Hurrah! I've now booked the NorthLink ferry to Orkney and back!
In fact I did it this morning, before the Budget. I'd just got an email from NorthLink to tell me that they had now published their 2025 ferry timetables, something I'd been waiting for, and that I could go ahead and book my car and caravan on whatever crossing I had in mind in May. I decided to act without delay, in case VAT was, after all, increased in the midday Budget.
Making the booking online was a doddle until it came to payment. The website then stalled. I wondered whether, despite taking great care, I'd made some error. Perhaps a huge crowd of people were thinking along the same lines, hoping to get in before any Budget announcement on VAT. Or perhaps commercial operators with delivery lorries were swamping the website. Their bookings would come before mine, if sorted in pecking order. As I settled down by the radio to hear Rachel Reeves' Budget speech, the NorthLink website still hadn't confirmed payment taken, and my bookings successfully made. I let it go. Reviving the laptop after the Budget Speech, I discovered that the booking hadn't gone through, and NorthLink had cancelled it.
I immediately rebooked. This time there was no problem. Hopefully the original payment authorised by my credit card company, which they had marked 'pending', will now just disappear or be matched by a refund, so that I'm not doubly out of pocket. However, at the time of writing this, my credit card account is showing two payments pending, one for the booking that didn't go through, and one for the booking that did. Gulp! It matters, because the return ferry charge is a whopping £277.48. So as things stand, I have paid twice that, £554.96. Fingers crossed that I get that refund promptly!
Still, this glitch hasn't spoiled my day. I feel elated at the thought that my week on Orkney next May is essentially in the bag. I had already booked the pitch at Stromness last August; now I've booked the ferry too. I still have a long series of Caravan Club site bookings to make, to get me up to Orkney and back from my home in Sussex, which will be quite a task, a whole morning on the laptop. But I've done this before, as far as Caithness anyway, most recently in 2022. I'm not daunted. But I'll need to make those site bookings before the end of this year, to secure the pitches I want at 2024 rates.
This is an important holiday. It may be the last time I go so far north, some 800 miles by road from home. It will be my second visit to Orkney, and my fourth to Caithness. This time I intend to 'do' both of these far-away places so thoroughly, so definitively, that a further visit won't be justified. I'm not saying that I won't ever return, but facts have to faced: I'm no spring chicken, and although my eightieth birthday is still some years away, long-distance caravanning is already becoming a test of stamina. I might after this go no further north than Inverness and Aberdeenshire. Shetland still beckons: but I think that'll be a different kind of holiday. I'd have to fly there, stay in a hotel, and hire a car. Or if taking Sophie, leave the caravan at home, use the overnight ferry from Aberdeen, and rely mostly on Travelodges and Premier Inns instead.
The pitch at Stromness is booked for 6th May to 12th May, departing 13th May. The ferries are therefore booked for the early afternoon of 6th May and late morning on 13th May. The rest of the holiday will be built around those dates.
I've already sketched out the long chain of caravan site bookings that will take me there and back again. At the moment it looks like a 28th April departure from home, and a 4th June return. Basically I travel north as quickly as I can, spending the bulk of my time on Orkney and in Caithness, and then travel south at a more leisurely pace, allowing time to meet up with friends on the way. Even so, I probably won't be seeing anyone I know for a whole four weeks. It's a good thing that I never feel lonely! In fact, I'm a great one for chatting with complete strangers - something that usually happens at least once or twice a day when on holiday - and it seems the remoter the place, the more likely it is that some cheerful and warm-hearted person will be intrigued by who I am, and where I've come from.
I have to admit that it will be an expensive holiday, so much so that I may have to put off buying a new laptop until late 2026, when the purchase payments on my car Sophie come to an end. Verity, my hard-working but still capable Microsoft Surface Book, will be ten years old by then. But putting off buying her replacement may work to my advantage: more time to assess what I should buy; more time for a powerful 2025 laptop to come down in price.
Meanwhile, I will be prepping for my Orkney holiday in the months ahead. The time will soon pass!
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