Airstream Camping 2025 - July Summer Days

Camping again, only this time it's in the summer holidays. We thought we'd given up rubbing shoulders with the family crowds now that we're retired, but a slot came up at our favourite campground and it was too good to turn down. I thought that we might be the only seniors around but no, the place is full of them, and not all are accompanied by grandchildren either. It seems odd that when you have quiet campgrounds in May and June, and again in September and October, that any retirees would opt to camp when the younger families are scrabbling for sites; it seems almost unfair. It's not unlike seeing all the old geezers grocery shopping on a Saturday when they, we, have had all week to do it. I don't know, maybe Ontario Parks should drop the Senior's discount for July and August to give the young 'uns a chance? Anyway, we're here, we're seniors, and it's very warm.

This past week we'd treated Towed Haul to a clean up inside and out, and she was gleaming. Or rather I thought she was gleaming. Being a total cheapskate, I'd used a pretend Chamois leather to wipe the water droplets off the skin of the trailer and it left horrible smear marks all over, which serves me right for being cheap. Not in my control, though, were the lovely birds that had crapped on the back of the camper; c'est la vie I guess.

Prepping to leave on Monday, we had set a departure time, but that disappeared into the Coleslaw Vortex. As I'm sure you know, the Coleslaw Vortex is when your thrifty wife decides to use up some veggies that are laying around to make a Coleslaw, when you should have been hitching up. Frugality is important, and leaving on time for a short run to Rondeau really isn't, so I'm not complaining, and we were only thirty-five minutes off schedule. These things happen.

At Rondeau, we hit a line of other trailers at the water fill station. It's not the best idea to travel with a full freshwater tank, not least because even with our little camper, that near-fifty gallons of water weighs quite a lot. So most people will travel dry, or almost dry, and fill up at the campground, at least at Provincial Parks that don't have a water supply on the sites themselves. There were two trailers ahead of us at the single water point, and it turned out that the one filling had only just started. We waited, with the car engine running to keep its A/C going in the heat, and we waited. While the first one was filling, another trailer not in the line pulled up on the opposite side of the water point and started to unfurl a hose. There is indeed a tap at the base of the water point, and he connected his hose to that while the first fellow was still filling and started to fill his own tank. While I applaud his ingenuity, he had both jumped the line up, and made a very slow water point run at half-speed for the guy still filling from the proper water point. That's not really cricket, is it? Still, there was nothing we could do. While we waited for the person in front of us to fill, I emptied the black and grey water tanks of the residue from last week's cleaning efforts, and we continued to wait. Goodness, that trailer must have had a massive water tank because it took absolutely ages to fill. All in all we waited a good forty minutes before we could fill, and by that point I'm thinking that one watering point really isn't sufficient. 

There was a reason for my growing anxiety, and that was the fact that Emma and Charlie were due on site, and we had effectively lost our whole time buffer. Trying to set up while Charlie "helps" isn't easy, particularly in the heat, so we were rushing around and getting ever more flustered trying to beat their arrival. Sadly, we didn't quite make it. Curses!

Charlie wants everything at once, of course, so we had to finish setting up with the whirlwind around us. We did manage to get him away with his mother for a while, which enabled me to finish up, but on their return, things were back into rushing mode.

We had promised Charlie a fire and roasted marshmallows, so in the heat of the afternoon, he and I built up a kindling tower in the fire pit, set it ablaze and stacked some logs on top as the flames built up. It was a good fire, even if I do say so myself, but in the very hot sun it all seemed a bit unnecessary. DW had prepared some baking potatoes, in three layers of tin foil, so I positioned those at the base of the fire, while Emma and Charlie did their marshmallow thing. 

Now here's a Canadian thing I don't fully understand, S'mores. S'mores are sweet campfire treats that people go nuts for, but I just don't get. Take a Graham Cracker, put a square of milk chocolate on it, stand a freshly roasted marshmallow on the chocolate, then cover with another Graham Cracker. Squeeze the whole contraption together and eat it. The cracker crumbles, the melting chocolate goes everywhere, while your hands and mouth are covered in the sticky and crumby goo. Emma loves them, Charlie thinks he does, DW spills their contents all down her front and I look on uncomprehendingly. As I said, I don't really get it.

The upside of the fire, though, was three perfectly cooked baked potatoes. If you plan to cook in a fire, though, make sure you double or triple wrap the potatoes in tin foil, and turn them regularly. Oh, and a perfectly set fire helps as well - all that training with the Scouts wasn't wasted.

Once our visitors had departed, things settled down. We tidied the site up a bit, put a few things away, poured some drinks and retired to the bug tent for the evening. I'd strung some coloured lights up in there and it was quite jolly watching the light fade and listening to the campground quietening down. Despite the number of people here, by nine it was pretty quiet and while we couldn't see them, the Raccoons were abroad, if the noises outside were anything to go by. I hadn't intended to have an early night, but I was in bed by eleven, which is early for me, and in the Land of Nod almost immediately. 

