Escape Time

It’s been bonkers busy at work. I’ve been in the office all afternoon and the telephone hasn’t stopped ringing. ‘I’d like to make a booking’ has been said more times than I can count. A motorhome pulls into view, our other assistant wardens back from a few days away at the seaside. I’m just a little bit jealous. Eight months without a holiday is tough. We’ve never done eight months without going away, up until starting work on site, last year was the first time. Despite living in the caravan whilst working during the season, I really miss my caravan time.

We keep in touch with many of ‘Our Year’ Assistant Wardens that we trained with. A few have Motorhomes or Escape Vans (Campervans) so they can get away for short breaks. Not us, our caravan has a long term awning set up nailed down for all weathers and an Escape Van is beyond our finances. Our bosses from last year even escaped to our site last weekend, so jealous watching them sunbathe as we did the daily bin run.

Another phone call, ‘I’d like to make a booking’ followed by ‘and a booking for my brother, my brothers brother, his friend, her sister, her niece and two dogs… Oh… can we all be pitched together but arrive different days, is there anything to do in the area… rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb…’. Mid call, while I maintained professional positivity, I notice The Boss flicking through the Club Sites book before clicking through a few screens on the computer… I’m now wondering what’s going on. Finally, after completing enough bookings to fill the site for August my phone call ends.

“We’re going on holiday tomorrow”, “But, but, but”, “No buts, I’ve booked it now”. “But (I had to get one more in), what about the awning”, “It’s coming down tonight”. I sensed a hard evenings work was in store.

A hard evenings work indeed. In baking direct sunlight at 25°C we pulled down the awning while I simultaneously threw essential items into bags.

The garage in our compound now resembles a disaster zone that needs to be sorted ‘post’ holiday.

Following day, the caravan is driven out the compound whilst on our dinner and hidden on site awaiting ‘shift end’, not that hiding a V70 Volvo Estate hitched to a seven metre caravan is so easy.

The Boss made life harder by doning a pair of bright orange plastic high-viz trousers to go strimming long grass in the mid afternoon sun, so a shower was required before ‘finding’ where we hid the van and ‘hitting the road’. If this works out we could be finding ourselves ‘Escaping’ more often.