23/12/2009 by Brigid.

I have sat down several times during the last couple of weeks, intending to update this blog, but each time I have struggled to put more than two sentences together. Despite this, the site still appears to be attracting visitors. Whoever you are, I thank you for your loyalty.

Once my mother was on her feet, her recovery seemed to gain momentum. She dispensed with the dreaded Zimmer frame within a week and, using a simple stick, was soon able to negotiate first the first floor passage, then a flight of stairs. The effort exhausted her, of course, as she was still eating very little: ‘Build Up’ soups and my homemade sandwiches being the preferred menu. Then there was a real setback when Mum’s wound (still not completely healed after her July operation) developed an abscess and had to be cut open again! Nevertheless, having been cleaned up by some friendly maggots, we were finally given a discharge date of 17^th December. And so it was that, last Thursday, Mum and I boarded the 3.30pm Portsmouth – Fishbourne ferry, and I brought her home.

I never really saw myself as a nurse or even a particularly good housekeeper, but, for the time being, this is my new vocation. Though I must say the community health services here in the Isle of Wight have proved spectacularly efficient. Within 24 hours of our arrival, we had had a visit from Mum’s GP and a screening call from the Occupational Therapists with the offer of immediate loan equipment from the local Red Cross. The District Nurse confirmed that she would be visiting the following morning, and the Stoma Nurse rang to welcome Mum home and made an appointment for Monday, and the Physiotherapists rang to apologise for the service being closed over Christmas, but promised they would be in touch the first week in January …

It felt good to know that I wasn’t on my own, particularly as I have had to leave John behind in London, overseeing the last of the redecorating work. For the time being Mum is still too weak to be left alone for more than an hour or so at a time, so JR is tasked with dressing the house for the market. An onorous responsibility, as he frequently reminds me that “real men don’t plump cushions”. Naturally, I, in all my feminine wisdom, have left him with a mountain of them, all carefully colour-coordinated, together with a substantial collection of vases, ornaments and pictures. In an ideal world, I would be there to tell John which rooms they were intended for. Instead, we have Skype and a webcam.

Neither Mum nor I have spent Christmas in the Isle of Wight for at least 15 years, and John has never spent Christmas here. The discharge date came too late for us to make any social arrangements, so this year will be rather different to past Christmasses. We haven’t sent any cards and presents have been kept to the edible or drinkable kind only. Even so, I have a feeling that this year will be one of the best.

I am looking forward to John’s arrival tomorrow, when we will be sure to raise a glass to all our friends and wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and peaceful New Year.

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10/11/2009 by Brigid.

My mother is 80 today. The party wasn’t the one my sister, Sarah, and I had planned. Instead of a lunch party for 50, we had tea and cakes in Mum’s hospital room, surrounded by cards and flowers from her many well-wishers.

When she was admitted in July, there were doubts as to whether we would be having a birthday party at all. But today we celebrated two milestones.

As far as being 80 is concerned, most of the greetings card manufacturers seem to shy away from creating humourous cards for octogenarians. Perhaps they assume that one loses one’s sense of humour with age. I have news for them. Exactly twenty years ago, on her 60^th birthday, Mum commented to me that she was only getting crumbly on the outside. Inside, she still felt 21.

I was 26. At the time, I didn’t understand. Now, aged 46, I am still wondering if I will ever feel “grown up” … After all, my mother is mature and sensible, simply by virtue of being my mother. That is her job. May be I beat the system. As I never had children of my own, who is to say I should ever be either mature or sensible. But I keep looking for symptoms.

The other milestone, Mum created for herself a few weeks ago. Having only recently arrived back in a private room, weak and emaciated from weeks spent in Intensive Care, her physiotherapists reprimanded her for a lack of effort. “You can’t stay here for ever”, they said. “You need a goal to aim for if you want to be strong enough to go home.” So, between them they came up with a target.  On the whiteboard at the end of Mum’s bed, the physio wrote, “Goal: to be able to stand on my own on my birthday, 10^th November 2009.”

Today, underneath the original message, someone had written “Achieved! Yea hey! Next goal ….”

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28/10/2009 by Brigid.

Some of you will have wondered how my mother is getting on. Much better, thanks. I apologise for the lack of updates.

