April 20
On April 12 we left our condo in Minneapolis with three overweight (50+ lb) suitcases. So our first job was to shift books and a 4-lb. box of Borax to our carry-ons. Funny how neither the security guys at Minneapolis nor the ones at Newark airports liked the box of white powder in the carry-on that had all our electronics: phones, GPS, camera, I-Pod, back-up hard drive, each with its own charging station and multiple wires going all over the place. But we probably gave them more excitement than they’d had all day. The Borax was on order from our daughter, now living in Norway, and shifting it and the books gave us 35- and 29-lb. backpacks, which we deftly (!) carried onto our flight to Norway.
After a few days’ visit with our charming granddaughter--
--and her equally charming parents, of course--we flew to Amsterdam with two now-underweight suitcases and picked up Rover. Our new stepdown transformer was waiting for us there (with a sticker that said USPS had first shipped it to Tokyo by mistake). David hooked up the batteries before we left the storage place, and we drove to Gaspaarpark Camping just south of Amsterdam, stopping at a gas station and a grocery store along the way.
The campground was very full of Palm Sunday holiday weekend vacationers, but the management found us a place and we had to use our longest electrical cord to hook up. Then David installed the new transformer and--praise God--everything worked.
The weather is perfect: sunny, 70+ degrees, with leaves and flowers popping out all over. We walked around town, had our wine and beer, followed by supper at an outdoor cafe in the center of Amsterdam, watching the bikes and trams expertly, nonchalantly, avoid collisions with pedestrians. It is so much fun to be back here again.
Today we drove without incident to Rotterdam on another gorgeous summer-like day. Since no one else was in sight at the campground, we took the opportunity to fill and flush our tanks--not something we are able to do very often. We have Thursday ferry tickets to the UK, where we plan to spend our time this year. But at the end of three months, we hope to end up in Lillehammer, Norway, at our daughter’s again, where we will store Rover for the winter.
And the price of gas in The Netherlands? $9.48/US gallon. But that doesn't matter: we know we are privileged to be here again.
April 24
(First, our apologies to those of you who have written comments: until we can fix an 'administrator' problem, we won't be able to have comments appear. We can read them...and appreciate them...but nobody else can.)
Because the ferry to England didn’t leave until 10:15 p.m., we decided to spend the day in Den Haag, which is quite close by. But it is a busy city, and all the parking signs led to garages with height restrictions. We finally just lucked out finding a spot on a street alongside a canal. Rover stuck out a little in the rear, but who are we to be judgmental, and we decided to chance it. Besides, it was only about three blocks from where we wanted to go: the library to use the internet briefly, a small museum with a Jan Steen exhibit, and a stroll among some impressive buildings (old ones, naturally).
The narrow road to the Hook of Holland where the ferry loads is full of trucks heading to the freight terminal. We were the first in line to drive on the ferry. All of Susan’s concerns about whether they would take us were for naught: no one asked us anything about our LP gas tank, customs on neither end seemed to care what we had aboard, and British customs didn’t ask for any vehicle emission tests--they just wanted to know if we had a dog.
The Stena Ferry is a massive new ship with restaurants, bars and entertainment. We had a lovely little inside cabin about the size of Rover’s interior, and we were very comfortable until the 5:30 AM wakeup call. We were almost the first to drive off, and the very first building we came to right next to the port was a large grocery and gas station,so we pulled right in and napped until it opened. Because we knew our refrigerator would be shut off for hours on the ferry, we had previously purchased very little food. Now we filled the freezer and the refrigerator and bought gas (a bargain at $7.87/US gal).
And then we had no excuse to postpone driving on the left on the roads of England. The first sign read “Please drive on the left” (as if we had a choice). And the first five miles or so had more signs every quarter mile reminding us “Drive on the left” in several languages, along with special lane dividers and arrows painted on the roads. But they soon disappeaed and it was just up to us to do it ...uh...right (or left). When you are in traffic it isn’t too disconcerting, because you just follow the vehicle ahead of you. It’s the narrow country roads with tight corners that are the exciting ones. So far, so good: even in the small towns with cars parked along the narrow streets, where everyone has to take turns passing, drivers are very considerate of one another--that quintessential British quality--and we just take our turn.
We are camped at Polstead, a nicely redone campsite in the Suffolk county, filled with Easter holiday campers. We took a double decker bus into Sudbury and Hadleigh on Saturday. It just careened along the narrow roads and convinced us that if it could get through, we could. We visited Thomas Gainsborough’s birthplace, which has been turned into a lovely little museum. Both towns were filled with Easter shoppers.
A healthy meal of fish and chips, delivered to the campground.
On a gorgeous Easter Sunday we walked 1-1/2 miles to a country church, being welcomed with bells for the last 10 minutes of the walk.
The church was full (about 100 people including 5 Easter bonnets) and almost everyone was dressed up! It was lovely to have a service in English and sing familiar hymns, even at a stodgy tempo. Then we took a slightly longer walk back, this time through some farm fields. It is permissible in England to walk through private property on marked footpaths. And once again Susan has stolen her first lilacs of the season.
April 27
We ventured forth into the English countryside. With information from enthusiastic tourist office employees, we drove to Lavenham and Long Melford, two medieval towns that would be great film and tv locations . . . and, as we learned, had been so used. We were told we could get through the narrow streets and that the car parks would accomodate us. Both proved to be true. When we arrived in Lavenham, we parked in a fairly empty lot that, when we returned, had become so full that we immediately moved Rover in order not to be trapped by incoming cars. Then we drove to Long Melford, the last few yards on a street about 12 feet wide. But once again we parked easily in a car park and visited Melford Hall, which looks inside and outside like it could be used for any Jane Austen movie. Susan was charmed. And the weather remained clear and warm.
That evening, we ended up on a CL site in Colchester (a CL is “Certified Listing”: a site with 5 or fewer spaces for motorhomes to spend the night). This one was well equipped with water and electricity and even free wifi, a big hit after three days without. We’d read that many CLs offer no extras, just a cheap or free place to park. The friendly and helpful proprietors met us with a cup of tea and the next day gave us a lift into town so we could tour the castle there before moving on. Then we headed to London and our first drive on the M (Motorway).
We arrived without difficulty. Being able to read road signs helps a lot! And driving on the left isn’t too big a deal when everyone else is also doing it. Corners and traffic circles are always exciting, but we both just have to keep our wits about us. The campground here is quite large: big marked pitches, no hedges or markers in between, a small store, a looong walk to the toilet/shower block, and no wifi (for 6 nights!)
But the worst discovery was that the bus doesn’t run to the campground until May 1st (we leave on May 2nd). So getting into central London entails a dangerous fifteen-minute walk on a narrow path along a busy, twisting, narrow road to a bus stop, followed by 20-30 minutes on a bus to the tube station and then another 20 -30 minutes on the underground. With waiting time, it can take well over an hour to get into the city center. But, then, we’re in London--our favorite city on the face of the earth.
April 29.
April 29.
(If, dear reader, you do not care about the Royal Wedding, best skip this post and read the one preceding.)
We are in London for the royal wedding. Our daughter, Emily, flew in to join us. This was our first attempt at having three adult bodies staying in Rover, and on the whole, she and we bore up admirably. (Emily did OK, too.)
On Thursday we scouted the wedding parade route; already there were lots of people camped out to claim space along the barriers on Pall Mall and at Westminter Abbey.
On Friday morning we were up at 5:30 and on our way by 6:30: walk, bus, tube to Charing Cross, and walk down Whitehall toward the Houses of Parliament. By 8 a.m. we had found an incredible spot perched atop a sort of deep, wide, window ledge on the Old War Office Building. We were about 6’ above the sidewalk, just across the street from where the cars would come out of Horse Guards Parade and turn onto Whitehall on their way to Westminster Abbey . . . and where the horse-drawn coaches, flanked by the Horse Guards, would carry the royal party back to the palace after the ceremony.
Emily (in green) on our perch
We could sit or stand on our ledge and see above the entire crowd,10 deep and choking the sidewalk by the time things started happening. We couldn’t believe our good luck in finding such a place. If we had arrived even a couple of minutes later, it wouldn’t have been available.
We were able to take great pictures of everyone involved on the way to and from the abbey. Afterwards, we made our way to Trafalgar Square, where a huge TV screen had been set up so we and thousands of others could watch what was happening at Buckingham Palace. The whole thing was quite magical and exhausting. It wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun if we hadn’t found that great viewing spot. We were back to Rover by 6 p.m. and bought an extra bottle of wine to celebrate.
May 2
May 2
(Note: the providers of our website’s ‘comments’ feature announced that our one-year free trial of their service had expired, and they now want $10 a month for us to use it. Because that’s nearly the cost of a beer in Norway, we chose to deactivate the service. However, you can still email us, and we hope you will.)
After a few more days showing Emily our favorite spots in London, we put her on the Underground to Heathrow and returned to Rover late at night, the buses now blessedly running all the way to the campground. The next day we drove to Canterbury, stopping along the way at Leeds Castle at Maidstone. The 500 acres around the castle were impressively gardened, but the castle itself was quite modernized, having been lived in until 1974.
We then drove to Canterbury, skirting just outside the medieval walls and through four traffic circles, one close on to the next, finally arriving at the campground just outside the city.
Like some of the others, this one had gravel pitches (sites) on a large field. It was very spacious. Many people who use caravans (trailers) also put up an awning room attached to the trailer, so the campgrounds often allow quite a bit of space between sites. And again there were no outlets in the bathrooms and a 20p charge for using the hairdryer! This seems to be the scheme in England. Because Susan has a 230-volt European hairdryer, she is unable to use it in Rover. We gave some European camping books to an Australian couple next to us who had rented a van for 6 months and seemed not to have done a lot of planning or research (can you hear our ‘tsk, tsk’?).
The next day we took a bus into the city and, because nobody else had signed up that morning, had a private tour of the cathedral with an enthusiastic women who made sure we knew the entire Thomas Becket story, down to the number and location of the wounds inflicted by Henry’s knights. The place was quite busy with school children of all ages, some in monks’ costumes and others speaking French.
On Wednesday we drove to Folkestone on the coast, stopping at a Battle of Britain museum housed at what is left of a WWII airfield that had sent hundreds of flights off to France. It is full of Spitfires and Hurricanes and pieces of the planes recovered from beaches and farm fields over the years. We were not allowed to take any photographs. It also has the stories of many of the 554 RAF fighter pilots who didn’t return, as well as newspaper clippings from 1940, asserting that an invasion was expected in the next 72 hours. (There is also a cartoon of Napoleon standing on the French coast with Hitler, saying, “Yes, this is as far as I got, too.”) Places like these are always a sobering experience, and it is good to see someone keeping these stories alive.
From there we drove to our Folkestone campsite on the scariest road yet. The campsite is in a breathtaking location, with the English Channel on one side and the white cliffs of Dover rising on the other.
We were close enough to see France and hear the waves breaking. But to get to the site we had to drive 1/2 mile on what felt like a farm lane, lined with hedges, all downhill with no room for passing. We are hoping we won’t scrape bottom and lose a tank or two on the way out. Incoming campers are not supposed to arrive until after noon, so we have been assured that we will not meet anyone as we drive back out if we leave before noon.
