party went for a diet coke, I went for a normal coke… only there wasn’t a normal coke on the menu – just “coke none”, so that was selected. Turns out it’s likely that it just meant “no coke” as all of the other drinks arrived, but that one didn’t, but fortunately a human rectified the situation. And then onto the food. As with previous times we’ve eaten out since having kids, I played it strategically; realistically I’d be finishing the kids’ food, so I ordered a “vegan Buddha bowl” – a fancy salad. And then the food arrived… but the three of us who ordered Buddha bowls didn’t get them… but there were 3 random bowls of cheesy chips that had no owners? Gotta love technology. It’ll never catch on!

After a very tasty lunch of cheesy chips with a little bit of everyone else’s food (peas, steak, pizza, tartar sauce…) we had a lovely wander back to the campsite through some woodland, past a babbling brook and a field of native Welsh alpacas. Some (mainly the children) still had room for an icecream to cool themselves down, whilst the rest just appreciated the shade of the gazebo. Rumours of Wales being a drizzly nation are definitely over-hyped! We each did our own thing for the rest of the afternoon – some headed off to swim, others to play – I had a lie down; extremely thankful for the extra adults whose presence enabled my rest. I woke to tales of “nappy-off” time around our campsite pitch from our toddler, who suddenly went from hyper mode to zero in the course of about 5 minutes – I got his nappy and pyjamas on and got him lying down in his bed whilst I turned around to zip up the tent and when I turned back, I was greeted by snoring! Before long, most of the kids were asleep and we settled down for a final game of canasta whilst watching the sunset.

Our final morning started at a very reasonable 6:30am and was fueled by a decadent salmbled egg roll (scrambled eggs with mushrooms and smoked salmon). I thought it should be salmumbled eggs, as mumbled eggs are scrambled eggs with mushrooms, but I was wrong and actually, I’ve had less experience with these things. Packing the car was as one might expect with two wee ones – we caught the smallest one “keying” the paint on the side of our car with sea shells and the other one was overheard saying “but can’t we take just one dead animal home with us?”. And then the other roof box strut snapped!

All this considered, we made it off the campsite soon after 9 and once we were on the faster roads, our little one drifted off to sleep, then the other one, then as our car has auto drive, we did too… oh, wait, our 15 year old Toyota didn’t have that fitted as standard! We arrived home to 27 degrees and bright sunshine at which point Kiri and I said “hi” to each other, realising quite how little time we’d spent together during the week. Nay bother though, we’ve got a few days booked in Fifi in early July, similar to last summer’s adventure. Now… time to fix that roof box!

Our roof box has been lonely. Nestled at the back of our shed for nearly two years, buried behind tarpaulin used as a sunshade in the garden and a variety of garden toys. Only a wasp valiantly attempting to build a nest in the shed (but regularly thwarted by us) has been keeping it company. So we can only imagine its excitement as it once more took its place on top of our car for an escape to Wales as soon as we were allowed in the Easter holidays in April.

Since the first lockdown last year we’ve slipped into a weekly routine of country walks in the surrounding area each Saturday with the kids, so it was going to be good to have a change of scenery, if not necessarily a break. As we crawled towards our self-catering in Llantwit Major (quite a mouthful for the young ‘uns to pronounce!) we realised everyone else was on the road too, so we had a resourceful lunch on the road, with the commentary of “Mummy’s teeth are being the knife”. It reminded me of a dinner we had on the M4 on our return from the lake district when Kiri and I were in the early stages of our relationship. I knew that Kiri was the one to marry when she made me a peanut butter and jam sandwich whilst crawling in a different sort of jam.