Her move to a private room more or less coincided with the start of my CELTA course at the end of September. It happened with no warning at all. We had spent the weekend at my mother’s house on the Isle of Wight and I got the news from my uncle on the way back to London. On Friday, it had been business as usual in Intensive Care but, by Sunday, she was sitting up in bed with her reading specs and a newspaper, talking normally and sipping (specially thickened) apple juice through a straw: no more ventilator, no more trachyotomy.

Mum still has a long way to go. She doesn’t seem to tolerate solid food very well, and she is having to learn to stand on her own two feet again – literally! We have had to postpone her 80^th birthday party next month but, at least, we are looking forward to spending Christmas together. Realistically, for us, it is likely to be Spring before we get home to France.

… and Room 101?

In George Orwell’s book, 1984, Room 101 contained “the worst thing in the world”: a place where enemies of the state were subjected to their own worst nightmares. The name isn’t wholly inappropriate. Mum’s worst nightmare at the moment is her twice-daily torment by the “physio-terrorists”, who bully her into doing her exercises!

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27/10/2009 by Brigid.

Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It’s been well over a month since my last post …

I’m in the launderette again. Of all the disruptions caused by the building work, I find our weekly washing arrangements the most tedious. On the other hand, if I ignore the exuberant Asian talent show on the TV and the Hilda Ogden look-alike doing her washing in 4″ hair rollers, they do provide me with an opportunity to catch up with the blog.

Heard the one about the Englishman ,the Scotsman, and the Irishman … the Turk, the Pole, the Chinese and the Russian? Allow me to introduce you to my fellow CELTA graduates.

“Cancel your social lives; no late nights, no evenings out …”, warned Christine, Language Link’s Polish secretary, on our first day. Indeed, the four-week intensive course was no place for shrinking violets. After one day of tutorials and observation, we were thrown in at the deep end; teaching grammar to intermediate English speakers, who probably knew the rules better than we did. But, before you feel too sorry for them, I should add that these lessons are free. Students are simply required to pay a £10 registration fee for a four week course. A sense of humour helps too.

The school itself is in Earls Court, a neighbourhood long-since re-Christened “Kangaroo Valley” for its population of Australians and Kiwis. The Antipodeans remain, but the influx of foreigners from the other three corners of the globe has been such that English is very much a minority language. Take my recent exchange with a very polite and efficient Indian Post Office assistant:

Me: How much is a stamp for Portugal?
SA: 56p. Err … are you working here?
Me: Well, yes, I suppose I am … “studying”, anyway.
SA: Do you need a credit card while you are here?
Me: Er, no thanks.
SA: What about a phone card? We do very good international rates.
Me: No thanks.
SA: If you don’t mind me asking, where are you from?
Me (bemused): Fulham. (about 15 minutes’ walk)
SA: No. I mean where were you from originally … before you came to England?
Me (embarrassed): What do you mean? I was born here …

At this point I could see the conversation going downhill rapidly, so decided to quit before I was accused of insulting the unfortunate woman. However, it wasn’t quite the end of the story.

Back at the language school, I related my experience to my fellow trainees. Far from the gales of laughter I expected, I was greeted with quizzical looks. Eventually, someone spoke, “Well, we were wondering where you were from. Where did you get that accent?”I was, for a rare moment, completely lost for words or, to use one of my least favourite expressions, utterly gobsmacked!

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12/09/2009 by Brigid.

If love means never having to say you’re sorry, fear is having an eastern European demolishing the back wall of your otherwise comfortable and well-insulated house with a Kango hammer. We’ve got the builders in …

Costa’s guys have only been here a week and, already, I am lamenting the fact that they don’t flush and leave the seat up, and the house is full of plaster dust. The old kitchen units are on eBay and John and I have retreated to the first floor of our Fulham house: washing up in the bath and cooking on two rings in the “living room”: previously the front bedroom. It is almost as if we have entered a time warp and stepped back 14 years!

Actually, I am not sure whether our current conditions are better or worse than when we first bought the freehold and started to convert the two flats back into a house. At least we are only dealing with one room this time, even if the room in question comprises half the ground floor. Back in the day, we stripped out the entire first floor: ceilings, walls, everything in fact, except one bedroom. I have fond memories (not) of arriving home from work and finding John and Bob Masterton looking like a pair of coal miners and the entire house being coated in a fine film of dust from the lathe and plaster. And here we are 14 years later doing the same thing. “It’s what you two do …”, commented John’s exasperated daughter.