It has been disconcerting to find that in England it seems to be necessary to book campsites ahead of time. On the Continent we had never made reservations, and the two times we did find a campground full they still found a place for us. And when we have called ahead here, we have been surprised at how often places are full. So we are spending a lot of our downtime trying to plan ahead a few days (or, in the case of Bank holidays, even weeks). This means that we have to know why we are going somewhere days ahead, what we want to see, and how long we need to stay. This has not been our style of travel. As a further complication, we bought a couple more campground books in London--bringing us up to six--each with its own way of listing sites (we are rapidly learning the names of England’s counties, if not their locations). Fortunately, we do have a phone that works in England, but the campsite in Folkestone is beyond the signal for phone or wifi, which is of no help at all.
May 8
May 8
We have seen some remarkable places--the field of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 (at Battle, England, of course), Rudyard Kipling’s home (a gracious large stone house with 13 fireplaces) just as he lived in it, the little town of Rye, the home of Victorian actress Ellen Terry with its collection of threatre costumes and posters--each with lovely English gardens. But to get to these places we have had to drive on English roads, and it isn’t getting any easier. Most of the campgrounds and places we want to visit are off the main roads (and, quite frankly, they, except for the rare divided highway, aren’t much better than the country ones.) Most of them have no shoulder and, in fact, have curbs with hedges right up to the edge of the road. Granted, sharp corners and intersections are well marked (if the hedges haven’t grown over the signs), but speed limits often seem at least 10 mph too high, and we sometimes hear our driver’s side miror hitting hedges on the left. The entrances to the campgrounds have proved to be most exciting: long, single-lane twisting ribbons, lined with trees, with no room for passing . . . hence the rule “leave before noon / arrive after noon.” So far it has worked.
All this is probably more unsettling for Susan, who sits in Rover’s “sui-side” seat (the one closest to oncoming traffic). She has developed a simple avoidance technique of closing her eyes as large vehicles approach and pass. For his part, even though the British roads have been more narrow than we experienced in Italy, David is happier driving here because (xenophobia alert) British drivers are sane.
On Sunday we were running low on gas, and many service stations were closed. But the warning light hadn’t yet come on, and we were entering Brighton, a large city. So no problem, right?
Wrong.
In town, we turned left up a half-mile hill pitched at about 8 percent. We were nearly to the top when Rover balked and died at an intersection. David got her started again and pulled into a no parking zone along the street to get her out of the way. She died again. David thought (hoped?) the steep hill and low gas level were the problem. Someone walking by told us where the nearest gas station was--back down the hill, of course--so Susan stayed with the vehicle to explain to police why we were in a no parking lane while David walked the mile back to the gas station, bought a can and 5 liters of gas, and walked back up the hill, futily flagging taxis along the way.
Rover started right up, we backed up, turned around, drove back to the gas station, bought more gas . . . and stopped at Starbucks to celebrate. Then we drove back up the steep hill and on to the Brighton campsite. We are close to the channel and Brighton’s huge marina but cannot see it from here . . . something about chalk cliffs in the way. The campground is a big place and appears to be nearly full. There are two big class A American RVs here, but both have Great Britain license plates. We have WiFi access here: £5 for 5 hours, good at any of the campgrounds associated with one of the UK’s two major camping clubs (confusingly enough, the other club offers a different WiFi plan).
Compared to our drive in, our time in Brighton today was relaxing. We left Rover in the campground and walked to the bus, which took us to the center of the city in minutes. We toured the ridiculously opulent Chinese-influenced Brighton Pavilion, the resort home of George IV in the 1800s.
It was a very good tour in that it let us into many more rooms than we are normally allowed to see. We walked all over: along the Brighton Marina with hundreds of sailboats and up and down the Brighton Pier (basically a casino/amusement park), where we napped on deck chairs in the afternoon.
Dinner in the city and a bus and walk back to Rover in a sprinkle led by a very bright rainbow finished out the day.
We are still having incredibly good weather. Only twice has it rained a little, both times overnight. Everyone is complaining about the lack of rain. And Rover really could use a good bath.
May 15
When we drove back down the long hill to leave Brighton, we headed for Chichester, stopping on the way at Arundel Castle. This site had great motorhome parking in a large field.
And the castle was impressive, too. It was and is still the home of the Dukes of Norfolk, one of them a friend of Thomas More, another a victim of Elizabeth I. We drove on to Chichester to a sparkling little campground west of the city. In the morning we took a bus toward the town, first stopping at the Roman Palace excavations. We weren’t expecting much but were surprised by the impressive layouts of mosaic floors that hadn’t been uncovered until the l960s. Afterwards we walked into the city, visited the cathedral, and bused back to the campground.
Buses are very expensive. If we weren’t so doubtful about finding parking for Rover in the city centers, it would be cheaper to drive, even with gas at $8 a gallon. We regularly pay $5-6 apiece for a day return ticket. “Pensioners” in England (aged approximately 60+) can ride buses for free, so we see many of them. And since most people at campgrounds are retired, many of them also use the buses regularly.
From Chichester we went to Portsmouth and again gook a bus to the city center, this time to visit the Royal Navy yards. We declined to pay $32 each for a ticket valid for a year to visit everything (our only choice available), so instead we walked around viewing the ships from the docks, including Lord Nelson’s “Victory,” a massive and impressive sight.
Then we found Charles Dickens’ birthplace in a remarkably unchanged home. The campground in Portsmouth was a bit scruffy, but only a dike away from the ocean.
Winchester gets the “Motorhome Friendly” award. The town’s visitor flyer we had picked up pointed out a designated “Park and Ride” with motorhome access just off the highway: a simple exit and two right turns (keeping left), and we were parked and on our way on a free bus. When we left a couple of hours later, it was just about as simple to retrace our steps to get on our way to Salisbury. Winchester cathedral has a great story about being saved by a diver. One corner of the cathedral was sinking into the bog, and when they dug down to try to shore it up, the hole kept filing with water. It took a diver 5 years to do the repair work and the corner still leans a bit. The cathedral is also where Jane Austin is buried, and they had a little extra exhibition about her in one of the transepts.
The campground at Salisbury was a big field, and since we asked for good wifi connection, we were kept close to the reception office on a fairly level pitch. Many others had major leveling challenges on the slopes. On Saturday, Salisbury’s markets were in full swing and the town was very busy. We bussed the short way to the town center, toured the cathedral, where one of the original copies of the Magna Carta is on display, and also stopped in at another of the National Trust properties, this one a Georgian private home.
We have joined the National Trust, which allows free admission to all its properties for a year. We have already recouped the cost. And we have also joined the English Heritage group that has similar properties. That one got us into the Old Sarum’s Norman castle ruins just above the campground.
Salisbury campground and cathedral, from Old Sarum
hilltop ruins. (Rover is fourth from the left.)
On Sunday we left, first heading north to Stonehenge. When we were here 40 years ago we walked around and sat on the stones; now everyone is kept at a distance on a path. Susan was disappointed that she couldn’t get a picture of Rover with Stonehenge in the background. Then we set out on our longest drive so far: 100+ miles to Exeter, where we had to find street parking without a map in order to visit their extraordinary cathedral, accompanied by the ringing of its bells the entire time we were in the city center. There was a funny display of plaster painted sheep on the cathedral lawn that was drawing a crowd.
(All of these city centers surprise us with how vibrant they are--so many people and so many stores open, even on a Sunday afternoon.)
And then the worst 9 miles yet. It’s one thing to have a bad 1/4 mile into a campground, but this was 9 miles of hedge-to-edge on what the authorities were pleased to call an “A” road, despite the presence of signs that said “Oncoming traffic in middle of road” . . . right next to the other signs informing you that said on-comers were free to do so at 50 mph. (We declined to match their speed--30 or 35 was good enough, much to the chagrin of the cars behind us.) We have planned a different way out, but feel sure it will entail more of the same . . . and because we are headed to Cornwall and Land’s End, we suspect that we will encounter even more in the future.
May 17
This is Susan writing. We ended our most recent entry saying (in reference to the driving) that we expected more of the same. But instead it got worse--much worse: damage-to-Rover worse.
We got out of Dawlish reasonably easily, compared to getting in, by heading south and west to a motorway. From there the driving was easy, but with amazing long hills and views. The hills concerned us a little because of our hill/gas problem in Brighton and because our fuel gauge was getting low. But we found gas (at £1.41/litre or $8.32/gal) and went on to the day’s first stop, a National Trust house . . . only to find that it was closed on Mondays. Undaunted, we headed south to the amazing Eden Project, with the GPS taking us in a very roundabout way through a very small town. (Hmm, surely we can do better than that on the way out.)
The Eden Project is a huge piece of engineering and imagination, built since 1997 in an abandoned china clay open pit in Cornwall. It is the quintessential “green” project: educational . . . practical . . . highlighting our dependence on the natural world and encouraging us to care for it. It has several large geo domes made of heavy plastic containing literally thousands of plants from the tropics and all over the world. It attracts thousands of people from all over the world, and no wonder: it was really spectacular and a wonderful way to spend the day.
However, after visiting the Eden Project we had to drive back to the campground. The unimaginative GPS wanted to take us back the way we had (safely) come. We should have listened. But since it had already been wrong twice that day, I decided we could go the short way.
I was wrong. The very first thing we encountered was a “diversion” (detour), so we were headed off on what the map shows as a “white “ road--the kind to be avoided at all times. However, once you are on these roads there is no way to turn around. In fact, you are lucky to have passing room if you meet someone, which we did three times. We passed a car that pulled aside into a little space. We backed up about 50 feet to let a tank truck pass. Then we asked a lady for directions at a cross road, and when I asked if Rover could get through she hesitated and then said, “Yes, the milk lorries get through the lanes” (note her telling use of the word “lanes’).
Lanes indeed. The road in places was barely wide enough to pass through. In one small town we could have both reached out and touched stone houses on either side. I mean that literally. We pulled in our mirrors and forged ahead, branches brushing against both sides of the vehicle (Rover measures 8’-3” with the mirrors pulled in). And then at another narrow passage we heard a crunch and discovered the front-facing awning support had been partly torn away from the side of the coach: some of those hedges, it turns out, are actually rock walls covered with vine. But there was nothing to do but keep going. Then we came upon a farm vehicle, one of the big ones with the cultivators folded up, that was backing up toward us because he couldn’t get through! The car behind us backed up; fortunately there was a place about 100 feet behind that David could back into, and the tractor was able to clear us.
We let the car go ahead of us and we were off again. We fairly quickly ended up at the campground, arriving from a direction that the directory listing would never have given us, after maybe half an hour. (We saved many miles of travel but added many gray hairs.) (And David used a few words I haven’t heard him say in a long long time.) We were able to put the awning support back in place; it seems to be very secure, although scratched down to the metal in places. It was very frightening and it was a huge relief and a real blessing to get to the campground. It cannot get worse. It simply cannot get worse than this.
Rover in a wide lane at the Lostwithel campground.
(David here: And it will not get worse, because from now on we will follow the GPS, which we purchased at great expense precisely because it has a “truck” setting that allows us to specify that we are 8’-3”-wide-with-mirrors-pulled-in and because it promises to keep us off meandering “country lanes” if only we will take its advice.)
May 19
What a difference a couple of easier days make. We drove out of the Lostwithiel campground on a narrow road and got ourselves safely on a “B” road that brought us to the nearby 600-acre Lanhydrock Estate, now in the capable hands of the National Trust.