But anyway, back to Llantwit Major (or Llanilltud Fawr, as the locals call it). Well, actually, we hadn’t made it yet, due to traffic and then some exceptionally fierce speed bumps once we got to the town. Since our last holiday as a 4, the kids have grown to an age where we won’t suffer from a bit of deviation to the routine, so we had a laid back meander to the beach in the late afternoon. On our amble, there were red road signs warning that COVID-19 enforcement was in place; a reminder that we’re not out of the woods yet. Just a week previously, travel outside the immediate area in Wales wasn’t permitted, so the road down to the beach had been closed.

Oh, but what a beach. Absolutely incredible; jurassic cliffs, then a natural pavement of large, flat smooth stones, with natural terraces down to the sea and the occasional round bowling ball boulder. And in the cracks of the pavement were rockpools with diverse aquatic life. Stunning. The kids liked it too!

After spending a while getting our bearings, we tried to order a pizza on the way back from the beach, but due to low phone signal and a much longer wait for delivery rather than collection, I popped into the centre of the town to pick some up, along with some Farmer’s Pantry bacon that had come highly recommended by a local.

The following morning, that very same bacon had the starring role in our rolls – slabs of gammon slathered in ketchup – it certainly lived up to expectations. What better way to start the day? We were then joined by visiting family members after a bit of a kick around on a field and we all headed once more to the beach. Now when I was a child, you had to earn your icecream with a walk, or at least something strenuous. Not this day, but then again, I guess we are in the middle of a pandemic. It was interesting to watch the two approaches to eating icecream; one child neatly consumed a strawberry icecream, daintily nibbling the cone whilst the other went for the tactic of “if I aim the chocolate icecream at my face at speed, some will likely go into my mouth”. The biting of the bottom of the cone was a brave move, which sadly didn’t pay off, but the t-shirt was happy to share the chocolatey goodness.

After some minor rockpooling where we didn’t find much, we headed back to the town and wandered past the main church (the site of one of the original homes of Celtic Christianity) where we appreciated the architectural brilliance of old meeting new, whilst celebrating both. Mental note made – beautiful things happen when old and new are sensitively joined.

I then reminded myself of my Dad as I explained to our eldest what a mounting block outside an inn was for… and then Kiri and I had a conversation for far too long that was a clear indication of 12 months of weariness – should we take a bag into town to bring back beer, or should we drive around after our walk. I mean who cares!? But the endless micro-decisions brought on by the pandemic seem to make small decisions like this too hard to make!

Making the most of the lovely April weather, the following day we met with a different subset of family members; this time for a barbecue on the terraced beach, complete with Farmer’s Pantry burgers and sausages. This time in our rockpooling we found shrimps and lots of shells. And more shells. But no fossils. We’d wisely thought to bring a towel in case the kids got wet in the rock pools, but not a change of clothes, so had to head back to our accommodation for that. And then it rained… so we had to fashion an improvised shelter with a tarp. And then we saw that someone had stuck a picture of Cliff Richard on a sign warning about dangerous cliffs. Yet after all of this excitement, what was our eldest’s favourite part of the day? Toasting marshmallows over the embers of the barbecue.

By the third day, we’d got into a routine – get up, have breakfast, then find some more family members at an outside venue (probably a beach). This time we ventured back to England and arrived at Sand Bay, driving straight past the car park where we’d agreed to meet. 5 minutes later I saw my Dad do exactly the same thing. Now there must be something about arriving somewhere and fueling up – icecream one day, coffee this time… but sadly it was too early, so everywhere was shut. Instead we focused on building an historically accurate sandcastle. It was maybe a little too ambitious given the chilly temperature, as the kids preferred to run around – maybe our next beach visit?

A toasted sandwich for lunch was our first meal out in a year; sitting outside and trying to remember how to behave (us that is… not the kids!). We then returned to the beach, shifting a large piece of driftwood to make a makeshift windbreak, then running around attempting to get a freshly purchased boomerang to return. Sadly none of us managed it, and when I nearly decapitated my Dad we all agreed it was time for icecream (it had to happen!)