The plumbing problems are reversed. Now instead of having no water on the first floor, we have no water on the ground floor, meaning many tedious treks upstairs for the plasterer and much ill-humoured hoovering for me. It also means weekly trips to the launderette - from whence I write, with a row of churning machines for entertainment. Every now and then I get a wave from a very large pair of purple knickers (not mine … or John’s either, before you ask) twirling around in the machine opposite!

I did, however, have a complete sense of humour meltdown over our clean linen, after dust funnelled up into the airing cupboard from downstairs. So I left it for a service wash with the Freddie Mercury look-alike who runs the launderette.

All together now, “I want to break free …”!

I am perfectly sure Mum also wants to break free. She has, and I hesitate as I write this, made a sustained improvement over the last two weeks or so. The CT scans don’t show much change, but her infection markers have been down and her temperature has been more normal. Gradually she is regaining her strength.

Nice “Dr Tim” says that Mum’s progress is remarkable, considering her age. I hadn’t previously taken in that Critical Illness Neuropathy can take 6 months to recover from. So the fact that Mum can smile, wave, clap and make thumbs up signs is very encouraging.

Mum still cannot talk as the plumbing for the ventilator bypasses her voicebox. However, the hoses are now only connected at night. During the day Mum is doing all the breathing work herself with minimal support from an oxygen mask slung loosely over the trachy pipe. A bonus of this arrangement, is that the nurses can wheel her up to the roof terrace, swathed in sheets and blankets, for a dose of early autumn sunshine … which reminds me, I must go and look for a pair of sunglasses.

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25/08/2009 by Brigid.

I suppose the very fact that we are struggling to find activities to keep Mum amused in her incarceration, is a sign that there has been some progress. Some. Days after I wrote the last blog entry, she was diagnosed as having something called Critical Illness Neuropathy, a neurological infection affecting patients with critical illnesses, in case you hadn’t guessed. It knocked her back a bit, to say the least. The infection prevents signals from the brain reaching the muscles, thus affecting the function of the heart, lungs and, well, practically everything else. She became incredibly weak, even losing the power to hold a pencil.

A lesser person might just have turned up their toes, but it seems Mum is made of sterner stuff. A week later, with no sign of being able to wean her off the ventilator, the surgeons operated to put in a trachyotomy. That evening, for the first time, they propped her up in bed and she sat reading the paper with the doctor. Seeing her the following morning, I was hugely relieved to see her looking more recognisably like my mother, albeit with a gaping mouth and lop-sided face.

Over the next week or so, the muscle tone came back and she was able to smile again. The improvement continued day by day until, greeting her old friend Margaret, she put her arms up and was almost able to manage a hug. Almost.

Then, calling the hospital on Saturday , I was told that Mum’s infection markers were up, she had had a bad night, and had been taken down for a CT scan. Not the news I was hoping for, particularly as her friend Fergie had come all the way from Norfolk to see her. John and I went to meet him at the hospital and he kindly bought us lunch, while we waited for the sedative to wear off.

That afternoon, while Fergie sat with my mother, the surgeon gave me the bad news. The CT scan had shown up a fistula in Mum’s gut. Normally they would operate to close it, but owing to Mum’s age, the high levels of infection and the awkwardness of the site, they felt it would not be in her best interest. Instead they would change her antibiotics and hope that the leak would seal itself, as they sometimes do. I was visibly shaken as I rejoined John in the hospital reception. He tried to put his arm round me to comfort me, but it had the opposite effect and I burst into tears. So I put on my bravest smile and we sat like two bookends at either end of the sofa waiting for Fergie to finish his visit.

Poor Fergie. He was longing to know what the surgeon had said, but I couldn’t repeat it all without crying, so I left out the most depressing details. Fergie had been staying with my mother when she collapsed at the beginning of June, so he has become almost family over the period of her illness. It felt like a lie, but he seemed so encouraged that she had opened her eyes and smiled for him, that I didn’t want to dampen his view that “she is going to make it”. We saw him into a taxi, and then I had to ring my sister, my aunt and uncle: Mum’s sister and brother.

Although I was told that Mum was in “no immediate danger”, the infection is a nightmare. While MRSA grabs the headlines, and provides a perfect excuse to hurl abuse at our beleaguered health system, it is eminently treatable. There are far nastier things out there. Acinetobacter, for instance, has been identified among casualties of the Iraq conflict, but is becoming increasingly common in mainstream hospitals on both sides of the Atlantic. It is resistant to all but the widest-spectrum antibiotics and can live for weeks on skin and dry surfaces and, yes, Mum probably did acquire it at Newport’s, unusually excellent, NHS hospital.

