As we come to the end of 2020, I wanted to try to sum up the year we’ve had and set out some ideas for 2021. ‘A year like no other.’ So say all the social commentators and historians. True, but you could say that about every year, couldn’t you? The difference with 2020 is that nobody could have predicted anything that’s happened and continues to happen. The whole world has changed. Every single human has been affected. It’s completely mind-blowing and extremely difficult to make any sense of it.
Vicky, who runs the fabulous Seascape Café nearby, posted this earlier today. I think she’s got it spot on!!
In this article
The Pandemic
Of course, I have to write about the P-word! Covid 19 has dominated world news and occupied most of my waking thoughts for the majority of 2020.
In Tobago
Oh, to be back at the start of the year – to be in a state of blissful ignorance about the life-changing virus that was about to spread across the globe. We were coming to the end of our second six-month stay in Tobago and looking forward to showing the island to our family who were due to fly out from the UK. We had so many plans, not just for their three-week stay with us, but for our onward travel to Thailand via New York.
As for so many others, all of our plans were cancelled. It was incomprehensible how quickly our dreams came crashing to the ground. We watched, incredulous, as the number of people infected by the virus increased day after day and countries closed their borders to try to control this silent killer.
Trinidad and Tobago reacted swiftly and strongly to the global pandemic despite having zero cases in the beginning. The borders were slammed shut, all schools were immediately closed (and remain so as I write this!), non-essential shops, restaurants, and bars were told to close their doors. Citizens were limited to meeting in groups of only five. Even the beaches were closed. Swimming in lakes, rivers, and the ocean was forbidden. The rules were strictly enforced.
We were unable to get a seat on any of the flights laid on at the end of March to evacuate people back to Europe as we were not in possession of a valid ticket (we had one to Thailand whose borders were also closed!). So we found ourselves stranded on a tropical island with a handful of other travellers and our island-based friends watching with horror as the world fell apart. I don’t think it’s melodramatic to put it that way. Friends back in the UK kept telling us ‘there are worse places to be stranded’. Of course, there are! We felt safe – if a little stir-crazy that we could see the sea from our deck but weren’t allowed to swim! We were also worried about family and had personal matters to sort out which we couldn’t do from Tobago.
So, when the British government organised a repatriation flight at the beginning of June, we made sure we were on it. It seemed a little counter-intuitive to be leaving a place of safety and flying into the eye of the storm, but it also felt like the right thing to do. Had we known how long the situation would go on for, or how long it would be before we could return to our second home, we might not have been so relieved as we boarded our flight from Barbados to the UK!
In the UK
Unfamiliar Language
We arrived back in the UK in June. It felt very different from the country we’d left a few months earlier. Unused to the strict lockdown protocols in place during the first lockdown, we fell foul of one or two rules and found it hard to adjust to the ‘new normal’, just one of the phrases that had come into everyday use during our absence.
Other examples of pandemic vocabulary include:
- pandemic
- social distancing
- self-isolation
- community spread
- contact tracing
- flattening the curve
- long covid
- herd immunity
- immunocompromised
- shielding
- second wave (and now, third wave!)
- PPE
- quarantine
- R number
- super spreader
- lockdown
- key workers
- covidiot
- sanitiser
- doomscrolling
… and so many more! It’s a whole new language!
And, while I’m on the subject, the most used word of the year? UNPRECEDENTED!! Yes, it has been!
Optimism
Back in June, it did, however, feel like the worst was probably over. The numbers of new infections and hospital admissions were coming down. Summer was just around the corner. There was a sense of optimism in the air.
When the lockdown rules were eased in early July, we welcomed the opportunity to get out and explore more of England and Scotland. It was frustrating at times. The need to book everything in advance took away any spontaneity from our travels, but we were grateful to have some freedom. We followed all the guidance and made sure we kept ourselves and others safe. Unfortunately, not everyone did the same!
