Photo album throwback:
What did 2020 look like for you?
This week I went down another rabbit hole of memories and have much work to do to unravel the very messy essay I thought I was going to share this week. To save you from the rather scary and unruly state of my brain, I’ll instead give you a few annotated photos from the first few months of 2020. You may remember that year. HA! Don’t we all. ðŸ¦
I began 2020 with so much travel: it is really unreal to look back at it. Before the March lockdown I had been to Portugal for work, Seattle and five separate places in California, and back to Plymouth, UK. To round things out we took a quick trip to Hampshire for a few days. I was actually relieved to stop travelling; probably one of the few people who still felt that way in June.Â
Faro, Portugal, mid-Jan 2020: This was a photo from my hotel window of boats in one of the harbours. This was my first trip of 2020, for work.Â
Aljezur, Portugal: This is our ‘workplace’ in Portugal, along the wild and wonderful coast near Aljezur, in the Northwest corner of the Algarve. Most holiday tourists do not come here, so it is a relaxed place to enjoy the natural beauty. It also reminds me of the Big Sur Coast of California.
Coast near Aljezur Portugal Seattle Art Museum: Next up in our travels: Four weeks on the West Coast of the USA. Before our flight to Seattle left from London the last day of January, we were delayed for awhile, and the news reports playing on the TV monitor in our overstuffed and stuffy waiting room were reporting a strange new virus that had just been identified in the US for the first time, in Seattle.Â
Seattle Art Museum Ventura at sunset: Lucky for us, we have amazing friends in many lovely locations on the West Coast. This was taken as far south as we usually go, in Ventura California. Ventura is north of Los Angeles, south of Santa Barbara. We were visiting good friends in Ventura; this is the beach a block from their house.Â
Ventura, California Carmel Beach: Between Santa Barbara and San Francisco as you go north is the lovely Monterey Peninsula. We have friends who live here now, too. (Told you: WE ARE BLESSED!). This was taken on Carmel beach one day.Â
Carmel River Beach, California After a few more stops in California and on the last day of February, we flew back to Heathrow and drove the 4 hours to Plymouth.
Wiltshire, UK. Not one to stick around too long, a week later, we drove to stay for a few days in a village we were considering moving to that would enable us to live closer to Pete’s parents on the Isle of Wight, and who were now needing more of our attention. On our drive to this village in Hampshire, we tried to stop at Stourhead, a National Trust property1 with its stately home, extensive gardens and a lovely cafe and gift shop for our usual lunch break, but the road was closed. I quickly googled ‘cafes near me’ and found that we were very close by Hillbrush Company headquarters, with their own gift shop and cafe (and museum). Lunch stop sorted! Afterwards we looked around the museum, and the shop, and we may have bought several items. This photo is of one of the displays in the museum. Of course they have a museum. And looking at their website now, I see you can actually purchase customisable shadow boards for storing your collection of their tools. In addition to their selection of quality brushes.
Museum at Hillbrush company, Wiltshire. This was our last trip before lockdown. Whew.
This is one of a bazillion photos of this same place as we passed here as part of our once-daily government approved walk: out to Jennycliff and back (which is located across the sound from Plymouth). This day in May was during one of those amazing warm spells, so there were loads of boats anchored in the cove. Nice way to isolate!
Jennycliff, Plymouth UK during lockdown Gardening hitchhiker. Like everyone else it seems, I got seriously into gardening this year. What a balm our gardens became! I was so happy pottering around, enjoying the crazy warm, dry sunshine that was blessing the UK that spring. This little hitchhiker was relocated outside our garden, possibly onto the lane in front of our house.
Unwelcome Hitchhiker
Lavender. Bee-cause!
10. Lafayette, California, August 2020. During this very elaborately orchestrated trip to California, we discovered the joys and pitfalls of travelling during Covid.
Joys: We were two of the few people who were legally allowed to travel back and forth between the US and the UK so we were also able to see loved ones. This was a really big one that I know so many people were not able to do. I tried to enjoy the joy for all of you. I KNOW how lucky we were to be able to do this, and that we didn’t get sick. We also enjoyed empty airports, an enormous jumbo jet with about 15 passengers and equal staff for our 11 hour flights.
Cons: Testing, testing testing; 10 days of isolation and daily reporting once back in the UK, and of course masks everywhere we went. At the airports, although they were empty of passengers, which was nice, very few restaurants were open and, more importantly, duty free shops were only sparely stocked at the airports. 😫 😉
This photo is about day 5 of our first 10-day isolation after arriving in California. We finally went outside for walk, but as you can see the temperatures were very high at times and this was the year of the intense smoke.
So that is my photo dump of the first part of 2020, a very surreal year for us all!
Thanks for indulging my photo journey today: I actually encourage you to scroll back through your photos from that time. I was surprised how much I had forgotten already.
Now I’d love to hear how YOU all fared those first few months and what your coping strategies were, what new hobbies you tried or improved, if you went out at all, and even what was hard, if you want to share that. It certainly was an exceptional time in all our lives.
See you next time, and take good care.
Cheers,
Sabrina xx
We use National Trust properties regularly for our roadside stops when convenient. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/wiltshire/stourhead
Thank you for sending me back to the joys and sadness of 2020 by looking at the photos. At least we made the most of the first two months of the year. We spent two weeks in January in Madrid watching workmen gut our new old apartment. In February, we sought sunshine in Colombia for two weeks and had some dental work done. After that, pictures show us in masks outdoors or entertaining ourselves indoors playing ping pong on the kitchen island in our Washington, DC apartment. Thankfully, we spent a lot of time outdoors with and without masks. Looking back on those photos made me realize how much we did do and travel despite the restrictions, including thankfully a trip to California.
Thanks for this post and re-igniting the gratitude for what we were able to do during that year despite the obstacles. And remember how many people lost so much.
Such a lovely post, Sabrina! I can imagine you scrolling through what I'm sure would have been many pictures of each location in order to select THE one to tell each story.
2020 was extraordinary. We'd picked up our campervan from the second-hand van place on the Wednesday before the announcement of the first lockdown, and immediately had no clue what to do under the sudden frightening circumstances. We'd spent all our money on this vehicle in order for Jim to drive/work/live during an 18-month job which covered a large swathe of the UK, and suddenly we couldn't go anywhere, and had no work! We were shielding, and didn't actually leave the house until summer.
As we and the world got used to our new selves, though, we found ourselves spreading our wings once shielding recommendations were eased, and off we trundled to beautiful outdoor photography locations in all four corners of the country (while still avoiding shops, motorway service stations and campsite bathrooms)! We were - and are - so very fortunate.