This is another “Gosford Park” setting and has been used as such: Fifty rooms to walk through, each one looking lived in and fabulous, from the servants’ quarters to the grand drawing room. We really felt we should have been in Edwardian dress. The kitchens alone were worth the admission price: a series of half a dozen rooms, each with its own purpose.
Then it was a simple short drive west to Truro and a visit to a little grocery. We had been concerned about parking in small villages, trying to buy groceries from three or four different places. But it turns out there are “superstores” here as well as on the Continent, where we can almost always park fairly easily. And then there are the “7-11” kind of places that will serve if necessary . . . like the little place near the campground today.
The next day we took our lives in our hands, walked a few hundred yards up a narrow sidewalk to a bus stop with cars going 40 mph a few feet away . . . and easily bussed into Truro. The cathedral hosted an eight-man German choral group singing a “Forest Mass” in the afternoon: everything in 3/4 time, accompanied by violin and “zither” (it sounded like a dobro, but if you want to call it a zither, OK). It’s always good to hear music performed in these great stone spaces.
We were also impressed with the Royal Cornwall museum, so after the concert and a Cornish pasty lunch we returned to see the rest of it. We camped two nights here in a well-kept campground that had a proper dump for American motorhomes. We also actually had water at our site for the first time but used it only to add a little to our tank. And we found some Mobil 1 synthetic oil that we like to keep on hand for Rover (at only $29/liter at Halfords!).
Today we drove to Sennon Cove and Land’s End. We will not drive further west--if you want to know why we won’t, locate Land’s End on a map. We are in a campground 200 yards off the main road (now why would we choose that? if you don’t know the answer, you haven’t been paying attention). It is basically a big field, although we are on a gravel and leveled spot. And we have a view of the ocean. We are here for four days because we are planning to avoid driving in Cornwall (!), opting instead to take buses to Penzance and Land’s End.
Unfortunately, we are finding the buses aren’t on helpful schedules. We did go to Land’s End today, glad to be on a bus and not driving ourselves. We were expecting a little fishing village or something quaint, but instead found only cliffs and jutting rock, a souvenir shop or three, a parking lot, and an iconic road sign like “The End of US 1” that you couldn’t get next to without paying a fee.
The view of the ocean and the surf crashing on the rocks was impressive, but unless you were willing to hike over rocks and down cliffs it was a bit of a letdown. (Some people wouldn't be a bit disappointed, like the cyclists who arrived having ridden the length of the island, 874 miles from John O'Groats, Scotland.) Later, we were content to be huddled warm in Rover, watching the sun set over the ocean.
May 21
Taking a bus instead of driving is definitely easier on us but not on the bus drivers. We took a bus to Penzance, expecting it to travel on the main route. Instead, it rather quickly cut off on a “white” road to a small town. The road brought back a lot of scary memories. We couldn’t believe a bus--a double-decker, no less--would be routed on a one-lane road. But instead of treating it as an error and turning around, the driver kept taking on more challenges, including a 16% grade downhill into Penzance (where we saw not a single pirate, by the way, despite what the souvenir stores would have us believe). From there we changed to another bus for a short trip along the coast to Marazion, where we could walk at low tide to St Michael’s Mount, one more of the National Trust properties--not to be confused with its twin, Mont St Michel, across the channel in France.
This is fairy tale stuff: At low tide a cobbled causeway is discovered, leading to an island, where a tiny village lies at the foot of a hill, in the shadow of the gloomy castle. Part of the fortress is still lived in, while the rest is open to the public. The grounds are so well kept and beautiful that there is a separate charge for walking through the gardens.
We spent the better part of the day there before walking back--well before the tide was due to come back in--and then bused back to Penzance. We did note that there was ample parking for motorhomes along the waterfront, but we were glad to have Rover safely parked in a campground.
Penzance is a little tired-looking town that spills down a cliffside to the harbor. We walked around a bit before taking the bus back on the same one-lane route. This time we had a more careful (timid?) driver, but it was still exciting, including two bus stops on the way up the 16%-grade hill as we left Penzance. On a blind corner we also met a tractor, pulling a wagon, that took some very careful maneuvering to pass. We could have reached out and grabbed hay out of the wagon.
On Saturday we woke up to strong winds and heavy gray skies. We had been expecting bad weather to catch up to us at some point, and Daphne du Maurier had prepared Susan for lashing rains on the Cornish moors--and buffeting winds, too...don’t forget them--so we bundled up and took yet another bus to St Just and Sennon Cove. These turned out to be two too-tiny towns along the coast with not much to see other than a couple of local art galleries and lots of stone buildings. The surf was up in Sennon Cove, where there is a wonderful wide sand beach, and several brave wet-suited souls were out in the water.
We had hot crab bisque for lunch to warm us and then headed back to do some much-needed laundry. There has been no rain yet, but the wind is howling so hard around Rover that we dare not hang laundry out to dry. Instead, reluctantly, we have paid £2 (about $3.30) for two cycles in the campground’s dryer.
We have decided a couple of things. So far we have traveled 933 miles in 34 days: an average of 27 miles per day. At this rate we will be lucky to get to Scotland. So we have decided we will not take a ferry to Ireland or try to get to the northern coast of Scotland. We have some long drives planned in the next couple of weeks--on motorways--to get us further north.
We are also aware of how content we are to just be here--no wishing we were close to coming home. Maybe the wonderful weather so far has had something to do with that feeling. We are cozy and happy in our 160 square feet with everything we need. We listen to the BBC and have had enough decent internet connections to stay in touch and do our banking. Unlike our experience on the Continent, we haven’t needed to buy a single International Herald Tribune. And knowing the language probably has a bigger effect on our comfort level than we realize. We have traveled safely and have stayed healthy. And while the money seems to be flowing out faster than ever, we are still blessed to be here doing what we love to do.
Which reminds us . . .
A friend told us he was surprised that we kept making these trips to Europe because “your blog entries are so full of problems”...or words to that effect.
It made us wonder whether we were accurately conveying our experiences. In the end, we decided two things contributed to what our friend had sensed.
First, our aim in writing this blog--besides assuring our children we are still alive--is to encourage American RVers to consider doing what we’re doing and to alert them to what they might be letting themselves in for if they do. (The answer, we hope, is “Nothing you can’t handle if you plan ahead and if at least one person in your travel group is an optimist.”)
So we don’t blog much about the wonderful things we’re seeing: our readers can Google thousands of examples of that sort of thing. Instead, we write about roads into campgrounds and dumping black water and the cost of gasoline (and also the absence, at least so far, of Sta-Bil in English stores). Of necessity, then, we also write, perhaps disproportionately, about horrible roads (and how we’ve determined to avoid them in the future), losing tires on autostradas (but also about kind Austrian couples who go out of their way to help us), and the relative im- (or unim-) portance of making reservations at campgrounds (unim- on the Continent, very im- in England during Bank or School Holidays).
This may make for a certain tone to many of the entries.
There’s also this:
A couple of days ago, having discovered that the Land’s End about which we’d formed such romantic images was, in fact, not a hardy fishing community clinging to windswept cliffs but instead merely a couple of ordinary gift shops and seedy carnival rides, we sat waiting for the bus to take us back to our campground. “Or we could walk to the next town and meet it there,” suggested Susan. “Why?” asked David: “The bus will be here in 20 minutes.” “I don’t like doing nothing,” she said.
Indeed: she really really doesn’t. Neither does he (although not as much as she doesn’t). So instead of spending hours sitting in chairs by the RV like many of the people we see in campgrounds, we tend to fill the time by doing things.
Not that we are avid adventurers--there’s no danger of Rover ending up at the tip of South America, like some RVers we’ve read about--but our experiences (and therefore our blog entries) will probably reflect a bit of exertion, sometimes discomfort . . . and, very occasionally, outright disaster.
But at least we’re not often bored.
May 24
Another exciting bus ride took us to Porthcurno, where there is a theatre carved into a rocky cliff on the English Channel. This idea dates from 1932, when a local group wanted to stage “The Tempest” in a perfect setting. Ever since then, with time out for WWII, the Minack Theatre has been going and growing. It is quite a wonderful location and quite a story (which we will spare you).
We climbed the cliffs to get to it and later walked back down the narrow road, always on the look out for cars. Since there was nothing else in the vicinity except a cafe and a telegraph museum, we passed the time until the bus came by sitting on the beach below the theatre, watching the surfers.
When we left Sennen Cove campground we asked if they had a place where we could dump our black water (toilet) tank. European motorhomes use a casette system: they remove and empty a small container into a “chemical disposal site,” usually a raised, out-of-the-way sort of sink. But like most or all other American RVers, we need the inground direct-to-sewage-line site. The managers at Sennen Cove did not have that and claimed they had never been asked about it before. (We had asked because it had been four days since we’d last dumped, and while we didn’t urgently need to use it, we don’t want to wait until it’s too late--we’ll leave you to fill in the blanks there.) But at the next campground we actually had a direct sewer access and water right at our pitch--a first for this trip. Twice campgrounds have opened a sewer cover near the bathroom building to accommodate us, and another had a special unit built for requirements like ours.
Our next drive was to St Ives. on the northern coast of Cornwall--only 18 miles away, all on “B” (read “semi-scary”) roads. We had planned to retrace our way on “A” roads, but that would have brought us into St Ives from the east, and both the GPS and the campground guide warned that we should approach the town only from the west. So we had an incredible drive along the coast through farmland. Stone fences divide the farms in patchwork patterns. The cows tend to gather together, but the sheep seem to need their personal space.
They spread over the hillsides like little tan polka dots. Knowing that buses used this route all the time--and knowing ahead of time that the route would be dicey--gave David a bit more confidence that we could make it through. We did . . . although we had to back up once at least 100 yards to let two buses pass on a particularly narrow stretch.
When we got to St Ives and walked into the town, we saw why an RV should not approach from the east: you can’t get through! The city is huddled around a beach and harbor, spilling down steep hills--the streets are all hills. Susan asked the campsite manager how to get into town and he said, ”Just keeping walking downhill.” The further you walked, the tighter the streets. When we walked down a second time to go to dinner, we investigated the route that the GPS was suggesting for getting out and found a one-way street going east that we could safely use. We would be able to get out going east--just not come in . . . incredible. St Ives is a total tourist trap and totally charming, even in a sharp Cornish wind and increasing rain. But by dinnertime the rain had cleared, and even our second walk back up those hills wasn’t too bad. The campsite was on the edge of the town at the top of the hill, overlooking the ocean and the city. It was the best view yet--quite spectacular. And the campsite gets the award for the best toilet/shower house yet.
We left the next day, going east on our one-way road for a few blocks, and safely made it out of town and headed to Tintagel, which claims to be King Arthur’s castle on the coast. A trip consisting of some divided highway balanced by some nasty narow roads brought us to a campsite view even more spectacular than St Ives’s had been. We are looking out over the ocean again, from just beyond the edge of a cliff. We can hear the waves breaking below.
We hiked along the coast path and through a cow pasture to get to the town. And exhausted from the climbs, we saw the ruins of the castle from a great vantage point. Yet another total tourist trap; yet another welcome bus ride back to the campground. We weren’t going to do those cliff walks twice.