Lockdown 2
As schools reopened in September, case numbers began to rise. There were reports of people suffering from ‘pandemic fatigue’ and more and more incidents of individuals breaking the rules. A second lockdown to try and stem the tide was inevitable. Fortunately, we managed to see our families before the restrictions made it impossible. We even celebrated Christmas together at the end of October!
Back at home, we watched as stricter lockdown measures were reintroduced across Europe and the rest of the world. It was a huge blow. How long would we have to live like this?
Lockdown 2 was definitely not taken as seriously as the first one. News of a vaccine being available sooner rather than later made people careless. In our town, non-essential shops were open, people had forgotten about social distancing, and lots of groups congregated on or near the beach. We mainly stayed indoors!
Tighter Restrictions
When the second lockdown ended, the country was divided into tiers depending on the number of covid cases and the local capacity to deal with them. We went straight into tier 3 which, at the time, was the highest tier with the strictest rules.
Plans to relax the restrictions and allow people to get together for five days over Christmas had to be abandoned after a new, more virulent strain of the virus was found in Kent. Numbers of new infections rocketed, as did the number of people dying from the virus. As I write this at year-end, we are recording over 50,000 new cases and almost 1,000 deaths every day. It feels very scary!
We are now in the new tier 4 which basically means ‘Stay at Home’!! We will!!
A Light at the End of the Tunnel
Although life feels pretty grim at the moment, there is hope. We now have two vaccines approved for use in the UK. The vaccination programme has started in earnest and the experts tell us that, by summer 2021, we can start to return to some sort of pre-Covid normality. Fingers crossed!
Brexit
Yes, that other word that has crept into the English language! It’s been around a lot longer than the covid-related words, though. It’s four and a half years since the UK voted (wrongly, in my humble opinion) to leave the EU. After a lot of shenanigans, we officially left on January 31st 2020 and our flag was removed from the European parliament building.
Since then, however, we have been in a transition period. For most of us, this has meant that nothing has really changed. We have continued our lives as before.
The transition period, though, ends today (31st December 2020). So, after a year of barely hearing a mention of Brexit because the pandemic dominated every news bulletin, in the week before Christmas, suddenly it was back! Brexit was once again on everyone’s lips as we wondered if a trade deal could be agreed before time ran out. It was touch and go. In these uncertain times, it meant even more worry for European business. How could they possibly make plans for 2021?
At the eleventh hour, an agreement was made on Christmas Eve. It was ratified by the European parliament a few days later and British MPs were recalled from their Christmas break yesterday to debate the issue. After a scant four-hour discussion, it was passed by a large majority. Many MPs voted ‘yes’ as ‘any deal is better than no deal’. The general public is yet to discover what the agreement means for them. Whatever it means, it comes into effect tomorrow! We await with bated breath!
Travel
As my readers know, travel is not a hobby for us – it’s our raison d’être – the thing we live to do. For the last twenty years, we have travelled constantly but slowly. We have spent extended periods of time in France, Turkey, Italy, Vietnam, and Russia, and visited over 40 other countries in between. We love our lifestyle. We never imagined for one moment that we would have our wings clipped and be unable to travel!
As I’ve said already, we began 2020 in Castara, Tobago. In February, we travelled to St Vincent and the Grenadines as a way of avoiding the red tape involved in extending our visas. We had a fabulous time exploring the main island of St Vincent, as well as the smaller island of Bequia. Little did we know that our future plans to ‘do’ New York on our way to Thailand to work for six months would all come to nothing.
Before the pandemic appeared, we devised our 60 to 60 challenge to visit 60 countries before I turn 60 in 2025. Re-reading the article now, it seems like a pipe dream. Let’s hope that it is just postponed, not totally out of reach!
As I write this, we should have been in Africa, approaching the end of an epic overlanding trip from Cape Town to Zanzibar. It was supposed to be a celebration of Mark’s 60th birthday, a milestone he passed in July. The first leg was booked with Intrepid who we toured Morocco with, and the second leg was with Dragoman, the company we used when we travelled through Ethiopia and West Africa. Obviously, all of this was cancelled. It was incredibly disappointing. Both companies have been great! They have rebooked our trips for November 2021 to February 2022 and kept them at 2020 prices. We have everything crossed that they go ahead!
