This time, we said, we are definitely going to take Considerably Smaller Suitcases.

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been planning our second Grand Tour.  Autumn come she will and we’ll be hopping on and off trains with gay abandon, clutching our trusty Interrail Passes and Considerably Smaller Suitcases.

The plan is to make our way towards København (see, fluent already! Those subtitles were not in vain), dare each other to touch THE Bridge without getting murdered, and then scuttle our way back home with a lightness brought about by dint of the fact that our suitcases will be Considerably Smaller.

Not for us this year, a hike down lengthy train corridors in search of a sufficiently large space for the big purple cases which had seemed such a bargain when we bought them: our Considerably Smaller Cases will slip easily into the interseat storage space. Not for us, the prospect of heaving them up a spiral staircase to the top apartment: they will practically walk up themselves.  And definitely not for us the indignity of being offered help with my case by a woman surely a good ten years older than me, with one arm in plaster and the other carrying her own bag.  Not on your Nellie, for this year we will have Considerably Smaller Suitcases.

It’ll mean taking less stuff of course.  Fewer shoes, just the one cocktail dress.  We’ll have to tame our washing more than once, no doubt, and I might need to restrict my knitting wool.  But worth it to travel light.

There’s just one small snag.  You’ll remember me mentioning that Ambroxol trial I’ve started on?  No? The lumbar puncture – yes, that’s the one.   Well, last week I trolled back up to the National Hospital of Neurology and have been given the trial tablets.  Here they are.

By the time ActorLaddie and I go a-wandering, I’ll be taking twenty-one of these beauties a day, in addition to my regular meds.

So, if you are coming to wave us off at St Pancras, look for an elderly couple with two Considerably Smaller Suitcases followed by a porter dragging a trailer full of tablets.

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The Cure Parkinson’s homepage now has a link to an appeal in Tom Isaac’s memory.  Alongside this, people are sharing stories about Tom – he touched so many lives with his passion and his humour.

Also, on the BBC website, you can still listen to the inspirational Ramblings programme when Clare Balding went walking with Tom through Chorley Woods.  Find it here.