May 31
We put a few miles behind us, heading east and then north on divided highways. We stopped at a campground at Burnham-on-Sea, an awful place masquerading as a large resort. You had to go through a crummy loud, flashing casino to get to everything: restaurant, pools, playground, tennis courts. . . . And the only place the WiFi would work was in the restaurant. We did enjoy walking up the esplanade to the little town.
WiFi is important to us. It lets us stay in contact with our children and keeps us up on the news (even news we’d rather not hear about: “The Twins lost again?!). And of course we cannot post to the blog without a strong signal. At the Lands End campground, our best connection--a direct line of sight to the antenna--required us to put the computer on the bathroom sink and sit on the toilet! And when someone parked their motorhome in the signal’s path, we went to the trouble of moving Rover six feet to the left to regain the connection. The next place had at least half a dozen WiFi antennas scattered around the campground. And then we got to Bath, where there was none.
We did, however, love Bath. It is a beautiful city, all light-colored Bath stone, except for the modern bus station they are ashamed of. This is Jane Austen country, and we toured her center, a great fashion museum, a lovely Georgian home, and an old theatre turned Masonic temple (with a guide who took his work very seriously).
We were able to ride our bikes a mile into the city along the River Avon from the campground. On Saturday night we went to the campground’s bar and restaurant while the Manchester United/Barcelona “football” game was on TV. There was Super Bowl intensity in the bar. It took 50 minutes for our dinner to be served, but we were well entertained in the meantime.
After leaving Bath, we traveled to Oxford, stopping along the way at Lacock, a medieval town that has gone to great lengths to preserve its look. There are no telephone or light poles in the streets: all the wires are hidden behind the houses. It is regularly used in films, including some of the Harry Potter movies.
Unfortunately for us, we picked the one day that there was some scarecrow family fun hunt going on: we visited the Abbey-turned-private-home without any trouble, but the town itself was just overrun with families. So we drove on to Oxford, where we had reserved a spot for three nights over the May Bank Holiday weekend.
The campground was full but quiet, and it rained the entire Bank Holiday. We walked into the city and took the tour bus--one of those hop-on-hop-off trips, which we used several times during the day. Finally on our third leg, when we found water dripping on us inside the bus and the windows so foggy we couldn’t tell where we were, we decided to sit upstairs in the rain since we were already wet. At least we could see.
We had hoped to take a bus tour of the Cotswolds, but because of the Bank Holiday even the tour companies were closed down! So on Tuesday we rented a car and drove to several little towns on our own. Villages in the Cotswolds can be über-charming, with roses climbing everywhere, but in terms of urban planning “medieval” and “treacherous” are synonyms, so we were really glad we were not driving Rover.
The highways weren’t bad, but the final couple hundred feet in the villages themselves would have been too much and parking would have been impossible. The little village of Filkins had one functioning business that we could tell, but that one was a wonderful woolen mill with museum and store, selling beautiful wools by the metre and many other outrageously expensive items. All in all, an eventful day: David got to drive a right-hand vehicle with a left-hand floor shift, and Susan got to see how close he could come to the left shoulder and curb. We decided we actually prefer driving Rover. Eventful, fun, sunny, and super quaint, yes . . . but not relaxing.
June 2
This is why we do what we do:
Where else can we sit at a Starbucks and look at Tudor buildings (some of them faux, but who cares)?
Today we visited Chester, a small city in the west-central county of Cheshire. Its medieval center is surrounded by two miles of stone walls: in the southeast corner are ruins of a Roman amphitheater that used to seat 7000; in the northeast there towers an amazing cathedral.
We have seen at least half a dozen ancient cathedrals and abbeys, each big and beautiful in its own way, but this one stopped us in our tracks. We are trying to figure out why: the unusual red sandstone perhaps, or its spacious feeling . . . maybe its integration of modern and medieval features. . . . We aren’t sure.
Chester’s inner pedestrian shopping area was amazing. There are several blocks with two levels of store fronts in galleried arcades.
We were charmed, and a relatively easy park-and-ride lot for Rover on the outskirts of the city added to the ease of the day.
And now we are off to Wales.
June 5
Susan writing . . . Caernarfon, Wales (pronounced Car NAH fin). This was a kind of pilgrimage for me: This is where my whole Anglophile thing began. I can remember watching Prince Charles’ investiture at Caernarfon Castle in l969 on our first little black and white 13” television and saying to David, “We need to go to England.” And the next summer, 1970 BC (before children), with a new MA under his belt and two full-time teaching jobs, we took off for 6 weeks--the trip of a lifetime we thought at the time--to England for two weeks and the Continent for four, visiting mainly the big cities. We did not get to Caernarfon.
This time we did. The drive into Wales from Chester was right along Liverpool Bay: long hills, tunnels, slag heaps, tunnels through slag heaps, divided highway almost all the way. It was just that last 100 feet of 20% grade with a 90% turn at the bottom in the campground that slowed us down. “Take the turn wide,” said the lady camp manager. “People keep hittin’ the rocks on the right.” It was a peaceful, green-terraced valley; we ended up driving around back up to the second level, so getting back out wasn’t as bad as getting in.
The campground was only a 15-minute walk from the city center and the impressive castle. This castle was begun in 1283 and it is in wonderful condition.
It has withstood every assault in its history. Virtually every room and corridor is open to the public: Lots of unlit, narrow, circling worn steps and cold stone rooms. And many many warnings.
There are three museums incorporated into various tower rooms. We were blessed with gorgeous weather to investigate all of it.
The town, still surrounded by stone walls, is kind of rundown but still charming. There is a small marina and a large car park that would have easily accommodated Rover, but getting there would have been fun. When we ate at an outdoor restaurant we were warned, “Watch out for the sea gulls when you finish your meal.” Indeed, a couple of seagulls (which closeup you learn are large birds) did seem to keep an eye on us from 20 feet until our empty plates were taken away, when they left.
We were also within easy (but steep uphill) walking distance of the foundation ruins of an old Roman fort from AD 77.
There wasn’t a black water dump in Oxford, Caernarfon, or the stop in between; on Saturday we drove 230 miles north, skipping Manchester and Liverpool, to Haltwhistle, where the promised “motorhome service point” proved to be only a gray water dump. So for the first time ever we emptied the black water tank, one bucket at a time, into their “chemical toilet waste” site. It proved to be not nearly as disgusting as we expected and got the job done. And then at the gray water dump site we were able to empty the gray water without even using the hose. It just took a couple of trips around the campsite to accomplish it all. About Haltwhistle the guide book had warned ”narrow and steep approach road to site.” Pshaw, say we: clearly the editors have never been to Folkestone or Battle, let alone Cornwall. This was a piece of cake.
Saturday was something like “National Let’s All Camp Out Weekend” in Great Britain. We were greeted at Haltwhistle with a bag of goodies that consisted of some fliers, two balloons, two mustard samples (!) and the British version of Gummy Bears. Sunday is the last day of the Bank Holiday week, so we made reservations here for both nights. For the rest of our stay we will have what is considered Low Season, so we are expecting fewer people in the campgrounds. But we are heading to Glasgow and Edinburgh, two very popular destinations, so we are planning our way and trying to make reservations. The planning will give us something to do on this rainy Sunday. And not going anywhere for a day feels just fine. David is replacing broken cabinet hinges--always a favorite pastime.
June 10
On our way out of Haltwhistle--the geographical center of Great Britain, they like to say--we stopped at Hadrian’s Wall. This marked the northernmost part of the Roman Empire, as if to say “this is as far as we are going.” The remnants of the wall are about four feet thick and high, and go on for miles and miles. We had to climb up through sheep and cow herds, past some much younger walls, in order to get to the real thing.
After a quick stop at a lovely little doll house museum we headed north to Moffatt, where we stopped for the night. Right next to the campground was a woolen mill, where we discovered sweaters we hadn’t realized we needed--and on sale, too!
The next day we headed to New Lanark, about 20 miles off the main roads. This mill town was an experiment by Robert Owen, a social reformer intent on improving the lives of his mill workers and educating their children. Along the way, he instituted the first nursery school, initiated an eight-hour work day, banned child labor, and still made a profit for his investors. It is quite a village: some of it is now residences, but much is open to the public. Once again, when we visited the mill’s shop we were compelled to purchase wool sweaters we didn’t know we needed. We expect this pattern will continue.
On the way out we ignored the GPS (Geezer Positioning System) that told us to take a yellow road, opting instead for the (obviously better) red road. Wrong: it turned out to follow every turn of the Clyde River, throwing in a few extra frightening hills and turns. But we finally arrived safely at the M road and made our way to the Glasgow Campground, located in a large “country” park.
This campground has probably been our least favorite place so far, just because of its location. Glasgow offers very few choices when it comes to campgrounds, and this one was a good 10 miles from the city center. It was very easy to get to: about 200 yards off the M, a couple of left turns and we were there. The problem was how to get into the city without using Rover. The attendant at the reception gate told us of a bus stop at the other end of the park, about 2 miles away, and also, he seemed to remember, a possible Park and Ride. So the next day we rode our folding bikes the two miles--including three hills--toward the bus stop and found a gas station where we asked permission to lock them up for the day. A lady on the street told us which bus to catch: it proved to be an express that went directly to the city center on the M without stopping.
All in all, that first day it took us an hour and a half to get into the city. We repeated the trip the second day: this time, since we knew about parking the bikes and the bus schedule, it only took us an hour. At the last minute we decided to wear our raincoats again, and, indeed, the rain started to fall only five minutes into our twenty-five minute bike ride. It rained on and off both days: brilliant warm sun, rain and chilly wind ten minutes later, then sun again.
Glasgow is a big busy city: lots of traffic, lots of impressive Victorian sandstone buildings, lots of dirt deposited on the sandstone, and lots to see. The Kelvingrove Art Museum building is an incredible structure,
and the dirty old cathedral proved to be stunning--straight out of Harry Potter.
In the city center, the statue of King George III, who let the American colonies slip away, has been replaced with Walter Scott (although it still stands in what’s called George’s Square).
We had gone to the trouble of buying water hose adaptors in a variety of sizes, but Glasgow’s campground trumped us: unthreaded spiggots. So we used bleach to wipe down everything in sight, shoved our hose over their #!* faucet, and gave ourselves cold baths in the process of adding a few quarts of water to our tank. As if that weren’t enough, there was no WiFi at the campground; fortunately, though, both a pub and a Holiday Express just across the road had internet access. The pub’s was terribly slow, so we went to the Holiday Express; even when we told the clerk we were from the campground, he gave us the password for the day--as the hotel staff did each of the three days we were there. (However, not even the hotel could provide bus service to the city center.)
We have found the Scottish people to be very friendly, good humored, and helpful--often unintelligible, but helpful. One old lady told us she would tell us when to get off the bus: sure enough, twenty minutes later she stood up from her seat in front and waved to us in the back. Others hear us discussing bus routes on the street and ask us where we want to go. This afternoon a well dressed man walked us through a college construction site to help us find our way back to the campground. Invariably, natives we talk with ask us where we are from and wish us a continued “good holiday.”
We drove to Culzean Castle Estate today. It has a long history: first a fortress, then a hunting lodge, and finally a Victorian family home. After WWII, the third floor was given to General Eisenhower for his personal use: it's now a hotel with $500/night rooms.