On our final day, unusually it was just the four of us. The two of us who need time alone to recharge had a bit of down time in the morning whilst Kiri and our youngest headed off to the beach, before we headed off to a different beach (Dunraven) in the afternoon. With a large expanse of sand, it was very exposed and cold, so we found ourselves some shelter and set up camp out of the wind, complete with tarp. We spent a very happy couple of hours redirecting a stream, climbing boulders, digging in the sand and balancing stones (Makka Pakka would be proud). We hadn’t even though about rockpooling until we stumbled across a starfish in one. We hadn’t even thought about fossils until we stumbled across a couple of ammonites! There was just one more thing the afternoon needed – an icecream. But it wasn’t to happen; the beach shop was shut.

The following morning we just about managed to squeeze everything into the car, but when we got back home, the roof box had clearly had too much excitement in one go, and snapped one of its struts. At least it has another one!

We settled in the garden with the deferred icecream from the previous day and dreamed forwards to the end of May. We’d had a foreign break planned for the half term for over a year… would we be able to go? Would restrictions allow it? Would illness get in the way? That, dear reader, is a story for another blog post.

So ask the opening words of our motorhome videos from a few years ago. Now, more than ever, the answer is “yes… please?”. This summer we were going to attempt to give our two wee ones a taste of motorhome life on the open road in France. Well, we all know that this didn’t happen. So when the chance came for Kiri and I to have a couple of nights away in a motorhome in late summer, we leapt at it. I say “a motorhome”, but this isn’t just any motorhome. Let us introduce you to Fifi.

Now you may remember Bertha, our Talbot Express Autotrail Chinook who will have just turned 30 this year? Well, according to latest MOT details, she’s had 8000 miles added since we sold her, so that’s not bad. But enough about Bertha – let’s talk Fifi. Fifi is a 6-berth Fiat Ducato Sunliving S70DF belonging to Kiri’s parents. She’s got a clever bathroom door, a snazzy control panel that shows you levels of water and batteries and a diesel cap that talks to you. But even more incredible than that – power steering, and a top speed higher than 60mph!

So, with two nights away, where would we go? To the top of Scotland? The middle of Wales? Land’s End? Nope – Forest of Dean. After a quick Lidl shop (the first time we’ve shopped together since March) and with Kiri at the helm, we powered our way to Mallards Pike. Only once did I have to hop out and guide us through a three point turn when we went the wrong way… and technically I didn’t have to hop out, as Fifi has a reversing camera, but old habits die hard. Once in the car park, we parked up, opened the windows, turned the gas on, fired up the fridge (no electric hook up you see) and boiled the kettle. It was nearly disastrous as we’d forgotten to buy tea bags, but luckily as Fifi is hired out by the Motorhome Holiday Company, we found a hidden stash and the day was saved.

So why were we at Mallard’s Pike? Go Ape. When you’re an exhausted parent, it’s the natural place to go and relax, right? Following a socially-distanced briefing, we donned our harnesses and set off into the trees for a couple of hours of fun. According to Kiri, it would have been more fun if we hadn’t had to wear harnesses. According to both of us, it would have been more fun if we hadn’t had a cuppa just before spending two hours in the tree tops. But saying that, once we’d done our final Tarzan swing, slid down our last zip wire, filling our shoes and covering our backs with bark chips, we agreed that it was over too quickly. And if we’re after climbing with no safety ropes, we know where to go.

Sadly, but understandably, it’s not possible to stay overnight in any of the Forestry Commission car parks in the Forest of Dean, but we’d noted a spot just down the road where we could spend the first night; Lydney Harbour. Our only adventure was when we went down a road that said it was unsuitable for vehicles over 7 tonnes (we were 3.5) and found ourselves in a very narrow spot. The cars coming the other way were very understanding as they all reversed, and the hand signals they gave us were certainly rather European. We styled it out though; as the livery of Fifi clearly shows the logo of the Motorhome Holiday Company people probably assumed we were novices, when actually we should have known better.

