Covid -19 Postcard #1 – 2020: A Year Like No Other

I decided to write this post because I felt an urge to record what has happened this year and at the same time just make at least one contribution to the blog in 2020.

The very last thing I wrote on this blog was on the 12 November 2019, little did I know how the world was about to be turned upside down in the months that followed by a global coronavirus pandemic that was given the name of Covid-19. These were the words at the end of my last post……………….

We now have nothing booked so I have no idea when the next instalment will be or even what it will be, fingers crossed we don’t have to wait too long.

By the end of 2019, all we had managed to book was a cruise that wasn’t sailing until 2022 (some 3 years ahead), with nothing else for the preceding two years.  All I can say for certain is its very unusual for us not to have at least one cruise in the pipeline that isn’t too far away and you could almost say it was like we had some sort of subconscious premonition that something was about to happen?

When 2020 arrived, all we had in the calendar for the year ahead was a land based holiday to see family in South Africa and a long weekend in Budapest but because of the coronavirus situation neither have happened. Foreign travel simply has not been an option for us in 2020 so we have just knuckled down and got on with our strange existence, fortunate to still have a jobs and able to work while also having the small saving grace of being able to put some money aside for future experiences when this all blows over or a vaccine is found.

Being in lockdown and working from home has given me the opportunity to spend a little time on the blog, lots of sorting out of photos and not that many of you will have spotted but I have also changed the WordPress theme as the old one was a little dated. I have hopefully managed to keep everything looking as close to the original as possible and it shouldn’t need updating now for a long time.

So, what next? Well currently I cannot even bring myself to consider looking at cruises, with most of the cruise lines at the moment abandoning any of their itinerary’s until the end of November and some even until the beginning of next year, it would be foolish to even look at anything until a vaccine is widely available.

This will only be the second year that we have not taken a cruise since we started in 2006, the previous time was in 2008 but at least back then we actually managed to set foot on a ship with a visit on HAL’s Eurodam. The nearest we have been to ship this year is when we went for a walk from Sandbanks to Old Harry Rocks and spotted 3 ships (Aurora, Arcadia and Queen Victoria) anchored off the coast of Bournemouth.

Its not been the easiest of times but at least we are all fit and healthy here, and I hope that this post finds you safe and well too. No doubt, you will be just like us, waiting for the green light to pick up where we left off.

Fingers crossed we won’t have to wait too long.