After seeing the castle, we drove to a little campground in Ayr, a town on the shores of the Firth of Clyde, due east of the northernmost point of the island of Ireland. It is right in the middle of the town--just the sort of location we like, but have seldom found on this trip. Tomorrow we brave the traffic around Glasgow to get a little farther north for a couple of days to see more countryside. So far it reminds us of a green Wyoming: huge barren rolling hills and lots of sheep--lots and lots of sheep. And even here in southern Scotland, it’s still light at 10 p.m.
June 15
Just north of Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland is only about 35 miles wide. The Highlands begin here, and the only real break in the hills is at Stirling. So, of course, a castle fortification was built there in the 1200s, and for hundreds of years it housed kings when it wasn’t being fought over. The castle is high on a cliff, reached by narrow roads winding right through the city, so we drove Rover to a Park and Ride at the foot of the hill and let the bus driver do the work. Even in the continuous rainfall that day, the castle was a major tourist attraction. Our purchase of the National Trust pass has saved us a great deal of money on entrance fees in England, and we’ve been pleased to find that Scotland accepts it at many sites, too.
The campground near Stirling, with beautiful views of the hills, not only had a black water dump just for us but also supplied a long hose so we could add water to the toilet tank and rinse it out. We think this is only the second time we’ve been able to do this in all of our trips.
(Moving on from our preoccupation with sewage:)
When we left Stirling we drove through the village of Dollar and then--our favorite so far--The Pool of Muckhart. It was a lovely little place. The names of villages continually make us smile. Make a circle with thumb and forefinger, place it anywhere on a map of England, and you will see at least half a dozen names that make you laugh. There’s Burpham, Lickfold, Wineham (just west of Twineham), Didling and Barripper. Then there is West Taphouse, East Taphouse, and Middle Taphouse; also The Quarter, Stede Quarter, Haffenden Quarter and Further Quarter--all within a couple of miles of each other. But if you put that same circle over the map of Scotland, often you will come up with nothing. There are miles and miles of uninhabited highlands, populated only by the thousands of sheep we see on the hills. But the few towns there are are often just as charming and sometimes unpronounceable.
There are golf courses everywhere in this part of Scotland, and we were getting close to the game’s birthplace at St Andrews. To play at the famous St Andrews course, it is necessary to make a reservation a year in advance or hope to win the lottery to play on a Saturday. We drove farther north, through the hills to Scone just for the views; the next day we turned back south to Edinburgh.
The campground in Edinburgh was a huge improvement over Glasgow’s. It is a big place: a wide, sloping field with a few hedges. There is WiFi, a bus at the gate (and a 30-minute ride to the city center), a shop, restaurant and bar and all the necessities. Among the tourist sites in the city was one we hadn’t expected: the Royal Yacht “Britannia,” now decommissioned, is berthed permanently at a dock just north of the city. We were able to tour all 412 feet, including the Queen’s own rooms and everything else. It was all done quite simply, not the over-the-top, gold/ regal look one might expect.
There is much to see and do in Edinburgh, and a lot of it involves plaid. We also saw and heard tourists from all over the world. It rains here a lot, but five minutes later the sun will be shining . . . until it rains again.
All in all, it was a good place to be for three days. But tomorrow we head east and south: we have a ferry to catch at the end of the month.
June 19
We drove from Edinburgh to Berwick-on-Tweed with nary a hedge, stone wall, or too-narrow road along the way. We are now back in England.
This half in England . . . . This half in Scotland
The Berwick campground was across the Tweed River from the city, high on a hill with great views.
The city, a short bus ride away, was a pleasant surprise. Sited on the border between Scotland and England, Berwick has the distinction of being the most fought over city in the land. It still has much of its fortification wall around the old center and we walked all the way around.
The next day we found Rover’s Mobil 1 oil at an auto supply store and then drove on to Alnwick Castle, the Hogwarts of Harry Potter films.
It is occupied by the Duke of Northumberland during the half of the year that it is not open to the public. The castle and estate has been in the Percy family for 800 years. And they are quite a family, with ties to numerous events in British history: the founding of Jamestown, Virginia; being written into a Shakespeare play (Hotspur); an execution ordered by Elizabeth I; a death at Dunkirk in WWII. . . . The rooms open to the public are wonderfully extravagant. The two-story library was worth the admission price alone.
And then it was just a short drive to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where we encountered our second water loading problem of the trip. For reasons of weight, we like to travel with as little water as possible, so we rarely fill our tank, instead choosing to add water when we arrive at that evening’s campground. But this time we were unable to make our hose connect to their faucet with any of the numerous connectors and adaptors we have acquired over the years. We always use our own hose, dedicated to drinking water, never knowing what the campground hose may have been used for. We have always had excellent water, but we do always use our own hose and filter. No unfiltered water goes into our fresh water tank. Eventually we were able to attach our filter to their hose so . . . we used it. So far, no problem.
It started to rain during the night: a constant light drizzle that kept up the entire day we spent in Newcastle. It was a special “Taste of Newcastle” weekend, with lots of food vendors in the wet streets. But the rain didn’t seem to keep the crowds away and didn’t slow us down too much. As we entered the city’s small cathedral, we noticed guests gathering for a wedding, so when the organ started playing we sat in the back, watched all the ladies come in with their fancy hats on, and stayed until the bride made it down the aisle before we sneaked out the back. (This is not unusual: In many of the very large cathedrals, tourists will be walking down the side aisles while services are going on in the middle or in a side chapel.) We continued through the rain, crossing one of the seven bridges in the city to get to an art museum in a remodeled flour mill and then crossed it again to get back to a craft show at The Biscuit Factory. We felt like we were in Minneapolis again, at an art center in a converted warehouse and a museum in a flour mill.
Newcastle was full of people. One bus stop on the way back to the campground was at a large shopping center attached to the train station. It was surrounded by huge parking lots and a parking garage, all of them packed full of cars. It would be Christmas before we would see lots that full in the US. The price of gasoline just doesn’t seem to slow anyone down.
On the way to Durham today we left the highway to see the largest angel sculpture in the world: The Angel of the North stands above a major highway, where it is seen, they say, by one person every second.
With the blessing of the angel we proceeded to Durham. We arrived at the cathedral in time to attend a worship service. 125 people in the congregation don’t make a whole lot of noise when they sing in this massive space, but the organ filled the place and was lovely. After the service we were able to investigate the whole cathedral; then we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the narrow steep cobblestone streets of the town, again in the rain, before heading to a nearby campground.
June 23
A really good day, but then a turn for the worse. We drove to the small city of Richmond because they have the oldest Georgian theatre in the country and they give tours. We spent a delightful hour in this tiny theatre with a very enthusiastic tour guide. We cannot imagine 400 people, smoking clay pipes, using chamber pots during the evening’s six hours of entertainment, jammed into this fire trap with smelly tallow candles for lighting. But it has survived and been restored to its original glory, except that now it seats maybe 200 at most. The theatre guide recommended we check out the town's little museum: it contains the set for James Herriot’s vet clinic from the tv series “All Creatures Great and Small. There are always surprises everywhere we go.
We drove on to a nearby campground and set up for the night. Susan used both the microwave and the oven (not at the same time) with nothing else running, and we thought we had tripped the circuit breaker on the post outside. David tried to fix it, but he and a knowledgeable neighbor couldn’t get the electrics running again. We have battery power for lights, water pump and ignition of the LP for the refrigerator, but we cannot charge the battery with incoming electricity--only from running the engine. It caused us little problem, but great concern.
The next day we drove on to two lovely properties out in the middle of nowhere on some pretty narrow roads and one 25% uphill grade!!. The first was the small Nunnington Hall, with a great dollhouse village displayed in the attic.
Then it was on to Castle Howard (home to two movies of Brideshead Revisited), a huge place--more palace than castle--quite extravagant, set in beautiful, massive gardens. We had to take the long way around to avoid an eight-foot wide gate on the road to York.
On our way to York we came upon a camping store and stopped to explain our electrical problem. We made an appointment to return the next morning to have it checked out. The young Polish man who looked into our problem tested a few things, agreed it was a problem with the charger portion of our inverter-charger, and sold us a separate battery charger to help when we were not driving (and charging the battery as we drove). We find we can manage quite well without electrical hookup as long as the batteries are charged.
So we pushed our problems to the back of our minds and spent a great day in York. Much of our time was spent in the magnificent York Minster, the cathedral. We had been there before, but this is such a massive, overpowering space that it was easy to spend time there again. And now they also have the underground crypt and Roman foundations exposed and available to the public.
We also visited the Jorvick center that tells of the Viking history connected with York. The old city center has many narrow pedestrian streets that were full of tourists, but they are still charming (the streets, not the tourists).
Our battery charger had accomplished little overnight, but we drove on to Lincoln where we had planned to go and also where we had located another motorhome dealer. Bless these people: we drive into their overcrowded yard where there was one place to park, without an appointment, and tell them our problem and they say “We are crazy busy, but, yes, we will look at it. Why don’t you leave it here and take the bus into the city.” So we did and they did.
When we returned from our visit to England's third largest cathedral, we waited quite a long while in the RV shop's waiting room . . . not unlike a hospital, waiting for the doctor to come in with good or bad news. Well, the news was bad: The charger is in fact not charging the house batteries because the unit is not recognizing the electric from the campground, and the problem is with the unit itself, not something simple--and external--like a fuse. We have now spent over $200 and have only gotten the problem diagnosed, not solved. So we are operating on the battery power we can generate while we drive: So far, so good. It’s a good thing it doesn’t get dark until 10 pm so we can make do with minimal 12-volt lighting, and we can run the refrigerator on LP gas.
Tonight we are camped in Sherwood Forest. There is a sign on the shower block door that warned of recent thefts. Perhaps Robin Hood is still around. (Repeat after me: ‘It’s all part of the adventure . . . it’s all part of the adventure . . .”)
(And if any of you, gentle readers, find yourself with an RV problem somewhere around the city of Lincoln in England, head for Camper UK. They’re very good.) (Psst--we have new Things We Have Learned!)
June 28
Our electrical problem has not resolved itself, and we have found no one to help us out with the many suggestions we have received via the internet. But Rover’s engine charges the house batteries while we drive and when we’re in a campground the little battery charger we bought does its thing, so between them we have enough power . . . provided that we run the refrigerator on LP and don’t use the microwave or the oven. (Eating dinner out also helps a lot.) We found that sitting in Cambridge for two nights didn’t drain the batteries either, so we are feeling more confident about finishing the trip by limping along this way.
We made one of our strangest visits yet to an estate called Calke Abbey. It is owned by the National Trust, who made the decision not to restore it to some pristine earlier era but rather to show it to the public just as it was received: in a declining state. The eccentric family that owned it had collected odd things; worse yet, they never threw anything out, but instead, when a room was full of someone’s collection of something or another, merely shut the door and moved on to other rooms. The only restoration that the Trust undertook was to keep the place from deteriorating further. So they fixed the leaking roof, for example, but left the peeling paint on the ceiling and the curling paper on the walls. It was quite an unusual property, out of the way and requiring a one-way mile-long paved drive amid the sheep still grazing on the estate. It was one of our favorites.
