C19 isn’t over but the interregnum is.  Or at least our interregnum is.  We’ve hit the the road once again.  Stepped from the front door, turned west with no defined plan, other than to keep moving, see where our bicycles can take us.

Interregnum: defined by the OED as a period of suspension between reigns or successive governmental periods; whilst not strictly accurate, is a useful metaphor for our current predicaments.  

Twenty five months ago we, like many others, made a hasty and expensive retreat from a European journey.  Our kit was duly cleaned, sorted and stored with an anticipation that we would be able to pack it back up again that autumn.

And we all know how that panned out.

So one interregnum later we start to pack, only to slowly realise that we have slithered down the learning curve.  What should have been a relatively simple pack – we’ve done it several times – second nature – took all day.  For sure some items had mysteriously migrated to another place, a sealed tube of seam-sealer had magically evaporated, a decision was needed on stove type and do we always carry a corkscrew, bottle opener and a sieve?   But these weren’t the real causes, just mere procrastinations.  

It was the cerebral existential questions. Can we thole the angst of negotiating for road space?  Will the knees survive the gymnastics of tent life?  Do we still have the instinct to find a safe, legal, wild-camping?

Can I still do this?  Do I really want to do this?  

Set against these imponderables was a weather forecast of easterlies, that in the Scots vernacular and this time of year, translates as ‘manky east’ – ‘stunning west’.  It would appear that two years of pandemic stasis has produced a couple of dithering ‘fair-weather’ tourers.  Time to climb back on the learning-curve, time to go west.

A quarter hour away from that initial step away from our front door and all the foreboding angst has evaporated.  Tail winds, bright sunshine and a bicycle that has acquired its own momentum, gliding along an old railway line.  The same line we’ve ridden innumerable times in the interregnum, but now it’s as if that pandemic interlude has been warped in a bubble, an interruption that will exist as a memory, held in suspended animation, but is now consigned for storage to a shelf labelled: ‘Time out of Time’.

The Navigator – editor and tech in chief – apologises that WordPress is getting the better of her right now. The content is here, but the layout is not the best. Another thing that has to be relearned.