Getting Away From It All

A slightly different blog from my usual one because I have been travelling for a couple of weeks in search of some winter sunshine, so my focus has shifted somewhat from my habitual concerns. My trip has certainly come at just the right moment in several ways. If going on holiday is an attempt to ‘get away from it all’, the ‘it’ I was getting away from was the endless dull, cold, grey skies which seem to have permanently settled over London like a heavy sodden blanket, and a news cycle which is at best baffling and at worst terrifying. 

It’s no surprise that for many the principal goal in retirement remains to travel as far and wide and as often as possible. Why? Because ‘getting away from it all’ offers the promise of escaping not just from our humdrum quotidian existence but also from ourselves. 

In many ways selling my house in France at the end of 2021 has given me both the means and the motivation to become more adventurous than I have ever been since my divorce over 30 years ago. Like many older people I suddenly had the freedom and time to go wherever I wanted and stay as long as I could afford to do so. However I am neither particularly brave nor remotely intrepid, so the world might be my oyster but which bits of it did I really want to prise open? I was also extremely fortunate that with my laptop and a wifi connection, I could even carry on doing various bits of work for LFF - like writing this - which I am currently doing sitting on a veranda with a spectacular view of the sunlit harbour in Rodney Bay, St. Lucia (sorry!) 

Another ‘issue’ (I refuse to say problem) is who to spend the holiday with, given that I don’t have a partner or companion in life. This is perhaps the trickiest of all because having a meal with a friend and chatting with them via Whatsapp or the phone from time to time is very different from spending two weeks in their constant orbit. One solution I have found to this has been to go on holidays arranged around a particular interest, in my case watercolour painting and learning to speak Italian. That way you have the best of all worlds in the sense of having the company of some (usually delightful) strangers who you only have to get on with for seven days. If friendships blossom, as does happen, then that’s just an added bonus. 

I have been on five such holidays so far and am booked on another, watercolour painting in Tuscany, later this year. Last year I also decided to take 10 days to drive on my own through France in order to stay in a gite near Carcassonne. Before I went, I did wonder whether I could cope with this very long road trip alone and also whether I would enjoy a solitary week in a part of France I’d never visited before. I really shouldn’t have worried.  France has always felt like a second home, probably because I speak the language and have long loved both the country, the French way of life and its people. 

As soon as I left the Eurotunnel, a journey I did annually for twenty-four years, I relaxed. Driving on the empty French motorways in the north is a doddle and my Mini Countryman ate up the miles until I reached my first stopover in Maçon. I even picked up a couple of female student hitchhikers who may have been somewhat in need of deodorant after their long day of hiking all the way from Belgium, but they proved to be delightful company for about 100 kilometres as I journeyed south. I treated myself to a very luxurious overnighter in the Chateau des Oliviers very near my old house, and even had a nostalgic visit to the supermarket I used for all those years in order to stock up for my coming week of self-catering in my gite.

The gite turned out to be a really delightful small cottage with a single large open-plan living space downstairs with two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.  It also had the advantage of a tiny walled garden at the front with a table at which I could spend hours painting and listening to an Audible book on my phone. It was good to discover that I was perfectly happy alone for long stretches of time especially as the temperature all that week hovered at around 38º C - far too hot for me to want to venture farther afield. There was also a swimming pool if I needed to cool off, and I ate a couple of meals out at nearby restaurants but that was the sum total of my entertainment. 

I decided to take three days to travel back up to Calais and again stopped in a couple of really delightful and quite indulgent hotels, which added to the fun and enjoyment. So much so that I have just booked a villa in the Luberon, just outside Avignon, for two weeks in June this year and intend to drive alone once more down and back with some very special stopovers to look forward to, which will break the journey and prolong the pleasure of being away.

And currently St. Lucia in the Caribbean because in February if you want consistently good temperatures and some winter sunshine you have to decide whether to go far enough south either east or west from the UK to guarantee what you are looking for. Last year I flew for about thirteen hours east to Thailand, specifically Nyang Beach, a small resort just outside Phuket. I joined some Irish friends, a married couple with various health problems who leave the cold and damp of Dublin every year from November to February. I loved Thailand and its beautiful and gentle people, but this year I jumped at the chance to go west to the Caribbean with a couple of friends from Cambridge. 

I guess as a group of women we are fairly typical. We range in age from 55 to 66 to me, the oldest at 77. Two of us are divorced and one is quite recently widowed. We all still work for ourselves which gives the necessary flexibility and funds. I have been friends with one of my holiday companions for over thirty years, but the younger one I met at Heathrow for our departing flight. We are all quite different but that has worked as an advantage rather than the opposite. For instance, the others tend to start early (larks!) and like to do lots of exploring and trips, and one turns into a pumpkin at about 9.30 pm. I slowly emerge in the mornings, prefer to read and paint and am still going strong up to midnight when, fortunately, the non-pumpkin and I can watch a film or play a fiendish game of Scrabble, or do both. 

Fortunately, we have largely agreed on most things including our accommodation and where we have stayed. The first week was in Soufriere in a very beautiful new villa high up in the lush green vegetation typical of the area. It was approached via a mile or so of rutted track over which we bounced in a large four-wheel drive SUV. Any thoughts of hiring a small car were quickly abandoned in favour of taxis for meals out and sightseeing. We had two very memorable meals overlooking the famous Pitons and the setting sun at Darsheen and The Mango Tree. 

After a week we moved north to a villa overlooking the harbour at Rodney Bay. This has also been a great success and we have beautiful accommodation with large rooms on three floors all with generous balconies and a veranda where I am currently writing this. Shopping in the local supermarkets has been a fun part of the trip as has catering for three women with very particular dietary requirements! We joked in the first week that a Venn diagram of our food preferences would only have about two or three items overlapping in the centre (mostly chocolate) which we would all eat. Sounds like a nightmare but it really isn’t and, believe it or not, the local Massy supermarket stocks a fair amount of Waitrose branded produce. The only thing we can’t seem to get is yoghurt that isn't a) flavoured b) low fat and c) full of sugar.

I started this overlooking Rodney Bay and am ending it overlooking my wintery Wimbledon garden. Back to earth and back to reality. But March and the promise of spring is only a week away and the days are slowly and noticeably lengthening once again. Having seen and experienced the warm sunshine on my skin for two weeks has made all the difference and underlined why it’s so beneficial to have a break from routine, to experience a different landscape and meet some delightful people who have made our stay both enjoyable and memorable.  

This is the essence of what it means to ‘get away from it all’ even though we know that it is short-lived and essentially ephemeral. But, as a fridge magnet in our villa said “The sand may brush off and the tans may fade but the memories will last forever.” So trite yet so true.

Tricia x

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