Putting our experience of parking on chocks to good use (Kiri’s learned a lot since her first experience 7 years ago), we settled in for the night at Lydney Harbour, cooking up halloumi, mushrooms and steak and cracking open a beer. We learned that the cupboards in Fifi weren’t designed for the vertically challenged when we were attacked by some nuts, but we put that to one side as we went for a sunset walk around the harbour with lovely views down the Severn estuary. The tide was out and on our return to Fifi a V-shape of geese flew low over us, and a lone feather drifted down to us. Celtic Christians used the wild goose as a symbol for the Holy Spirit. Co-incidence?

We retired to Fifi and received news from home of an “interesting” bedtime from the grandparents.

We’ve had a lovely afternoon with some successes that have made us smile… bedtime wasn’t one of them but we’re there now

Been there. Many nights actually. So our reaction was to crack open a second beer (unheard of these days) and play crib, whilst pondering that drinking in a car park is generally frowned upon… yet legitimate when in a motorhome. We’d splashed out on special beer from St. Peter’s brewery, as they do the finest gluten free stout around, so maybe that makes things better? The evening drew on and random cars pulled up for a short while before driving off – pretty standard in our experience of overnight stops in car parks. Finally Kiri announced “I feel so tired – it feels like the middle of the night; what time is it?”. Readers, it was ten past nine.

The following morning was a lazy one (well, for me – Kiri went for a run), watching the birds – cormorants, woodpeckers, robins, pigeons, but alas, no wigeons. What’s a wigeon? Apparently an estuary bird, but we think the sign writer was having a laugh. As we weren’t on the continent, I couldn’t indulge in the standard Schoko muesli motorhome breakfast, but we were able to slip back into our routine of reading the bible together, thinking about walking and listening to God. And what better way to put it into practice than to go for an amble around the local area. Now we like to get off the beaten track and at times we commented that it seemed like no-one had been on these footpaths for years… until we realised we weren’t actually on the footpaths! A shortcut involving barbed wire, brambles and stinging nettles got us back on track. Forget walking and listening to God (well, maybe not) – we should have walked and consulted a map! The two and a half mile jaunt ended with a woodland path along the cliff, which, according to the harbour regeneration project noticeboard (from around 2005) had some lovely views. Turns out trees can grow a lot in 15 years… maybe the noticeboard will be updated as part of the current regeneration project?

The tide was back in (I won’t bore you with details of tidal estuaries) as we returned to Bertha (oh dear, Freudian slip – I mean Fifi) for a lunch of cheese. And then it was time for some planning. With another night to go, where could we go for more adventure? What could we do? With COVID-19 cases on the rise again and the new government announcement about laws regarding groups greater than 6 we ideally wanted to avoid campsites and pub car parks… but there wasn’t much choice with regards to wild camping in the immediate area. Kiri decided to lie down and nap to aid the decision; the first time she’s had an afternoon nap since she was pregnant (before you ask… just no!) and I settled into a book. I glanced up from my book with a start when some youths in a car next to us were examining the various dents in their motor and mentioned that one of them was from a camper van. Fifi winced too. But they moved on without any drama and I returned to my book.

By the time the nap was over, we decided we’d stay put. Now one of the joys of motorhoming for us is the moving around, setting up camp in a new place, exploring the area and living a simple life from a mobile base. But as a parent, it’s rare to have time where you think “I don’t have anything to do”, so I continued reading and Kiri did some reading, then some sketching. If we’d followed our original plan of 2 weeks in Fifi in France with the kids, we wouldn’t have been afforded that luxury and it would have been a very different experience. We follow the adventures of Marmalade Tour (a family of four, with two young children, full time motorhoming) on Twitter with equal parts envy and respect – could we do that? Possibly not with our children the age they are… but maybe in the future?