Bertha
When we returned to the UK in June, we picked up a hire car at the airport. We had sold our Landrover when we flew out last October, thinking we were going to be away for at least a couple of years! We couldn’t keep the hire car indefinitely so, with restrictions being eased and campsites opening up, we decided to buy a campervan.
Introducing Bertha …
I intend to write about our adventures in Bertha in future posts. Suffice it to say that our travel itch was scratched with several weeks away in her exploring the Yorkshire Dales, the Lake District, Scotland, Norfolk, and Suffolk. We had a great time. Our spirits were dampened only by the vagaries of the British weather!
Happy Days Travel Blog
This blog has been my passion project for several years now, but the latter part of 2020 saw me fall out of love with it completely! Before covid, the traffic to my site was increasing steadily, as was my income generated from those visitors. All the hard work was beginning to pay off! As soon as the pandemic hit, however, my traffic hit the floor. I had zero visitors to my site. Who was going to be searching for travel information, or even inspiration, when they couldn’t go anywhere?
At first, I continued to publish, sure that things would return to normal pretty quickly. When it became obvious that they wouldn’t and I actually started to lose money because of all the standing costs involved in running a website, I stopped working on my blog. I lost my mojo completely. The last post I published before this one was back in August. It was about Skipton, the first stop on our road trip around Britain. I intended to write many more, but ended up thinking ‘what’s the point?’.
So, what’s the future for this site? Numbers are still low. I’m still not earning from it. Over Christmas, I considered shutting it down, giving up. But the truth is that I love to write. I also enjoy photography and telling stories through my images. What I don’t like is the ‘tech’ side of running a blog. I hate constantly looking at numbers and trying to adapt to the latest changes to Google and social media algorithms. Keeping up to date with affiliate links drives me crazy! Writing SEO (search engine optimised, for the uninitiated 😊) articles gives me no pleasure whatsoever.
I want to write about what I want to write about. I know I’m supposed to write articles that answer questions people are searching for. But if I don’t enjoy the subject matter – or the format – of such articles, surely that will come across to the reader? And if I write about what interests me in an informative and chatty style, surely readers will want to engage with that content? But if they don’t, I’m still doing something that I love. I figure that life is too short to do otherwise!
So, in 2021, I will be creating content that makes me happy! I have already cancelled subscriptions to blogging tools that are supposed to help me drive traffic to my site, but which are, in reality, a money pit. I have also taken the decision to stop sending out newsletters. The mechanism to do this was too expensive. I will keep readers up to date via my social media channels.
My mojo is back! 2021 looks good for Happy Days Travel Blog!!
Publishing
The situation with the publishing side of my business is pretty similar to the blog. I had huge success with a cookery book I wrote with Sharon from the Boathouse Restaurant in Tobago at the start of 2020. Since then, however, sales of my other travel-related titles and colouring books have slumped. I decided not to produce a 2021 version of my 2020 Travel Diary – I really didn’t think there would be much demand!
Going forward, I probably will produce some more books, but, for now, publishing is on the back burner.
Home
For the past twenty years on the road, we haven’t had much of a sense of ‘home’ in its traditional meaning. We have spent extended periods of time in lots of different places across the globe. ‘Home’ has been wherever we were at the time.
For practical purposes, we always used my parents’ address in the UK to keep a small foothold in the British system. When my Mum died a few years ago, we ended up buying a holiday chalet which came with permission for all-year occupation. It was all we could afford, but it gave us what we needed – a UK address and somewhere to come back to if we were ever unable to travel. When we bought it, we envisaged it would be ill health or old age that would force us to call it home, not a global pandemic! It was fortuitous that we had it, though, when we found ourselves unexpectedly back in Blighty.