When we left Calke Abbey, we drove east to a campground outside Peterborough. But when we drove into the city on Sunday morning, intending to worship at the cathedral, we were unable to find a place to park: every lot had a height restriction barrier. In addition, there was at least one large boot sale (flea market) going on in the center of the city, and traffic was very busy, So we gave up--our first real defeat--shook the dust from our sandals, and drove on to Cambridge.
We had reserved the campground in Cambridge for two nights, but it was too early in the day to go there, so we headed for a Park and Ride that we had checked out on the internet beforehand. The website had assured us that motorhomes were allowed there.
Can you tell where this is going? Sure enough: when we arrived, down a narrow little entrance road, there was the height restriction barrier (again!); also a bus lane that threatened “rising bollards” should we dare proceed; and of course no alternative way to back out. So Susan walked/ran a couple hundred yards around hedges to the bus station to find out how to get in or out or park. She was assured that the bollards would not in fact rise to smite our black water tank, so we drove in . . . and survived. Fortunately, during all this time no bus had appeared behind us to demand the use of his lane. So we parked, took the bus into the city, walked to the train station, and for £8 round trip for two (about $13) we took the train to Ely and went to their wonderful cathedral instead of Peterborough’s. It was yet another amazing site.
Then we took the train back to Cambridge, caught the Park-and-Ride bus to where Rover awaited, bollard-free, and drove to the campground.
The weather has turned very warm and humid, so we spent an uncomfortable day in Cambridge. The city was very easily accessible on the city bus from the campground. Bicycles are everywhere. Almost all the streets are marked for bike paths. It is really flat here: when we took the tourist bus, we were told that the nearest mountains to the east are in Russia. The tour took us to the American Military Cemetery and all around the 31 colleges that make up the University. Then in the afternoon we visited a few, including the beautiful Christ Chapel at King’s College with its fan-vaulted ceiling.
Cambridge really is a lovely city. We exhausted ourselves in the heat and treated ourselves to dinner out again.
There was a little rain overnight to cool things off and again the next day on our way to Bury St. Edmonds. We found a very tight place to park in a shopping center and walked a few blocks to the Theatre Royal. This is another Georgian-era theatre, but unlike Richmond's this one has been refurbished, not restored, because it is regularly used today. It is actually owned by the Greene Brewery across the street that once used it to store barrels of beer when the theatre was in decline during the first half of the 1900s. Now it is under the care of the National Trust. We had a great detailed tour taking us onstage, backstage, under the stage and into the boxes and balconies. While we were there we could hear rain pounding on the roof, and when we came back to the lobby to leave, we found its floor flooded--the lobby is several steps down from the street level--and water was continuing to pour in. From the way the staff was dealing with the problem, it was clear that this was a very unusual occurrence. We waited for a few minutes for the rain to let up and then walked back to Rover. Even with rain coats and an umbrella, we were soaked by the time we got back, but the rain had cleared most shoppers out of the parking lot so we had no problem leaving. We are staying in a small rural campground a few miles out of town and we were glad to find a gravel site waiting for us instead of very wet and spongy grass.
June 30
We found ourselves with an empty day, so we backtracked toward Cambridge to go to the Duxford Imperial War Museum. This is a huge, impressive place at Duxford Air Field, used by the Royal Air Force and hundreds of American pilots during WWII, especially the Battle of Britain. The museum consists of eight huge airplane hanger-like buildings, two of them fairly new construction, to show off the impressive collection of all kinds of aircraft. One building explained the principles of flight and had a piece of Orville and Wilber Wright’s first airplane. We walked through a preproduction Concorde with its testing equipment still in place. Another building was dedicated to the Battle of Britain, another to US Air Force aircraft, and still another to land warfare, with an emphasis on D-Day. These buildings were strung out along the still operational air field, and we put a few miles on our shoes going from one to another and all the way back again. It was a remarkable place.
Then we drove on to the small campground in Colchester where we had stayed at the beginning of our trip, because we knew they had wifi and a dump for our black tank waiting for us. The owner was delighted to see us and wanted to know if we had made it to the royal wedding. They are also located only 35 miles from the Harwich ferry, where we were headed the next day. We drove into the little town, parked by the beach and walked around a little before heading to the port to get in line for the ferry to Denmark. From there we will make our way north to Norway and our daughter and her family.
Now that we are successfully on and off the ferry, we can tell of our concern. We had made a reservation from Harwich to Esjberg, Denmark, back in February or March, via the internet, with a Danish ferry company--the only one that sailed to Denmark. They sent an email saying something about not allowing loose LP gas bottles; Susan responded that we had a fixed LP tank; they asked “How big?” Susan told them . . . and they said they would have to check with the captain! A couple of days later they told us, “ Your tank is too big. We have cancelled your reservation and refunded your payment.”
This was, shall we say, disheartening: We thought we would have to return to The Netherlands on the other ferry and drive all the way to Norway. So when we got to Harwich, England, at the start of our trip, after our ferry from the Netherlands (with a company that never asked about LP gas), we decided to drop by the Denmark ferry office in Harwich and ask about reservations. The staff there asked us nothing about LP gas (and we didn’t mention it), so we ended up making (in person) the exact same reservation we’d had cancelled on us (via email). At the end of our stay in the UK, we showed up at the dock on June 30. At the first check-in, we were asked if we had any loose tanks. At the second, someone checked that our gas was shut off . . . and waved us on. Huge sigh of relief. We were on our way to Denmark, Rover tucked safely away in the belly of the whale. (Three vehicles ahead was a fuel tanker truck, be it noted.)
July 1
We have driven safely on the left for 2964 miles in England and Scotland. That proved remarkably easy to get used to, and David got really good at negotiating traffic circles, of which there are thousands. Except for the major multilane motorways, or M’s, the “narrow road” label is really true, particularly in a wide American motorhome. But British drivers are used to it, stopping to let us and others pass through a narrow section, taking turns when necessary, and nearly always staying well on their side of the road.
(One example of British drivers' usual attitude toward the other guy: on the Continent, flashing your headlights at another driver means “I have rights and I mean to exercise them,” e.g., to drive through this narrow section of road ahead of you or to go as fast as I want in the passing lane that you, a slower driver, are improperly occupying. In Britain, though, flashing your lights at another driver means “You may go first through this narrow section” or, as you are attempting to merge with traffic on the M, “Come on into the lane ahead of me; I’ll actually slow down to let you in.” And that attitude is common among truckers as well.)
We are grateful that our only road-related momento is a scratch on our awning support. We are pretty sure we will return to the British Isles some day, certainly to London, maybe to Ireland, which we missed entirely; but we’re really sure we won’t be driving a motorhome when we do it. In fact, we deliberately left all our British maps and camping guides at the last campground.
But lest we leave you, dear reader, with the mistaken impression that this trip was all anxiety, please know that we love England still and had a great time. We hope that we have not overused the words “quaint” and “charming,” but quite frankly they apply to every village, town and old city centre we were in. Every one has buildings older than anywhere in the USA.
Most of the housing stock is built of stone, is very old and (often) is quite run down. But some has been well kept and updated, and some is quite new--although often in that row-house style of house-after-house-exactly-the-same for long blocks. Single family homes are rare; two-car garages even rarer. Many homes have a name, ranging from countless instances of “Rose Cottage” to “Butt House.”
We saw some wonderful sites: not only all the places we had wanted to see (except for Peterborough Cathedral) but also many more that the National Trust and English Heritage plans (or “schemes”) alerted us to. Having to make reservations ahead of time proved to be relatively easy, although rather time-consuming, and if we had it to do over again, we would change only a couple of the choices we made. The campgrounds were always clean and well kept, and we felt safe everywhere (maybe a bit less so in Portsmouth and Glasgow, which were just too empty). We had WiFi coverage in most places, which helps a lot, especially when making reservations at campgrounds, and we didn’t have to stop at a single MacDonalds to use their free WiFi. We found Starbucks in every major city and in some small ones; aside from London, the record was Edinburgh, with six. Their shortbread chocolate chip biscuits (cookies) are wonderful, but the prize goes to the shortbread caramel chocolate frosted torte at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow. We had some memorably horrible, soggy fish and chips and also some too-hot-to-eat, crispy, tasty fish and chips. And we had perfect sunny weather for the first whole month, followed by typical off-and-on rain for the second month . . . which we didn’t allow to interfere with our plans much at all.
We will be spending a few days in Denmark and will post about that and then a week in Lillehammer, Norway, where we have a granddaughter
and storage for Rover waiting for us. We will post again when we have added it all up (which is something we are not looking forward to this time).
July 3
We were off the ferry in Denmark within minutes of its docking. We had purchased a good map of the country on board and were able to drive (on the right!) right out of town and on our way. Our first impression of Denmark: flat, And very little traffic for a Friday afternoon. We drove on reasonably wide roads to Billund, the home of Legoland amusement park, and to the campground across the street from it . . . and discovered where all the cars in Denmark were.
We arrived too late to visit Legoland, and the next day it was raining, so we decided that that was something we should do with our granddaughter anyway. We then left for one of our longest drives yet: 172 miles to Frederickshavn. We had traveled about five miles when, almost together, we both said, “A hill!” It really was the first real hill we had encountered since leaving the ship. Traffic, again, was very light until we reached the E, the Danish version of the interstate highway. It was very busy, and we saw many camping trailers and motorhomes going south. We later learned this was the first day of the major “everyone goes on vacation at once” period that is common over most of Europe.
With it, costs increase: we are in a large resort campground for two nights at around $50 per night. There are more than 700 sites here, and most are full. Rover is one of only three motorhomes in the entire campground--the rest are trailers, many with an attached awning room as large as the trailer itself. We are about 100 yards from the beach, and we can see the ferries approaching the port about three miles away.
The place is full of beautiful little blond children who talk funny. We are staying an extra night to take the ferry on Monday, saving us a couple hundred dollars over the Sunday fare, but ever since we boarded the ferry to Denmark we’ve felt like the price of everything has pretty much doubled, so we aren’t sure we are saving much by staying an extra day. Two cups of coffee and two muffins cost us $12 on our two-hour walk today. And gasoline in Denmark? $8.50 a gallon.
July 4
We arrived at the ferry bright and early on Monday morning. Many cars were already lined up ahead of us. We had little wait before we were herded on with two stamps to put on our LP tank--one to identify it and one to seal it shut. It was a smooth crossing: 8 hours to Oslo, where Customs greeted us warmly, asked very little, and sent us on our way. They didn’t even want to see our passports. That same evening we drove the 120 miles to Lillehammer, where our daughter and her family live. It is light until 11pm, so we had no driving problems and could enjoy some of the scenery when there wasn’t massive road construction. Because we’ll have access to a hose and a vacuum cleaner, we’ll give Rover her first real inside-and-outside cleaning in four years.
July 12
Adding things up took a little time this year because we spent US dollars, Norwegian Kroner, Euros, British Pounds Sterling and Danish Kroner. In the past we have paid cash for virtually everything. This year, though, we had to use our debit card often, especially for campground reservations. We use a dedicated debit card/checking account which charges only a 1% foreign transaction fee. We rarely had to use our credit card, which has a 3% fee. None of the ATMs we used charged a fee until we got on a ferry to Denmark.
We normally plan to have $1000 a week available for all expenses and hope that we won’t really have to spend it. Then we put a little extra in the account for backup in case of emergencies. This year we also planned on three ferry trips, which were unusual expenses. And, of course, everything turned out to be far more expensive than we had hoped! We spent all that and a little more.