Tea this second night was the simple, hearty, staple Bertha tea of pasta in a vegetable and tomato sauce, which we followed with another evening stroll, before washing up and settling down for more beer and crib. Mid-evening a group of youths congregated in the car park and started playing loud music, but they were no hassle. It’s lucky they didn’t stay for long, as I was ready to burst out of the door and bust some moves to their sick beats. That would have shown them. Instead I was thrashed at crib by Kiri. Once dark, we headed out of the motorhome to empty our grey waste and we spent 10 minutes or so just marvelling at the stars, whilst bats darted around above our heads. It was a bit nippy though, so we headed back to the motorhome and Kiri commented that she hoped the earlier youths had coats. We then had a pretty uneventful night again… apart from being woken up by youths (maybe the same ones who had returned once they’d got their coats?) setting off fireworks whilst holding them in their hands. We prayed for their safety and ours before rolling back over into a deep slumber.

Any good holiday has to end with a bacon butty for breakfast. We cooked the bacon alongside some frozen mushrooms (next time we’ll learn how to turn the fridge down!), before turning off the gas, rolling off the chocks and stowing everything away. It was my first chance to drive Fifi and I certainly noticed the increased length and width over Bertha, whilst also being disconcerted by how little effort it took to turn the steering wheel! I soon got into the swing of it, although I welcomed the new road markings that had appeared in one village since we’d passed it on the way in – they must have known I’m a less experienced driver than Kiri! And before we knew it, we were home – just in time for me to roll into my first meeting of the day (luckily with no video, so they couldn’t see that I hadn’t showered for a couple of days!)

So, reflections on the two days. Not quite the shape of break that we’d envisaged for this summer, but definitely what we needed. Would we resurrect our original plan for Fifi with the kids? No question! So many things reminded us of how much we love the motorhoming lifestyle. Would it be challenging? Of course, but we love a challenge. And now let me put on my 1970s infomercial voice.

Are you dreaming of a couple of nights away from it all? Do you want all of your facilities in one place? Do you want that place to be somewhere of your choosing? Then why not book Fifi? Just visit the Motorhome Holiday Company website to find out more. Terms and conditions apply; you may fall in love with motorhoming and end up buying your own.

Lego has been a mutual love of ours throughout our relationship. From a Lego-themed wedding programme, to the opening credits of the videos documenting our motorhome trip around Europe, to the Lego calendar that we’ve added our family to. But never have we dedicated quite so much of our time to playing with Lego as we have been during lockdown.

We’ve already written a brief blog post for the Gloucester Diocese site (the title wasn’t chosen by us!) about how we got into making short Lego stop-motion animation videos of bible stories and you can watch all of our videos on our YouTube channel:

Several people have asked us how we make the videos though, so here’s a bit of a behind the scenes look at the end to end process.

1. Choose the bible passage and script it

Our starting point is the lectionary. What’s a lectionary? It’s a centrally-curated suggested list of bible readings for particular dates. Our current church chooses to follow the lectionary on a Sunday, which for each week gives a reading from the Old Testament, a psalm, a gospel reading and then a reading from elsewhere in the New Testament. Once we’ve chosen which one we’re going to animate, Kiri distils the passage down to capture the essence of the message. This involves a whole wealth of complexity, including reading multiple translations, looking up what other people have said about the passage, working out the simplest way to convey that message, quite often a debate over the wording… and a lot of prayer!

2. Identifying new Lego to buy

Depending on the passage, there may be parts of it that we can’t easily represent with our current Lego. For example, trawling eBay for job lots of minifigures for big crowds, buying foliage for the parable of the sower and buying fish for the Kingdom of God being like a huge catch of fish. The rest of the time we improvise with what we’ve got. It’s always touch and go as to whether the Lego will arrive in time for the filming, but to date it’s worked out OK for us.

