Author: Selina Gough

What I know about almonds…

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Before I moved here and inherited the stewardship of hundreds of knackered old almond trees, I only knew that almonds were tasty and full of goodness. As they are the wonder-food of the moment and loved especially by those going easy on the grains, many of us will be aware that they’re a ‘good thing’ to try and incorporate into our diets. Specifically, they’re high in monunsaturated fats, (which are believed to lower cholesterol), they’re packed full of protein and contain vitamin E, magnesium and potassium, and have been found to reduce post-meal elevations in blood sugar. Almonds can now claim the coveted label ‘superfood’. I wasn’t unaware of the rise of the almond; I had the Helmsley and Helmsley cookbook, I was ready to replace the flour in my quiche with ground almonds at least once – I’d maybe chop a few on top of my salads and cereal – but that was probably, honestly, the extent of my knowledge of this particular prunus. These days however, as we’ve been on this land from harvest …

Life has been happening

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Some time has passed. During this online pause, life has been happening. Here are some of our stories… We stayed a few months with my dad in my childhood home in Liverpool at the end of our travelling year. When I first left my home, bound for Glasgow at twenty one, I felt sure I’d never feel enthusiastic about the place again. The idea of being ‘back there’ in the place I’d grown up had felt uncomfortably retrogressive. Maybe it’s the simple fact of being older and having different values now but this time around I found that there was a satisfying circularity to having my children sleep in my old bedroom, and the sounds of my night-owl dad shuffling around after midnight fixing himself a whisky and raiding his cake cupboard were familiar and comforting. I was able to see my family often and in a casual, popping-round-for-a-cuppa sort of way, which is something I’ve rarely been able to do. Then, in March, we packed up a load of our stuff (gathering boxes and …

Vanlife remembered

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We’ve been home now for over a month. I say ‘home’ but for us as a family right now, this is a vague concept that seems to merely mean not living in a van that moves every few days. At the moment this place of non-moving is my dad’s house, the house that I grew up in. Our presence here is signified by the noise and mountains of life-crud now crammed into his formerly quiet and ordered, if a little eccentric, single pensioner’s life. My dad has lived in this place since before I was born and has never (to my knowledge) had any plans to go anywhere else. While I have moved my children about almost constantly over the last couple of years, my own childhood home has barely changed. Rob finds it bemusing that we are now taking baths in the very same bathtub I sat in as a teenager; watching our feet resting on the same taps that I rested my feet upon some twenty years ago. I have found it strangely …

The Future is shed-shaped

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Before we left last January to travel around Europe for almost a year, there was a big question mark over our future as a family. People often asked us what would happen when we returned to the UK, what were our plans, how would we manage to get a house again having spent most of our money? They were difficult questions to answer because, genuinely, we didn’t have a clue. For a long time, probably since the days of reading about the children of Cherry Tree Farm running wild about the countryside chatting to nature -loving hermits in Enid Blyton’s books, I’ve had romantic longings for a life lived on the land. In recent years however, with eco-systems increasingly under pressure from the continued pillaging of our planet’s resources and the rampant beast of consumerism crushing everything in its path, I’ve felt necessity take the place of romanticism. I find myself unsure of what to do in the face of such global ecological chaos, but with an instinct to return to the land. Overly alarmist …

From a van, somewhere in the Pyrenees

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I’m aware that there has been far too long a gap in my postings and, for those who are still interested in our wanderings, I apologise for being absent from this blog for so long. Right now, we’re nestled on the edge of the Pyrenees, covered in blankets, the boys gazing up excitedly at snow covered peaks towering around us. And I still have much to tell, and so many pictures to share from our journey but there are various factors that have been affecting my ability to post. Back in Croatia, I started to feel some awkwardness about writing of our own travels away from home – the difficulties and the excitements – when so many people were, and still are, undertaking journeys of survival; leaving their homes behind them to seek safety and refuge. I was moaning about tedious border crossings in the van, while at the same time thousands of refugees were waiting in Hungarian train stations, arriving at desperately pressured Greek islands, travelling across treacherous seas, and trying to find rest …

