Running away...

In September last year our beautiful boy died. He had his 12^th birthday one week before he died as a result of bone marrow treatment for his leukaemia. He was diagnosed with the cancer aged  7yrs so we had all been fighting with him for nearly four and a half years. He had successfully gone into full remission after three years chemotherapy and we had a big celebration party with all our family but within a few months he lost his mobility and IT was back. There was no option but to have the bone marrow transplant. His Grandad was his treatment partner and we used all our energies for a very long time to try to keep him alive.

He was quite well known at our local Caravan Club site at Clumber as we would take him away when he was at risk of infection or on particular treatments and we had to make several midnight flits from the site to Sheffield Children’s Hospital when he took ill in the middle of the nights.  The three of us were our own ‘caravan club’ and we went all over: Clumber, Poolsbrook, Hebden Bridge, Englethwaite, Sutton, Scarborough, Durham, Hemel Hempstead, Beechwood, Rowntree Park, Killin, Castleton, Chatsworth and Knaresborough for example.

After we lost him however we lost our purpose in life and we lost our very best friend too.

We decided that the only way we could remain sane was to take to the road – to ‘run away’ I suppose. We both took early retirement and we loaded up Charley Van, our Pageant Champagne, and set off to see as much of the British Coast as we could – a dream we had always had.

We started at Sandingham in the first week of January and did all the most amazing places from Wells on Sea to Terrington St Clement. Then we moved to Bridlington and did Spurn Point to North Landing up from Flamborough. We then had a week to celebrate my Mum’s 78^th birthday at Scarborough where we stayed at The Sands apartments overlooking the North Bay as the West Ayton site was not yet open.

We have come inland at the moment to Chatsworth, Castleton and Hargill House for three weeks before heading on to Whitby tomorrow where we will explore up to Hartlepool over Easter. After that we move onto Hartley Bay….

We always use Caravan Club sites because the facilities are so good and even in the snow of January we were very comfortable and saw some glorious scenery as we walked along the coast.

 We take our beautiful boy with us wherever we go and it helps to have constant changing scenery and know we are doing the things he liked to do. Even the simple things like fetching the water and emptying the toilet – he was always fascinated by that!

We have a long way to go, in more ways than one, but we are tootling along taking each day as it comes. Life is very precious.