3. Building the sets and the characters

It’s fair to say that the sets have been getting ever more elaborate as we’ve progressed with the videos. It’s not been a deliberate decision; we’ve just got a bit too engrossed! Where possible we’ll try to re-purpose one set for multiple scenes, but in fairness as the building of the sets is so fun, we don’t really mind building multiple sets (although we often have to dismantle part of one set to have enough pieces for another). This is one part of the process that we can do with the children around; Lego spread across the living room floor and all of us on our hands and knees playing together. And sometimes we spend disproportionate lengths of time building bits that only feature for a few seconds (you don’t want to know how long it took to build the tractor!)

4. Recording the script and editing the audio

Once we’ve got the script, we record the audio with our eldest. Several people have asked how a pre-schooler can remember all of the lines like that. We’ll share a secret; it’s not done from memory. We set up a laptop with a USB microphone and Audacity. I then break down the script into short chunks (sometimes even sub-sentence chunks), reading out each section in turn, which are then parroted back. We do it all in one take (although occasionally repeat a line or two) as it’s unfair to ask a child of that age to record multiple takes. Once recorded, I edit the audio in Audacity; removing my voice, trying to make sentences seamless and smoothing out the volume that we get from being different distances away from the microphone.

5. Setting up the “studio”

We don’t have a dedicated place in our house where we can shoot the footage. Our first video was shot in our eldest’s bedroom, on the bed with the white wall behind and natural lighting from the side. However, as you’ll see from the final footage, the set moved around a fair amount; not very ideal. After that, we moved the “studio” to the kitchen, twisting the ceiling lighting to point at the kitchen table, putting a white bedsheet over a couple of taller toys (to give a white background), and weighting down the set board with a large bag of popcorn, a heavy candle or some tins of food to stop movement. For our latest film we’ve invested in an angle-poise lamp with a daylight bulb to give us a bit more control over lighting, plus it means when I’m doing the washing up, I can actually see what I’m doing as the kitchen lights are now pointing in more sensible directions.

6. Setting up the camera

Some people love the techy details. So, we use a Nikon D5100 camera with a 18-200mm lens on a tripod with an infrared remote release so we don’t have to touch the camera to get the shot. For the majority of our shots we want a fairly large depth of field (so that most things in the shot are in focus), so we set it to aperture priority with aperture somewhere between f/14 and f/32. Once we’ve set the focal point for the sequence, we’ll make sure that the focus is set to manual so that we don’t get any variation of what is in focus.

7. Shooting the footage

The bulk of our time is spent shooting the individual frames that will be stitched together. Each of our videos is made up of between 600 and 800 shots, that we then stitch together at 6 frames per second. Now if we were doing this properly, we would take the recording of the script and work out exactly how many frames we’d need per scene. We’d also probably synchronise how we animate particular things – for example when Kiri films someone walking she’ll move the arms too (attention to detail), whereas I focus more on as an accurate a portrayal of leg movement as I can (it’s incredibly frustrating when I forget which leg I’ve just moved!). With multiple people in a scene, we should also probably document the path and movement for each character, but instead we just wing it.

You’ll notice that there are two styles of scene we’ve employed; the 3D standard scene, then what we refer to as “grey board” scenes, where we shoot with the camera directly above a grey board and shoot in 2D.

Our most complicated scenes to film so far have been:

• Flocks of sheep – as we didn’t stick them down onto the board, we found that when they’re close together, if you knock one sheep over, the rest will fall like dominoes!
• Jerusalem street scene – we had so many different characters doing different things that it was tough to keep track of what everyone was doing. We worked on this scene together, with Kiri moving some characters and me moving the others
• The docks – rocking a boat, moving people, having fish “flying” through the air – there was a lot going on to try to co-ordinate
• Everyone going into heaven – working out a path for every character to take as they were funnelled in through a gate, and then getting them to follow that path, whilst avoiding other people was quite a challenge

With scenes like these, it can take upwards of 30 seconds to move everything for each frame, whereas for simpler scenes with just one character moving, it’s more like 10 seconds per frame.

