Sometimes the number of posts in a month is the best indication of what kind of month it has been.

Well, March is a record-breaking 26-poster!

I wouldn't like all my months to be so active, as I think I'd wear out really quickly. But it has been a LOT of fun.

The first day of March saw us leaving Sofia to go to Bucharest:



(For the rest of the journey, start with that post, and work forward, via Brasov, Budapest, Bratislava, Ljubljana, Munich, Geneva, Lille, and London. Oh, and the couple cavorting so purply at the top of the post are from Trnava.)







There were one or two minor hitches en route, but overall, the trip went splendidly. If I ever worried that all the years of lockdown had killed my desire to travel, I can now rest assured that they haven't...











The journey speeded up towards the end, as we spent less time in the more expensive countries. As a result, it has felt a little hectic lately, in a way it didn't towards the start. But never mind. We adapt.






The flipside of all this travelling, of course, is that there has been very little time to read. A fat Purple Tern month generally means a thin Velvet Cushion one. I've managed to finish three fascinating books, though: The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim; The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk; and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. And there are four more under way, so April -- which will also see us in somewhat more sedentary mode -- will, I hope, produce a bit more of a crop. I may not have lost my taste for travel, but reading is still very much part of my surviving-as-a-human kit...

We're currently in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, UK.

Not that we've yet seen anything of Weston-super-Mare (or Weston S. Ma-ray, as the Google lady pronounces it...). Yesterday, we collected our hire car from Heathrow airport, and then stopped off in Hampshire for a long lunch with friends we'd not seen for 11 years... And today we headed over to Herefordshire for lunch and a walk with other friends (not seen for four years). Both sets, as it happens, have recently acquired large and beautiful houses, with fabulous views, and we really enjoyed the opportunity to share their space with them for a while.






We've not seen that much of our flat in Weston-super-Mare either... It's been a sleeping place only so far. But it's really comfortable, and very well equipped. It's true that fighting your way in and out of the extraordinarily congested estate where it's situated is a bit of a mission. But we have to do that only once a day, and everyone is very courteous.



So, Day 41 and March draw to a close.

If things go according to plan, the end of next month will find us on the Isle of Man... May the journey continue to go as well as it has up to now.