Our final day

As I sit in warm, crowded English pub writing the final spiel before our flight home we reflect back on our final days.

London went from fog to freezing in the space of two days.  Lucky we were no longer camping.  We made the most of the first two days with sightseeing London, starting at Trafalgar Square, then walking past Downing Street, to Big Ben, looked at the London Eye (too foggy to consider going on), then past Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace, then Harrods.

Harrods was wonderful but very easy to get lost, my feet were sore by the time we left the store.  I was going to have a High Tea with a glass of Champagne but it worked out at £46 ea. (NZD $172) for an afternoon tea!  I couldn’t do it, so we then walked through Hyde Park back to our base in Paddington.  All up a great day and loads of famous sights ticked off.

Thursday we slept in then took the tube to Victoria, had lunch down this wee street full of food stalls, then went to the matinee of Billy Elliot the Musical – fantastic!!  We had excellent seats and both really enjoyed the experience.  After this we meet Daryl’s cousin and friends at what had to be the smallest pub in London, the Euston Tap,   and getting home very late.

Friday was Daryl’s birthday and more importantly Mildred’s containerisation.  We both groaned about our 6.45am start, Daryl opened his birthday present from me (two Old Guys rule shirts) and another card sent from NZ, then we caught the tube out to Ruislip, with no time for breakfast.

As the warehouse guys were very good to us, and it was Daryl’s birthday AND I don’t think they have ever allowed (or been asked) to have the owners present for the loading, we stopped on the way to buy a chocolate birthday cake for their morning tea.  It was well received.

Our container arrived about 1.5 hours late; then it was all stations go; the entire container was loaded within 30 or so minutes, very professional and efficient.  They first put the boxes in, built a wall and then Mildred was driven in.

Unlike the way over the loading of Mildred was very different, for a start no tie downs???  This was a shock to us, but when we see how they did secure our baby we understood it was a far better system (we will of course leave our final judgement until we see Mildred safely back in Nelson) with high wooded planks around the entire wheel circumference, by the wheels about 6 inches high, the rest 4 inches.

Then she was gone and we were off to London Bridge to meet Sharre, Kelly and Kay for our Dickens Pub Crawl.  We were to have lunch at the Borough Market but the weather (extreme cold – it was snowing up north) dictated our lunch was at the first pub of the ten pubs on the tour.

Hats off to Kelly, it was a much organised and thoroughly researched tour with brief walks and one old fashioned London double-decker bus ride.  Kay left us after the 6^th pub, and the rest of us managed to make the 10 (plus 1 extra on the way when the walk/chill convinced us another pub on the way was beneficial to our health).

We were back at base camp just prior to 10pm, which wasn’t bad considering we started at 1pm.

Saturday we toured back to Borough market for our lunch there, walked past Shakespeare’s Globe and walked across the Millennium Bridge to St Pauls then we decided a lazy afternoon was in order to thaw our chilled bones out.

Today is our final day in London, we will catch the Heathrow Express from Paddington around 5pm and early this morning the clock went back an hour; so we got a wee sleep in.   Packed our bags (one is bloody enormous – sorry NO PRESENTS for anyone including ourselves – it’s all for Mildred) and departed to watch the changing of the Guards – along with what seemed like half of London.  We were lucky and got a reasonable spot by the front fence where we got excellent views of some of the ceremony, but no views of others.

Now we are having our final lunch, trying to use up our last of our pounds and biding our time for a few hours.  It’s a 25.5 hour flight to Auckland (with 3 hours in Hong Kong), then 3 hours in Auckland before our flight to Nelson.  All going to schedule we should arrive home Tuesday 4pm.

Where the hell has the last 6 months gone?

The beginning of the end

Since our last update we have alternated between relaxing and sorting our gear out for the return trip home.  It’s just not as easy as it was with coming over here, to start we don’t have our lovely garage to dry and clean Mildred in.   Nor do we have room to spread all our gear out to pack in a sensible fashion.

We stayed near Maidstone and went to visit the Leeds Castle on our way to London. 

Last night we camped in the East London suburbs, today we had to drive to West London suburbs, Ruislip to be precise.  It took us OVER 2 hours to do this mainly in traffic jams, heavy fog and taking the ring road at central London to avoid the Congestion charge of £10, passing by Kings Cross and Regent Park.

The camp had warnings out to not leave your footwear outside as the local fox will steal only one of any pair of shoes left outside.  The squirrels were everywhere gathering, then burying the chestnuts that fell from the trees which we were camped under, making for great entertainment.

So today we dropped off our nicely cleaned bikes, bike carrier, tent, and outdoor chairs to the freighters, then we steam cleaned Mildred at the nearby garage and headed to our camp 20 minutes away.