So, what now?

Well, actually, in the days that followed Fergie’s visit, Mum rallied again. By Monday, the antibiotics seemed to have the bacteria on the run, and her signs were returning to normal. Within a few days, she was bright and alert and smiling again. I have started to take a “talking book” in with me, which we can sit and listen to together. I chose Dirk Bogarde’s autobiography, “A Postillion Struck by Lightening”, the title of which, I know, will mean nothing to our American friends, who refer to a “pillion” (short for “postillion”) rider, simply as a “passenger”. Anyway, Mum hates it: not my choice of book, particularly, just having to sit in a chair and stay awake for half an hour. But the doctors say it’s good for her, so I tell her she just has to put up with it and, as she cannot talk, she cannot argue.

Today, after much negotiation on the part of Mum’s nurses, I got the IT department to lend me a small projector so that I could run a little slide show of holiday photos. When I told her that I was going to show her my photos, I could have sworn I saw a twinkle of excitement. I duly set up the laptop and projector, and Mum looked at the first two or three photos as I sat close to her right ear and told her what they were. Then, as often happens with slide shows of other people’s holiday photos, the audience dozed off. I let the show continue in silence, then packed up the projector and left Mum fast asleep with her mouth open. Only the ventilator prevented her from snoring …

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09/08/2009 by Brigid.

Our lives are, for the time being, dominated by daily, sometimes twice-daily, trips to the hospital, where Mum continues in Intensive Care. Her recovery from a life-saving operation on July 18^th is slow: sometimes to the point of being imperceptible. Each day seems to bring a new challenge: high temperature, low blood pressure, high sodium, sleepless nights, restless days … Since she still requires support from a ventilator, she cannot speak, which tends to keep our visits short. On a good day we will get a beaming grin and, if she is feeling strong enough, a hand wave. But not being able to communicate soon becomes frustrating and, as the banks of monitors behind her head warn us that her heart rate and blood pressure are rising, we reluctantly leave. On a bad day, she might open her eyes for us … but then again, she might not.

Every input and output is measured and recorded by a devoted team of 3 or 4 nurses, who have, over the last three weeks, become like family to us. Other patients come and go from this dimly-lit subterranean world within a day or two, but, for the most part, Mum has the entire staff of the ICU to herself: one nurse permanently stationed at the end of her bed, diligently plotting her progress on a giant chart. And, while Mum concentrates all her efforts on breathing, around her others busy themselves adjusting drips, checking lines, taking bloods, resetting alarms …

No five-minute visit seems to pass without some activity on the part of the medical team and, yesterday, I witnessed Mum’s physiotherapy workout. As she has spent so long lying down, there is now a concerted effort to get her used to being upright again.  This is an undignified process, by which Mum is strapped to a tilt table and gradually inclined to an angle of 45°. Then two physiotherapists, aided by a couple of nurses, help her raise and lower her arms, touch her forehead and squeeze their hands. It is painful to watch the disproportionate level effort and exertion required, but the team seem delighted by her progress. Occupational Therapy brought her a large television so that she could watch Coronation Street, and asked about her hobbies …

Friends and relatives call every day to ask if and when they might visit. Some seem shocked when I tell them Mum is still in Intensive Care and unable to speak. I don’t give it too much thought. There are few other places in the country where she would receive such dedicated care. To some extent, I have become desensitized to discussions around care plans and interventions: topics that would have previously left me faint or weepy. I find myself being almost alarmingly matter-of-fact about Mum’s condition. But the doctors are upbeat about every small improvement, so why shouldn’t I be?

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30/07/2009 by Brigid.

Most of our friends and family reading this blog will, by now, understand the lack of updates. Speaking to my mother on Monday 13^th, from Cranbrook, BC, it became evident that she was extremely unwell. Our group having begun to split up, John and I made an immediate decision to cut our trip short, possibly flying back from Detroit instead of Halifax. As it happened, I received a call on Wednesday morning, telling me that Mum was dangerously ill and had been readmitted to hospital in a critical condition. We flew home on Friday from Chicago to be with her.