Tuesday is going to be a bit of an odd day, but with fine weather forecast, I'm sure we'll make the most of it.

Blighty 2025 - Flying Home

Flight day dawned. All the bags had been repacked and reweighed, and all of them, thankfully, came in under the 23Kg limit. I eschewed breakfast on the grounds that I didn't need to spend another £20 on food when I'd done nothing but eat over the past month, and we moved seamlessly to getting the bags downstairs and loaded into the rental car again.

It's only a couple of minutes drive from the Hyatt Place to Terminal five, but I still manged to be in the wrong lane, and subsequently on the wrong road when trying to get back to the car hire drop off point. I managed to correct things without going too far out of our way, but still struggled with the complicated instructions on how to get to the drop-of point. Essentially it was a case of driving almost all the way around the T5 Sofitel Hotel before finding the entrance. They have a kind all 360 degree scanner you drive through when you leave, and again when you return. I guess it compares dents and scratches and the like without having someone come out and check. To the best of my knowledge, I hadn't added to the car's patina, so that was all good. Apart from dropping the key back in to the office, we didn't have to do anything other than unload the car - onto three trolleys - make our way back through the Sofitel and head into the departures hall of Terminal 5.

Dumping the bags was the first order of the day, so we did a self-service bag drop and boarding pass collection, which was all we needed to do having checked in online the night before. DW and I sat and relaxed before going through security, while Emma and Charlie went for a ride on the T5 Pod system for twenty minutes.

Going through security was relatively painless, for us at least. Emma had her bag opened and manually checked thanks to her carrying a big, resin, Lilliput Village church in her carry on baggage. Time had slipped away quickly, so we decided to head straight out to the gate, which was about as far away as you get from where we had arrived airside. You can walk it, and we have done that in the past, but this take we took the "transit", a little underground train that doesn't run often enough to make it a comfortable trip because it's always so crowded. Heathrow seems to specialize in not realising how many people move through their place; I remembered with horror the wholly inadequate lifts in Terminal 2, lifts that had no viable alternative, and were always bursting at the seams. The world's busiest airport really needs to do better, I think.

Our transport for the flight home waiting at the gate, and with the power of the Internet at hand, I interrogated it and found out that our aircraft was a 2025 Boeing 787 Dreamliner. It has come back to London from Barbados the previous day, and Toronto was its only flight this warm afternoon. How informative.

In our World Traveller Plus cabin, I was surprised to see the seat configuration was 2-3-2 and not 2-4-2 as it had been on the Airbus on the way over. Indeed, the seats were bigger, better padded and altogether an improvement over the outward leg. The Dreamliner also has fancy LED windows that lighten or darken at the push of button and, more pertinently for the crew, could be controlled as one from the flight deck, so no messing about with getting people to lift the window blinds for take off. 

We were sitting over the wing so were treated to a lot of wind and engine noise, and the sight of the Boeing's wing lifting and wobbling. It's a good job I understand the principals of flight or I might be a bit worried. The last time I flew on a 787, I remember it being quieter, but I'd trade the noise for the better seats any day. Flights are as flights are, pretty boring. The food was better this time, and I did enjoy a short while with Charlie on my lap watching Paw Patrol, which is so much better without the sound.

Then we were banking out over Lake Erie for a rare northward landing at Toronto Pearson Airport, getting a great view of the Islands and the CN Tower, which was all the better as it had been cloudy since we passed over Ireland. The airport wasn't much fun, though. Terminal 3 was packed, the customs kiosks were playing up and it took an age for two of our bags to show up in the arrivals hall, thanks to a technical fault in the conveyor system. The magic of Park and Ride was working well, though, as a Valet Parking bus was waiting at the curb, and as I'd already notified them through their phone app that we'd landed, the car was sat in the lot waiting for us. I do like Park and Fly, and it did take the edge off the fact that it had taken us two hours to clear the airport. 

Opening up the back of car to load our many bags, it was quite comforting to see that our Canadian (made in Ontario) Honda CRV had quite a bit more luggage space than our Skoda hire car, so the game of baggage Jenga wasn't quite so difficult. Mind you, two bags "self-unloaded" when we opened the tailgate at the On Route in Cambridge.

We arrived home tired, of course, and out of sorts given that it was 3am according to our body clocks. Still, we'd completed quite the epic journey. A month, give or take a day, and no major dramas (bar the Manchester accommodation), and we did most of the things we'd set out to do. Now, as we Brits are wont to say "we need a holiday to get over the holiday". Next week, people, next week.