And we must give a shout-out to blu-tac – with particularly tricky things that people are holding, or balancing on, we use a strategic bit of blu-tac to hold it in place. If you freeze a few of the frames, you might be able to spot a bit still!

8. Bringing it all together

By this stage we’ve got several hundred frames and an audio file and what happens next is fully in Kiri’s realm; with her degree in graphic design (majoring in moving image), she works her magic. She uses the DaVinci Resolve video editing software (version 15, as our computer can’t handle version 16) to import the frames and choose the frame rate, add transition effects and synchronise the audio. It’s at this point that she’ll come to me and say “I need a sheep sound” or “I need a woohoo”, so I’ll dutifully record the sound effect (normally on my phone). Once these are incorporated and a title has been added, it’s time to render the film, which we then upload to YouTube.

To start with, our plan was to record one of these every week during lockdown, but as the whole process is fairly time-consuming, we found that we were working on the Lego films most evenings. Don’t get me wrong; we’re happy to spend date night drinking beer and playing with Lego (either building sets or moving characters tiny amounts). We thrive on being creative together, but every night was a bit too much! We then moved to once a fortnight… which worked when our eldest was spending some time at pre-school, but now we’re in the summer holidays, we might reduce it to once every 3 weeks.

We’ve had several people asking us whether they can use these films at holiday clubs, in services, in assemblies etc. The answer will always be “yes!” – we made these to be used and shared. And if you want to be notified of when there’s a new film, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel.

When will we stop making these films? Who knows!

Coronavirus. An uncomfortable time for all of us, in different ways. But some great things are coming out of the crisis – the incredible sense of community and the way that people are serving others. We’ve tried to do our own little bit and part of that has involved helping to move a lot of our church communications online. Nearly a year ago now, I set up a system in our church to record sermons – pretty simple, a line out from the sound desk into a laptop with a program to record the audio. We then upload it to our church website. Simples! But what about those members of our congregation who don’t have access to a computer?

On 26 March I read a really interesting blog post about how you could use a service called Twilio to allow people to call a phone number and listen to an online audio file. I dropped an email to our vicar to ask whether there was a need for something similar in our church… and the response was positive; over 20 members of our congregation without access to email or the internet.

So, it was worthwhile doing, but I’m lazy and the method cited in the blog post involved changing an audio file every week. I don’t really want to be doing that – plus I don’t want to be a single point of failure in a system. Everything else with regards to our sermons is automated – we upload it once to a custom post type that I’ve created in WordPress, then we use IFTTT to detect when there’s a new sermon and post a link to the sermon to our Facebook and Twitter accounts. Then separately I’ve created an itunes-formatted RSS feed, at which I’ve pointed Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, PlayerFM and Spotify so people can be served the sermons from their favourite podcast platform. So let’s see if we can automate this phone call stuff.

The first thing I do when creating a new thing is to find out whether it actually is a new thing, so I check whether something exists out there already. This was the 27 March… it didn’t, so I got started. Using the blog post as a starting point, I got stuck into familiarising myself with Javascript (the language that the functions needed to be written in), and wrestling with some libraries to help me out. Oh, and there was also the thing of entertaining young children, working from home etc that meant I couldn’t dedicate much time to it. I finally finished on 6 April and it was all working.

And then I found out that someone had already done it and blogged about it on 3 April, with what I think is a neater solution (using the rss-parser library). The Switched On Network method enables you to point to any standalone MP3 file. Nick Holcombe’s method consumes an RSS feed, and gives you a menu of sermons to select from. My method is somewhere in the middle.