Gasoline: $3047 for 363.7 gallons (averaging $8.37/gal). We drove 3373 miles, averaging 43 miles each day; as close as we can figure, Rover got 9.2/mpg. We had only ten days where we traveled more than 100 miles, including one day of 200+ miles.
Campgrounds: $2222 for 76 nights, an average of $29/night. The three nights in Denmark were the most expensive at $50/night--these were also large resort sites. The six nights in London were $45/night. We stayed mainly in Caravan Club and Camping and Caravanning Club sites: they were well kept, clean places that were rather easy to reserve through the clubs.
Food: $4294. This is probably $2000 more than our normal food expenses for three months. Food on the ferries and in Denmark and Norway was extremely high priced, and there is also no cheap wine in England.
Other transportation costs (car rental, buses, parking, taxi, trains): $1124.
Insurance: $1028 for just the three months on the road.
Internet: $161.
Ferries: Holland to England $286
England to Denmark $814
Denmark to Oslo, Norway $521
Total $1622
Tourist activities (castles, tours, museums): $1506
LP Gas: $54
Phones: $377. (We discovered the extent of our I-Phone's coverage when we began receiving calls from the US in the middle of the night.)
Foreign Transaction and ATM Fees: approximately $150.
We also spent money on gifts, souvenirs, books, maps, laundry and miscellany. Additionally, our expenses this year included the costs of having our daughter with us for six days in London. Then the need to end our trip by getting to Lillehammer, Norway, fairly quickly added a couple hundred miles and two ferry trips.
All in all we ended up just over the budget; also, we had a few expenses before leaving home, including airfare ($2066), new truck-function GPS ($340), and more books and maps.
Nearly everything in Britain cost more than we’d experienced anywhere on the Continent. And Scandinavia--next year’s adventure--looks like it will be even more expensive.
We are grateful for this privilege of travel and can hardly believe we have spent 11 months over the past few years in good health and safety living in Rover in Europe. Rover has performed wonderfully. We cannot blame her for our electrical problems. Our challenge is to solve the charger/inverter problem before we begin our travels again: this next one will begin a little later in May--or even in June--to give Norway a chance to warm up before we get there.
April 20
On April 12 we left our condo in Minneapolis with three overweight (50+ lb) suitcases. So our first job was to shift books and a 4-lb. box of Borax to our carry-ons. Funny how neither the security guys at Minneapolis nor the ones at Newark airports liked the box of white powder in the carry-on that had all our electronics: phones, GPS, camera, I-Pod, back-up hard drive, each with its own charging station and multiple wires going all over the place. But we probably gave them more excitement than they’d had all day. The Borax was on order from our daughter, now living in Norway, and shifting it and the books gave us 35- and 29-lb. backpacks, which we deftly (!) carried onto our flight to Norway.
After a few days’ visit with our charming granddaughter--
--and her equally charming parents, of course--we flew to Amsterdam with two now-underweight suitcases and picked up Rover. Our new stepdown transformer was waiting for us there (with a sticker that said USPS had first shipped it to Tokyo by mistake). David hooked up the batteries before we left the storage place, and we drove to Gaspaarpark Camping just south of Amsterdam, stopping at a gas station and a grocery store along the way.
April 24
(First, our apologies to those of you who have written comments: until we can fix an 'administrator' problem, we won't be able to have comments appear. We can read them...and appreciate them...but nobody else can.)
Because the ferry to England didn’t leave until 10:15 p.m., we decided to spend the day in Den Haag, which is quite close by. But it is a busy city, and all the parking signs led to garages with height restrictions. We finally just lucked out finding a spot on a street alongside a canal. Rover stuck out a little in the rear, but who are we to be judgmental, and we decided to chance it. Besides, it was only about three blocks from where we wanted to go: the library to use the internet briefly, a small museum with a Jan Steen exhibit, and a stroll among some impressive buildings (old ones, naturally).
The narrow road to the Hook of Holland where the ferry loads is full of trucks heading to the freight terminal. We were the first in line to drive on the ferry. All of Susan’s concerns about whether they would take us were for naught: no one asked us anything about our LP gas tank, customs on neither end seemed to care what we had aboard, and British customs didn’t ask for any vehicle emission tests--they just wanted to know if we had a dog.
April 27
We ventured forth into the English countryside. With information from enthusiastic tourist office employees, we drove to Lavenham and Long Melford, two medieval towns that would be great film and tv locations . . . and, as we learned, had been so used. We were told we could get through the narrow streets and that the car parks would accomodate us. Both proved to be true. When we arrived in Lavenham, we parked in a fairly empty lot that, when we returned, had become so full that we immediately moved Rover in order not to be trapped by incoming cars. Then we drove to Long Melford, the last few yards on a street about 12 feet wide. But once again we parked easily in a car park and visited Melford Hall, which looks inside and outside like it could be used for any Jane Austen movie. Susan was charmed. And the weather remained clear and warm.
That evening, we ended up on a CL site in Colchester (a CL is “Certified Listing”: a site with 5 or fewer spaces for motorhomes to spend the night). This one was well equipped with water and electricity and even free wifi, a big hit after three days without. We’d read that many CLs offer no extras, just a cheap or free place to park. The friendly and helpful proprietors met us with a cup of tea and the next day gave us a lift into town so we could tour the castle there before moving on. Then we headed to London and our first drive on the M (Motorway).
April 29.
April 29.
(If, dear reader, you do not care about the Royal Wedding, best skip this post and read the one preceding.)
We are in London for the royal wedding. Our daughter, Emily, flew in to join us. This was our first attempt at having three adult bodies staying in Rover, and on the whole, she and we bore up admirably. (Emily did OK, too.)
On Thursday we scouted the wedding parade route; already there were lots of people camped out to claim space along the barriers on Pall Mall and at Westminter Abbey.
On Friday morning we were up at 5:30 and on our way by 6:30: walk, bus, tube to Charing Cross, and walk down Whitehall toward the Houses of Parliament. By 8 a.m. we had found an incredible spot perched atop a sort of deep, wide, window ledge on the Old War Office Building. We were about 6’ above the sidewalk, just across the street from where the cars would come out of Horse Guards Parade and turn onto Whitehall on their way to Westminster Abbey . . . and where the horse-drawn coaches, flanked by the Horse Guards, would carry the royal party back to the palace after the ceremony.
May 2
May 2
(Note: the providers of our website’s ‘comments’ feature announced that our one-year free trial of their service had expired, and they now want $10 a month for us to use it. Because that’s nearly the cost of a beer in Norway, we chose to deactivate the service. However, you can still email us, and we hope you will.)
After a few more days showing Emily our favorite spots in London, we put her on the Underground to Heathrow and returned to Rover late at night, the buses now blessedly running all the way to the campground. The next day we drove to Canterbury, stopping along the way at Leeds Castle at Maidstone. The 500 acres around the castle were impressively gardened, but the castle itself was quite modernized, having been lived in until 1974.
We then drove to Canterbury, skirting just outside the medieval walls and through four traffic circles, one close on to the next, finally arriving at the campground just outside the city.
Like some of the others, this one had gravel pitches (sites) on a large field. It was very spacious. Many people who use caravans (trailers) also put up an awning room attached to the trailer, so the campgrounds often allow quite a bit of space between sites. And again there were no outlets in the bathrooms and a 20p charge for using the hairdryer! This seems to be the scheme in England. Because Susan has a 230-volt European hairdryer, she is unable to use it in Rover. We gave some European camping books to an Australian couple next to us who had rented a van for 6 months and seemed not to have done a lot of planning or research (can you hear our ‘tsk, tsk’?).
May 8
May 8
We have seen some remarkable places--the field of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 (at Battle, England, of course), Rudyard Kipling’s home (a gracious large stone house with 13 fireplaces) just as he lived in it, the little town of Rye, the home of Victorian actress Ellen Terry with its collection of threatre costumes and posters--each with lovely English gardens. But to get to these places we have had to drive on English roads, and it isn’t getting any easier. Most of the campgrounds and places we want to visit are off the main roads (and, quite frankly, they, except for the rare divided highway, aren’t much better than the country ones.) Most of them have no shoulder and, in fact, have curbs with hedges right up to the edge of the road. Granted, sharp corners and intersections are well marked (if the hedges haven’t grown over the signs), but speed limits often seem at least 10 mph too high, and we sometimes hear our driver’s side miror hitting hedges on the left. The entrances to the campgrounds have proved to be most exciting: long, single-lane twisting ribbons, lined with trees, with no room for passing . . . hence the rule “leave before noon / arrive after noon.” So far it has worked.
May 15
When we drove back down the long hill to leave Brighton, we headed for Chichester, stopping on the way at Arundel Castle. This site had great motorhome parking in a large field.
And the castle was impressive, too. It was and is still the home of the Dukes of Norfolk, one of them a friend of Thomas More, another a victim of Elizabeth I. We drove on to Chichester to a sparkling little campground west of the city. In the morning we took a bus toward the town, first stopping at the Roman Palace excavations. We weren’t expecting much but were surprised by the impressive layouts of mosaic floors that hadn’t been uncovered until the l960s. Afterwards we walked into the city, visited the cathedral, and bused back to the campground.
Buses are very expensive. If we weren’t so doubtful about finding parking for Rover in the city centers, it would be cheaper to drive, even with gas at $8 a gallon. We regularly pay $5-6 apiece for a day return ticket. “Pensioners” in England (aged approximately 60+) can ride buses for free, so we see many of them. And since most people at campgrounds are retired, many of them also use the buses regularly.
May 17
This is Susan writing. We ended our most recent entry saying (in reference to the driving) that we expected more of the same. But instead it got worse--much worse: damage-to-Rover worse.
We got out of Dawlish reasonably easily, compared to getting in, by heading south and west to a motorway. From there the driving was easy, but with amazing long hills and views. The hills concerned us a little because of our hill/gas problem in Brighton and because our fuel gauge was getting low. But we found gas (at £1.41/litre or $8.32/gal) and went on to the day’s first stop, a National Trust house . . . only to find that it was closed on Mondays. Undaunted, we headed south to the amazing Eden Project, with the GPS taking us in a very roundabout way through a very small town. (Hmm, surely we can do better than that on the way out.)
The Eden Project is a huge piece of engineering and imagination, built since 1997 in an abandoned china clay open pit in Cornwall. It is the quintessential “green” project: educational . . . practical . . . highlighting our dependence on the natural world and encouraging us to care for it. It has several large geo domes made of heavy plastic containing literally thousands of plants from the tropics and all over the world. It attracts thousands of people from all over the world, and no wonder: it was really spectacular and a wonderful way to spend the day.
May 19
What a difference a couple of easier days make. We drove out of the Lostwithiel campground on a narrow road and got ourselves safely on a “B” road that brought us to the nearby 600-acre Lanhydrock Estate, now in the capable hands of the National Trust.
This is another “Gosford Park” setting and has been used as such: Fifty rooms to walk through, each one looking lived in and fabulous, from the servants’ quarters to the grand drawing room. We really felt we should have been in Edwardian dress. The kitchens alone were worth the admission price: a series of half a dozen rooms, each with its own purpose.