Holiday memories are apt to fade all too quickly. Even more so, in circumstances such as these. Sitting on my 81-year old mother-in-law’s sofa in Coulsdon on Saturday evening, watching a Kevin Costner movie with a glass of wine, I began to mull over the last days of our trip. The film was set in Alaska. Our hero is having some communication issues …

Me (having had a little too much to drink): The trip was tough. Alaska is not that easy to conquer.
Betty: I was not ever that much of a fan.
Me: Uh?
Betty: Michael Jackson. I never really liked his music.
Me: No. Alaska. It’s not that easy to conquer. A lot of us didn’t get there.
Betty: I mean, lots of people like him. But I never really saw the point.
Me: … On a motorcycle, I mean.
Betty: Oh, yes. Of course …. Oh, I’ve just remembered, I’ve got someone coming to service the gas boiler on Tuesday …

Since leaving Kelowna, we had been assuming that George’s Alaskan crew were still on schedule, so it was a relief when I called the hotel in Watson Lake to find they were still booked in. With all the delay and disappointment, it would be good to ride with friends again for a few days, and we were glad to see a few familiar bikes in the Belvedere’s parking lot.

George and Annie greeted us like prodigal children returning to the fold, and tables were hastily pushed together in the dining room so that we could join them for dinner. “Them” being George and Annie, Jenny and Nelson, Jo and Cathy, and John Stoughton. The others had apparently been delayed on the road. However, it quickly became evident that there was a little more to their absence than George was letting on … An incident the previous day had pushed the already tired and stressed group to breaking point, effectively bringing about a mutiny.

As if in confirmation, George approached me the following morning to ask which group we would be riding with. To have altered our plans in order to catch up, only to be forced to pick sides, seemed unfair. But there it was. The road from Watson Lake to Dease Lake is notorious: unmarked, uneven and partially unsurfaced. Received wisdom suggested that riding the Cassiar Highway as part of a large group might be hazardous. And, since George’s group was notably smaller than the breakaway faction, we chose to ride with them. In the event, the Cassiar was as about as savage as MGM’s toothless lion.

Dinner at Dease Lake was a protracted affair. The food was mediocre and overpriced, and the service, appalling.  So, after a congenial evening of beer and bike washing, we left early the next day to seek breakfast elsewhere with the mutineers: Willie, Jim, Chris and Flo, Bill, Greg, Julie and Johnny Higgins.

With no deliberate decision on our part, the pattern was now set for the rest of the week. There being no published itinerary to adhere to, we got up late and ate breakfast when and where we chose to. We exceeded speed limits, stopped whenever someone saw a bear, or suggested a point of interest, for a Kodak moment or just for a fag break. And, when we arrived at our destination, we stayed up late, drank (too much), played pool, laughed (a lot), and generally had a good time. We were, after all, on holiday.

It was not that we didn’t regret what had happened. Our conversations revolved around little else: what might have been or how we would have done things differently. We tried to organise a group dinner at Prince George but, by that time, too much water had passed under the bridge. Our leader was reportedly heartbroken that we didn’t want to ride with him. Unfortunately, it never occurred to him to ask himself “why?” .

The fact was that, having been on the road for over three weeks since leaving Chicago, the whole group was exhausted. Leaving behind the heat of the desert in California, no one needed 6am starts or 5pm dinners. Perhaps the worst crime of all, was the rigid adherance to a daily timetable to which no one else had any input. There was simply no time for relaxation, sight-seeing or technical issues. Deviate from the schedule for any reason, and you were on your own.

Much as George wanted to keep the group together, that has never been the ethos of the Mother Road Rally, for which he acted as Rallymaster for the first time this year, and from whence the Alaska ride originated. In our experience, one of the nicest aspects of that 2,448-mile ride, was the tendancy for the main body of riders to disperse into smaller groups over the course of the week. The trip is never without problems. People regularly have flat tyres, oil leaks and flat batteries. They take detours, run out of fuel, drop their bikes and lose their wallets. Sometimes, this year in particular, they hurt themselves. Always, they can count on the support of the friends they make on the road and, despite the Rally’s disclaimer, no one is ever left behind.

Non-biking friends often fail to understand the appeal of a motorcycle road trip. To them it is all dirt, discomfort and black leather. An attempt to recapture one’s youth: a poor man’s answer to the mid-life crisis. But those people forget that a trip of this length is not lightly undertaken and is never cheap. Add together to cost of a full spec touring motorcycle, fuel, lodging, subsistence and, for us Europeans, travel, and you could probably buy yourself an off-peak timeshare on the Costa Brava. Hence, every one of our travelling companions on this trip comes from a professional background of one sort or another. And, since Americans are almost unique in having no statutory right to paid holiday, they either need to be retired or in a position to dictate their own leave.