Paestum and the temple of Hera

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Having an ex-archaeologist as a partner means that we see a fair amount of old stuff. Amphitheatres, temples, burial chambers, the lot. On the whole, the kids and I are happy to wander about these places, shoulder to shoulder with the ghosts. Some sites grab me more than others, sometimes I’m tired and suffering from ancient site saturation and I struggle to connect with the people who laid the stones, walked the streets, sat in the theatres. Other times I’m utterly alive to the humming of souls hovering just behind their thin veil of time. Whilst Paestum’s ruined Roman town was interesting – the cart tracks worn in the great stone slabs of the roads, the crumbled walls of the homes of the gentry – it was the earlier Greek temples that really stole the show. Of particular resonance for me, occasional student of the classics, were the temples dedicated to Hera; queen of Olympus, consort of Zeus. Hera is an intriguing figure amongst the ancient Greek pantheon; the people were building temples to Hera …

The Cities of the Dalmatian Coast

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With their mixture of architectural style and layered history, the magnificent cities of the Croatian coast are like film sets. Each turn of a corner and each new vista reminiscent of some half-remembered scene from a movie watched long ago. Today they feel like tourist towns, their beating hearts muffled by the constant pounding of traveller feet; their stones polished underfoot to a slippery shine by the passage of infinite hordes. Every few paces there’s a cafe, restaurant or souvenir shop, clamouring for your tourist penny. But if you look up, the stories of the buildings still soar above – painted shutters, tiny garret windows looking across endless rust-tiled roofs, carved faces peering eerily from unexpected corners and the exotic moorish curves of Venetian era windows – knowingly watching the garish comings and goings of the modern world below. And if  you escape the crowds and go peeking about the hushed hidden alleyways of the city you can find lines of washing hanging, perfectly mundane against their crumbling backdrop of slow and graceful decay. So …

Stopovers 6 – Peniscola to St Chinian

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#51 Camping La Volta, Peniscola This stop was listed in Camperstops Europe as a five euro stopover but was actually a campsite with campsite prices (albeit very reasonable ones). Peniscola seems to have lots of cheapish campsites and although it’s an established beach resort, is not without its charms. There’s an absolutely huge stretch of sandy beach and a very pretty old town complete with hilltop castle as well as the usual resort distractions. We didn’t expect to love it, but we were surprised by how much we liked it. #52 Camperstop at La Casa de Fusta, Ebro Delta  This was a totally unexpected find and turned out to be a real highlight. The Ebro Delta is a fascinating place and the visitor centre, complete with camperstop, has plenty to offer everyone; a fantastic restaurant, punting, museums, wildlife watching, boating, cycling and plenty more. The camperstop is fully catered for and costs around 5 euros a night. There’s plenty of space and you can spot rare and exciting birds from the comfort of your van! …

Friendship, a story (For Julia)

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At first glance, we may not be an obvious match. She, with one more child than me and therefore two years extra sleep deprivation, always looks a million dollars. I favour the dishevelled look. Her home is spotless, with shiny crumb-free surfaces and clothes smelling laundry-liquid-fresh. Even before my home was a van, my hygiene standards were ‘relaxed’. She moves quickly and busily, I slower and more ponderous. It’s no surprise that her thyroid is over-busy and mine can’t be arsed. She and I met when we were pregnant, her body coping well with the extra demands of gestating a life, mine struggling to support my disproportionately massive belly and the behemoth growing inside. It was at an antenatal class which fortunately turned out to be full of people who got along. We were but a roomful of innocents, our heads still full of fuzzy images of snuggly sleeping babies and ‘family’ times. We couldn’t have known that we were standing at the threshhold of a world full of chaos. In those first awful weeks …

The Bears of Kuterevo

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I’m a bit obsessed with bears and wolves. One of the reasons I’m spellbound by deer is that the idea of something so big wandering around wild in the woods is just so exciting. They’re so big! And they’re owned by no one! So obviously being in places where there are wolves or bears, which are way more exotic and wild and potentially dangerous, is pretty mind-blowing for me. The chances of us actually seeing a bear in the wild though are thankfully fairly slim, so we opted for the next best thing and went to the bear sanctuary in Kuterevo. The Kuterevo bear sanctuary was set up in 2002 by Ivan Crnkovic-Pavenka to give a home to orphaned bears that  otherwise wouldn’t have survived in the wild. It has since grown to accommodate four large enclosures and supports a permanent community of international volunteers. The site provides trees, pools and caves for the bears to live a life as close to wild as they’ll ever know and simultaneously a sense of community and purpose …