So, here’s my code in case anyone wants to see my alternative way (follow the instructions in the other blog posts to get Twilio up and running… the only extra bit you’ll need for mine is to add an npm dependency on the node-fetch library – version 2.6.0).

url = "https://www.stpaulstephenglos.org.uk/join-in/sermon-podcast/";

const fetch = require('node-fetch');
const DOMParser = require('xmldom').DOMParser;

exports.handler = function(context, event, callback) {
	// create the voice response object
	let twiml = new Twilio.twiml.VoiceResponse();
    
    // load the first item from the RSS feed (https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/03/introduction-to-fetch)
    fetch(url)
  .then(
    function(response) {
      if (response.status !== 200) {
        console.log('Looks like there was a problem. Status Code: ' +
          response.status);
        // end the call and hang up
	    twiml.hangup();
	    callback(null, twiml);
        return;
      }

      // Examine the text in the response
      response.text().then(function(data) {
        
        // create a parser, give it the RSS feed and tell it to parse as XML
        parser = new DOMParser();
        xmlfeed = parser.parseFromString(data,"text/xml");

        // extract the data from within the channel
        const channel = xmlfeed.getElementsByTagName("channel")[0];

        // get the title and description
        podcastTitle = channel.getElementsByTagName("title")[0].textContent;
        podcastDescription = channel.getElementsByTagName("description")[0].textContent;

        console.log(podcastTitle);
        console.log(podcastDescription);

        // Say the welcome text
        twiml.say('Welcome to ' + podcastTitle);
        twiml.say(podcastDescription);

        // get the first item 
        const podcastItem1 = channel.getElementsByTagName("item")[0];

        itemTitle = podcastItem1.getElementsByTagName("title")[0].textContent;
        itemDescription = podcastItem1.getElementsByTagName("itunes:subtitle")[0].textContent;
        itemDurationTotal = podcastItem1.getElementsByTagName("itunes:duration")[0].textContent;

        // use the double not bitwise operator to round to the minutes
        itemDurationMinutes = ~~(itemDurationTotal / 60);
        // use the modulus to get the seconds 
        itemDurationSeconds = itemDurationTotal % 60;

        itemUrl = podcastItem1.getElementsByTagName("enclosure")[0].getAttribute("url");
        
        console.log(itemTitle);
        console.log(itemDescription);
        console.log(itemDurationMinutes);
        console.log(itemDurationSeconds);
        
        // Introduce the item
        twiml.say('You are about to hear ' +itemTitle);
        twiml.say(itemDescription);
        twiml.say('This is ' +itemDurationMinutes+ ' minutes and ' +itemDurationSeconds+ ' seconds');
        twiml.say('Please wait while we load the sound file');
        
        // Play the item
        twiml.play(itemUrl);

        // end the call and hang up
	    twiml.hangup();
	    callback(null, twiml);
        return;
      });
    }
  )
  .catch(function(err) {
    console.log('Fetch Error', err);
    
    // end the call and hang up
	twiml.hangup();
	callback(null, twiml);
  });
};

Before I close, it’s probably worth a brief note on SOP and CORS (no, not SOP and The Corrs… although check them out!). This is all about permissions for scripts to access resources that are stored on other sites. The best description of it that I could find when trying to work out why my code wasn’t working was at javascript.info.

In essence, I needed to make a minor addition to the .htaccess file on the church website; we’re happy to allow GET requests from anywhere, so this is the code I added:

Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Methods "GET"
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Headers "Content-Type"

But hang on, there are other services consuming the RSS feed (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Player.fm, Spotify)… how come these permissions are not needed for the other feeds? My educated guess (although please do correct me) is because this code uses javascript (which is a client-server interaction) whereas the other podcast feed code will be server-server. SOP and CORS only apply for client-server conversations.

If you fancy using my code, it should work for you by just changing the URL to be the URL of your podcast RSS feed. If your podcast is available on ApplePodcasts or Soundcloud and you don’t know your RSS feed URL, then you can use the handy getrssfeed.com tool to find it.

Am I little irked that I could have saved myself some time an effort if I’d kept on searching to see if anyone had done this? Yes. Am I pleased that I managed to get something working on my own? Yes. Is the code meeting a need? Yes. And actually, that’s the main thing.

Stay safe.