Prior to 2020, we had only spent a few weeks in our ‘shed by the sea’ (or ‘cabin on the coast’ as my sister-in-law prefers to call it! 😊). When we found ourselves back here in June, it didn’t feel particularly homely – or even lived-in! It was nice, therefore, to have the time to refurbish, decorate, and furnish our ‘shed’ to make it into a home. It’s a tiny house, but it’s our house and we know, whatever the future holds, we have somewhere to call ‘home’.
Family
Our family means everything to us. We were devastated not to be able to show two of our nieces around Tobago! It was also upsetting not to be able to meet up with the other one because one of her classmates tested positive for covid.
We have three teenage nieces, three very grown-up nephews, and three (soon to be four!) great-nieces. I regret that at this point in time they are denied the same opportunities to travel that we have always enjoyed. At 16, I enjoyed the summer in Oregon, USA. At 18, I travelled to Israel to spend my gap-year on a kibbutz. I lament the fact that my nieces can’t do something similar. I worry that when the world does open up again, the requirements for travel will put them off, or that they will be too fearful to go anywhere. I hope that isn’t the case.
Health
Mark and I both enjoy relatively good health. Mark has had to learn to live with pain resulting from a childhood road traffic accident, but he doesn’t let it stop him doing what he wants to do. Neither of us has needed much medical intervention in our lives. We thank our lucky stars but know that, as we get older, we can’t take it for granted.
We want to make sure that we are well enough to enjoy our postponed trips. With this in mind, we’re both doing ‘Dry January’ (not that I drink much anyway in recent years!) and are going to make an effort to eat more healthily. We cook every day, but being back in the UK for this extended period has meant that we’ve got into the habit of preparing the same meals week in, week out. We’ve acquired some new recipe books over Christmas and are looking forward to spicing up our diet!
We’ve also bought new bikes although I think I might find out that I’m only a fair-weather cyclist! We both enjoy walking and are lucky to have the beach on our doorstep. No excuses not to get out in the fresh air! I have signed up for the Walk for Good Challenge which starts on January 15th. Over the next six months, I will walk the 485 miles of the Camino de Santiago – virtually, of course! Perhaps one day we will get to do it for real! It’s something we’ve wanted to do ever since watching the brilliant movie, The Way. If you haven’t seen it, make it a priority!
Lifelong Learning
I’ve always studied – whether it be for professional qualifications, to help grow my business, or simply for pleasure. I am proud to be a lifelong learner. The pandemic led to a plethora of free courses being made available online. I took full advantage.
While we were still in Tobago, Sharon and I loved learning about The Tudors on a course run by the University of Roehampton. Since then, I’ve done several more courses through Future Learn – on genealogy, royal fashion, Wordsworth, mining, and Jane Austen. I love doing them! Tomorrow, I start a course on intercultural studies.
Since being back in the UK, I’ve also done a couple of very enjoyable sewing and craft courses run online by our local council’s learning centre. I wasn’t sure how sewing online would work, but it was great! And, even better, I could take part in the classes while we were travelling the country in Bertha! I enjoyed these courses so much that I’m starting an accredited craft course on January 13th.
Not Only Cushions
The sewing and craft courses I did led me to revive my craft business. It’s something I’ve picked up and put down over many years, only really doing it when I found myself in the UK for a period of time. On this occasion, I set up a simple website for Not Only Cushions and took part in several virtual craft fairs. These proved to be very successful and kept me busy in the weeks leading up to Christmas. It was good to reconnect with my creative side. I will continue into 2021 – until the opportunity comes to travel again! 😊
2021
So, after such a dreadful year for the world, how do I feel about 2021?
Well, I can’t see things returning to pre-Covid conditions any time soon, if ever. We all need to accept that life will be different going forward. Never again will I take travel for granted. When I’m offered the vaccine, I’ll be first in the queue. Hopefully, by the end of the year, we’ll be able to travel again, albeit our choices of destination might still be severely limited.
In the meantime, Mark and I intend to make the most of the opportunities we do have. We’ll continue to improve our home, look after ourselves, and go off in Bertha as soon as we’re allowed. We’ll count our blessings and do our best to remain happy and healthy.
We wish all our readers the very best year you can have!
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