None of us are children. When things go wrong, we manage. It’s what we do, or have done, every day of our working lives. It would be arrogance to assume otherwise.

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13/07/2009 by Brigid.

Neither of us fancied using the unisex shower block with its, rather too public, cubicles. So we made do with a change of undies and quick dab with the anti-bacterial wipes that I had bought as a precaution against swine flu. Needless to say, the restaurant was closed on Sunday, so we would have to look elsewhere for breakfast. But we had more immediate problems. John went off in search of jump leads while I brewed up some coffee and began to “strike” camp.

Once the Triumph was started, we didn’t dare stop for anything until the battery had had a chance to recharge. Luckily, the first convenient breakfast stop was 50km down the road at the Buckinghorse Ranch, and we had enough fuel to get there. The café only had 3 or four large tables and, unsurprisingly, was doing a roaring trade. The lone gas pump was out of service, but there was another service station across the dusty road.

Refreshed and refuelled, we rode on.

To be honest, there was not much of note. Fort Nelson was not much more than a blob on the highway. We pulled off again for fuel and a milkshake at A&W: again, being Sunday, it was practically all that was open.

100km or so on, the road became more scenic, weaving through mountains with stunning views over forestry and lakes until we arrived at Toad River, our overnight stop.

We had intended to camp again, but since it there was a little rain in the air, we were glad to find that they had a cabin still available. It felt good to be warm and dry, so we did our best to ignore a distinctly stale smell wafting in from the basin waste pipe in the bathroom. We unpacked, showered, and wandered back over to the café for a burger.

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13/07/2009 by Brigid.

The various disappointments of Grand Prairie made us all the more determined to camp out this evening. We had two more days to get to Watson Lake, so we didn’t need to achieve more than about 340 miles in a day.

After last night’s experience, and our dislike of continental breakfasts consisting of donuts and lurid-coloured cereals, we decided to have breakfast in Dawson Creek. So, having taken the obligatory photos of “Milepost 0″ and the “Start of the Alaska Highway” sign, we found a nice little diner serving a traditional breakfast of … quesidillas and fajitas.

We felt a tinge of regret as we started out on the Alaska Highway. It seemed a bit of a sham to have photographed ourselves at the start, knowing we wouldn’t be going further north than Watson Lake, barely into the Yukon, let alone Alaska.

In true Route 66 spirit, we found an historic cut off that took us across an original timber-built curved bridge on a section of the old Alaska Highway. In reality the road is now just a loop off the main highway, leading to the Kiskatinaw Provincial Park and a campsite, but it was an interesting detour involving a surprise section of deep gravel.

We passed through Fort St. John, stopping only for gas but, 100km further on, we were parched and needed a break. The Shepherd’s Inn seemed to fit the bill. The Milepost book had a tempting advertisement for lunch and dinner menus of homemade fare and “refreshing fruit drinks from local fruits”. May be it was just the wrong time of day, but we found only a rather surly waitress and a choice of coffee or commercial bottled soft drinks … Oh, and a bookstand full of worthy titles like, “Seven Secrets to Preserving Your Virginity”. Seven? Clearly, the facts of life are more complicated than I thought!

We arrived at our campsite at Pink Mountain just before 6pm, at the same time as two BMW riders from Alberta, and a Frenchman, who we had earlier come across on the side of the road. They were just stopping for dinner and fuel, so it seemed the sociable thing to do to eat with them – and just as well, as the place was about to close up for the day.

The meal was unremarkable, save for the fact that John left his auxiliary lights on while we ate, and came back to a flat battery. Luckily, the parking lot for the restaurant was above the camp site so, even though we couldn’t bump start the bike, it was easy enough to push across the highway and up to our tent site.

The Pink Mountain camp site bills itself as “one of the nicest on the Alaskan Highway”. I beg to differ. Perhaps I am spoilt, in that I expect separate Ladies and Gents shower facilities or, at the very least, a private cubicle. And, though I appreciate, we are in the middle of nowhere, a flush toilet would have been preferable to the single, revolting, privie that passes for a ladies lavatory.

Having had an interminably boring conversation with a German, to whom John had unwisely offered a can of beer, and two young cyclists, we made our excuses and retired to our tent.

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