A Tour Guide During Covid

As tour guides for Seymour Travels and for Rick Steves, we’re normally very very busy at this time of year. However, as we all know, the world has changed, and will continue to change exponentially for some years to come, because of this damned plague.

There has been no work and therefore no income at all for 2 years. We have a little in the way of savings so we’ve been able to get some household jobs completed……you know the ‘jobs’ I’m talking about. Painting the house inside and out, fixing doors, cleaning windows, spring cleaning in the middle of Summer, gardening…….my vegetable plot has produced some marvellous produce this year, things that I didn’t even know I had planted!

Some jobs still need to be completed…….painting the house, fixing the doors, cleaning the windows, and the garden needs some serious ‘weeding’. AND I’ve rediscovered what a joy supermarket shopping can be. It’s become a sport. Social distancing means that I have to wear my mask, disinfect my hands, disinfect my trolley handlebars, sidestep shoppers and hurdle over others. Its quite an interesting experience here in Brittany( where I now live) where many of the local people are so short…..As I now feel it necessary to ‘hurdle’ over them instead of waiting behind them in the coffee aisle.

We wake up in the morning and discuss the potential activities for the day.

‘Tea?’

‘yes, please’

‘shower?’

‘after you’

‘Alexa, BBC Radio 2, please’ (Yes, we try to be polite to Alexa. She got rather annoyed with us recently and ignored us for a whole hour before I noticed that she had started playing some French rap station…ughhh!)

Walks are also important to us. Very often we head down to one of the many beaches in our vicinity……that’s always uplifting. We return home and, promptly, walk sand through the house. I think we do this deliberately because it gives one of us the task of vacuuming it up, later, in the afternoon. Occasionally we go walking with friends. A good example of this happened just a few days ago. We invited Nigel (another Rick Steves and Seymour Travels guide) and his wife Debs to join us for an 8 mile trek along a popular Ridgeline walk, here in Brittany. It started beautifully……the sun came out, the windmills looked serene, and nobody was around……perfect!

However, nobody had been around for quite some while to keep the trail open, and because of a recent storm, the woodland we had to traverse had been shattered. We felt like the Chindits, fighting their way through the jungle during WW2……. quite an adventure…. something we’ll talk about for years, I’m sure.

One of the more persistent discussions we’ve had over the last few months, concerns animals and animal welfare. My wife loves cats, but because of our strange tour guide lifestyle, we’ve not been able to entertain the thought of caring for any. We’re away from home so much.

Well that’s changed for now anyway….. we’re the proud parents of 3 ‘rescue’ cats !!!!

Yes, a momma cat and her two babes have joined us at home. We have a family to care for……and distract us from our busy lifestyle!

So now our morning discussions are more like….’have you fed the cats’, ‘‘did you hear them last night?…I think that was the Christmas Tree’, Put your slippers on before you go downstairs’

Our lives are changing.