Daryl, bless his little heart, thought we would spend a few hours finishing the cleaning and packing our contents….we ended up semi finishing our jobs in the dark!   It took ages to remove each wheel, clean the wheel, suspension, chassis, etc before moving to the next one.   Also our gear had to be packed, and itemised for Customs documents.  We used a hairdryer to dry out the poptop canvas and still have our sun canopy to dry out, due to the fog that London is currently experiencing (wouldn’t it be a bugger if our plane home was cancelled due to fog!)

Now we have a short list of jobs in the morning, our final load of washing is now in the dryer and it’s nearly 10pm. 

It will be another early start in the morning to finish our jobs and get Mildred back to the freighters all stiflingly clean and shiny by 9am.  Then we will take the tube to our Hotel in Paddington, coming back on Friday to supervise Mildred’s containerisation and departure from London.

 Friday is Daryl's birthday so later we are hitting the town for a Dicken's Pub Crawl.

Tomorrow night will be the first time we have slept in a building for over 170 days!

Southern England

Since the Brighton Breeze VW event we have had mixed weather, at the moment we are averaging one day of sun to one day of rain, so most of the time we have been staying two nights at our stops.

We have cruised down the southern coast, through Sussex, Hampshire, Dorest and Devon.  We visited Tintagei with the hope of staying at least one night on the cliffs, but the wind there made that an impossible ask as there was no way Mildred’s roof would withstand those winds (and due to our now very cramped living conditions in the van, sleeping downstairs is no longer an option).

(some of the highways (two way) we have travelled down this week)

Along the way our best stops were:

Looe – a quaint wee fishing village on the southern coast.  A 30 min downhill walk to the village, where we wandered the streets and had a traditional Cornish Pastie for lunch – as what else would you have in Cornwall?

Dulverton, where the sun shone and we experienced a lovely traditional English Sunday roast, complete with Yorkshire pudding.  (Why does this update seem to be all about food?) 

And we visited Bath (where we purchased one HUGE suitcase that we are now juggling in the kombi (that’s to carry MOST of our purchases home to avoid duty and GST at customs).  Yes, sadly we are starting to make moves to sort out poor Mildred for her shipment home – in the meantime we hope her axles don’t collapse.

(Experienced skipper needed to ensure you don't end up down the drop)

Today we did the requisite visit to Stonehenge, which was surprisingly right on the roadside, then onto Winchester, where we were turned away from camping as all their pitches aren’t hardstanding (gravel) so no motorhomes allowed.  It is suffice to say all the ground we are seeing now is either water logged or flooded.  Most, if not all, campsites are now only taking bookings for the hardstanding sites, so limited space.

We decided to head back to Bognor Regis as we didn’t get a decent look on the way through, thanks to the rain.  This afternoon we are catching up with our washing (last bed change for this trip) and tomorrow we will visit the town.

Our last VW Event in UK – the Brighton Breeze

We arrived at the Friday night campsite mid-afternoon and soon set up camp, which was lucky as it wasn’t long afterwards that we sat and watched others erect tents etc. in the pouring rain – poor sods.  The night was so miserable that it called for an early night in bed with our alarm set for a wakeup call.

Saturday seen the sun strain through the cloudy sky and we were awaken not by our alarm, but by all the dubs around us moving their vehicles to the cruise line up – about 1 ¼ hrs BEFORE the cruise.  So we jumped up, threw everything into Mildred and joined the crowds like sheep.

It was lucky that during our wait we could get a bacon bap and coffee at the nearby food tent.  Then we were off for a 80km odd cruise down to Brighton.  As we got closer the weather got better making for a lovely day to wander about looking at both all the vehicles (not sure on the exact count by approx. 1200) and trade stalls (Nope I didn’t buy anything!  - as buying something later the event online DOES NOT count).

The day speed by with so much to see, in fact the planned visit to Brighton shops didn’t eventuate as time did not allow, the most we got was a lovely coffee at a café.

All sorts of VW’s were on display, by far the majority would be kombis, and then mainly split screens.  Some were definitely straight off the resto block, others ratted to the max.

After the awards ceremony, we headed to the nearby racecourse to camp and party the night away.  A great band was playing in the bar and the place was very crowded (it colded down remarkably when the sunset making the bar the warmest and favourite spot to be).

The Splitscreen Club UK treated us very well, making us most welcome, we even got a special mention in their booklet.

Now we are back in Densole, it was to be one night, but at the pub last night we were talked into another night with the promise of a very cool '67 VW to look at and a home cooked proper English dinner.