Then it was a simple short drive west to Truro and a visit to a little grocery. We had been concerned about parking in small villages, trying to buy groceries from three or four different places. But it turns out there are “superstores” here as well as on the Continent, where we can almost always park fairly easily. And then there are the “7-11” kind of places that will serve if necessary . . . like the little place near the campground today.
May 21
Taking a bus instead of driving is definitely easier on us but not on the bus drivers. We took a bus to Penzance, expecting it to travel on the main route. Instead, it rather quickly cut off on a “white” road to a small town. The road brought back a lot of scary memories. We couldn’t believe a bus--a double-decker, no less--would be routed on a one-lane road. But instead of treating it as an error and turning around, the driver kept taking on more challenges, including a 16% grade downhill into Penzance (where we saw not a single pirate, by the way, despite what the souvenir stores would have us believe). From there we changed to another bus for a short trip along the coast to Marazion, where we could walk at low tide to St Michael’s Mount, one more of the National Trust properties--not to be confused with its twin, Mont St Michel, across the channel in France.
This is fairy tale stuff: At low tide a cobbled causeway is discovered, leading to an island, where a tiny village lies at the foot of a hill, in the shadow of the gloomy castle. Part of the fortress is still lived in, while the rest is open to the public. The grounds are so well kept and beautiful that there is a separate charge for walking through the gardens.
May 24
Another exciting bus ride took us to Porthcurno, where there is a theatre carved into a rocky cliff on the English Channel. This idea dates from 1932, when a local group wanted to stage “The Tempest” in a perfect setting. Ever since then, with time out for WWII, the Minack Theatre has been going and growing. It is quite a wonderful location and quite a story (which we will spare you).
We climbed the cliffs to get to it and later walked back down the narrow road, always on the look out for cars. Since there was nothing else in the vicinity except a cafe and a telegraph museum, we passed the time until the bus came by sitting on the beach below the theatre, watching the surfers.
When we left Sennen Cove campground we asked if they had a place where we could dump our black water (toilet) tank. European motorhomes use a casette system: they remove and empty a small container into a “chemical disposal site,” usually a raised, out-of-the-way sort of sink. But like most or all other American RVers, we need the inground direct-to-sewage-line site. The managers at Sennen Cove did not have that and claimed they had never been asked about it before. (We had asked because it had been four days since we’d last dumped, and while we didn’t urgently need to use it, we don’t want to wait until it’s too late--we’ll leave you to fill in the blanks there.) But at the next campground we actually had a direct sewer access and water right at our pitch--a first for this trip. Twice campgrounds have opened a sewer cover near the bathroom building to accommodate us, and another had a special unit built for requirements like ours.
May 31
We put a few miles behind us, heading east and then north on divided highways. We stopped at a campground at Burnham-on-Sea, an awful place masquerading as a large resort. You had to go through a crummy loud, flashing casino to get to everything: restaurant, pools, playground, tennis courts. . . . And the only place the WiFi would work was in the restaurant. We did enjoy walking up the esplanade to the little town.
WiFi is important to us. It lets us stay in contact with our children and keeps us up on the news (even news we’d rather not hear about: “The Twins lost again?!). And of course we cannot post to the blog without a strong signal. At the Lands End campground, our best connection--a direct line of sight to the antenna--required us to put the computer on the bathroom sink and sit on the toilet! And when someone parked their motorhome in the signal’s path, we went to the trouble of moving Rover six feet to the left to regain the connection. The next place had at least half a dozen WiFi antennas scattered around the campground. And then we got to Bath, where there was none.
June 2
This is why we do what we do:
Where else can we sit at a Starbucks and look at Tudor buildings (some of them faux, but who cares)?
Today we visited Chester, a small city in the west-central county of Cheshire. Its medieval center is surrounded by two miles of stone walls: in the southeast corner are ruins of a Roman amphitheater that used to seat 7000; in the northeast there towers an amazing cathedral.
We have seen at least half a dozen ancient cathedrals and abbeys, each big and beautiful in its own way, but this one stopped us in our tracks. We are trying to figure out why: the unusual red sandstone perhaps, or its spacious feeling . . . maybe its integration of modern and medieval features. . . . We aren’t sure.
Chester’s inner pedestrian shopping area was amazing. There are several blocks with two levels of store fronts in galleried arcades.
June 5
Susan writing . . . Caernarfon, Wales (pronounced Car NAH fin). This was a kind of pilgrimage for me: This is where my whole Anglophile thing began. I can remember watching Prince Charles’ investiture at Caernarfon Castle in l969 on our first little black and white 13” television and saying to David, “We need to go to England.” And the next summer, 1970 BC (before children), with a new MA under his belt and two full-time teaching jobs, we took off for 6 weeks--the trip of a lifetime we thought at the time--to England for two weeks and the Continent for four, visiting mainly the big cities. We did not get to Caernarfon.
This time we did. The drive into Wales from Chester was right along Liverpool Bay: long hills, tunnels, slag heaps, tunnels through slag heaps, divided highway almost all the way. It was just that last 100 feet of 20% grade with a 90% turn at the bottom in the campground that slowed us down. “Take the turn wide,” said the lady camp manager. “People keep hittin’ the rocks on the right.” It was a peaceful, green-terraced valley; we ended up driving around back up to the second level, so getting back out wasn’t as bad as getting in.
June 10
On our way out of Haltwhistle--the geographical center of Great Britain, they like to say--we stopped at Hadrian’s Wall. This marked the northernmost part of the Roman Empire, as if to say “this is as far as we are going.” The remnants of the wall are about four feet thick and high, and go on for miles and miles. We had to climb up through sheep and cow herds, past some much younger walls, in order to get to the real thing.
After a quick stop at a lovely little doll house museum we headed north to Moffatt, where we stopped for the night. Right next to the campground was a woolen mill, where we discovered sweaters we hadn’t realized we needed--and on sale, too!
The next day we headed to New Lanark, about 20 miles off the main roads. This mill town was an experiment by Robert Owen, a social reformer intent on improving the lives of his mill workers and educating their children. Along the way, he instituted the first nursery school, initiated an eight-hour work day, banned child labor, and still made a profit for his investors. It is quite a village: some of it is now residences, but much is open to the public. Once again, when we visited the mill’s shop we were compelled to purchase wool sweaters we didn’t know we needed. We expect this pattern will continue.
June 15
Just north of Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland is only about 35 miles wide. The Highlands begin here, and the only real break in the hills is at Stirling. So, of course, a castle fortification was built there in the 1200s, and for hundreds of years it housed kings when it wasn’t being fought over. The castle is high on a cliff, reached by narrow roads winding right through the city, so we drove Rover to a Park and Ride at the foot of the hill and let the bus driver do the work. Even in the continuous rainfall that day, the castle was a major tourist attraction. Our purchase of the National Trust pass has saved us a great deal of money on entrance fees in England, and we’ve been pleased to find that Scotland accepts it at many sites, too.
The campground near Stirling, with beautiful views of the hills, not only had a black water dump just for us but also supplied a long hose so we could add water to the toilet tank and rinse it out. We think this is only the second time we’ve been able to do this in all of our trips.
June 19
We drove from Edinburgh to Berwick-on-Tweed with nary a hedge, stone wall, or too-narrow road along the way. We are now back in England.
This half in England . . . . This half in Scotland
The Berwick campground was across the Tweed River from the city, high on a hill with great views.
The city, a short bus ride away, was a pleasant surprise. Sited on the border between Scotland and England, Berwick has the distinction of being the most fought over city in the land. It still has much of its fortification wall around the old center and we walked all the way around.
The next day we found Rover’s Mobil 1 oil at an auto supply store and then drove on to Alnwick Castle, the Hogwarts of Harry Potter films.
It is occupied by the Duke of Northumberland during the half of the year that it is not open to the public. The castle and estate has been in the Percy family for 800 years. And they are quite a family, with ties to numerous events in British history: the founding of Jamestown, Virginia; being written into a Shakespeare play (Hotspur); an execution ordered by Elizabeth I; a death at Dunkirk in WWII. . . . The rooms open to the public are wonderfully extravagant. The two-story library was worth the admission price alone.
June 23
A really good day, but then a turn for the worse. We drove to the small city of Richmond because they have the oldest Georgian theatre in the country and they give tours. We spent a delightful hour in this tiny theatre with a very enthusiastic tour guide. We cannot imagine 400 people, smoking clay pipes, using chamber pots during the evening’s six hours of entertainment, jammed into this fire trap with smelly tallow candles for lighting. But it has survived and been restored to its original glory, except that now it seats maybe 200 at most. The theatre guide recommended we check out the town's little museum: it contains the set for James Herriot’s vet clinic from the tv series “All Creatures Great and Small. There are always surprises everywhere we go.
We drove on to a nearby campground and set up for the night. Susan used both the microwave and the oven (not at the same time) with nothing else running, and we thought we had tripped the circuit breaker on the post outside. David tried to fix it, but he and a knowledgeable neighbor couldn’t get the electrics running again. We have battery power for lights, water pump and ignition of the LP for the refrigerator, but we cannot charge the battery with incoming electricity--only from running the engine. It caused us little problem, but great concern.
June 28
Our electrical problem has not resolved itself, and we have found no one to help us out with the many suggestions we have received via the internet. But Rover’s engine charges the house batteries while we drive and when we’re in a campground the little battery charger we bought does its thing, so between them we have enough power . . . provided that we run the refrigerator on LP and don’t use the microwave or the oven. (Eating dinner out also helps a lot.) We found that sitting in Cambridge for two nights didn’t drain the batteries either, so we are feeling more confident about finishing the trip by limping along this way.
We made one of our strangest visits yet to an estate called Calke Abbey. It is owned by the National Trust, who made the decision not to restore it to some pristine earlier era but rather to show it to the public just as it was received: in a declining state. The eccentric family that owned it had collected odd things; worse yet, they never threw anything out, but instead, when a room was full of someone’s collection of something or another, merely shut the door and moved on to other rooms. The only restoration that the Trust undertook was to keep the place from deteriorating further. So they fixed the leaking roof, for example, but left the peeling paint on the ceiling and the curling paper on the walls. It was quite an unusual property, out of the way and requiring a one-way mile-long paved drive amid the sheep still grazing on the estate. It was one of our favorites.
June 30
We found ourselves with an empty day, so we backtracked toward Cambridge to go to the Duxford Imperial War Museum. This is a huge, impressive place at Duxford Air Field, used by the Royal Air Force and hundreds of American pilots during WWII, especially the Battle of Britain. The museum consists of eight huge airplane hanger-like buildings, two of them fairly new construction, to show off the impressive collection of all kinds of aircraft. One building explained the principles of flight and had a piece of Orville and Wilber Wright’s first airplane. We walked through a preproduction Concorde with its testing equipment still in place. Another building was dedicated to the Battle of Britain, another to US Air Force aircraft, and still another to land warfare, with an emphasis on D-Day. These buildings were strung out along the still operational air field, and we put a few miles on our shoes going from one to another and all the way back again. It was a remarkable place.
July 1
We have driven safely on the left for 2964 miles in England and Scotland. That proved remarkably easy to get used to, and David got really good at negotiating traffic circles, of which there are thousands. Except for the major multilane motorways, or M’s, the “narrow road” label is really true, particularly in a wide American motorhome. But British drivers are used to it, stopping to let us and others pass through a narrow section, taking turns when necessary, and nearly always staying well on their side of the road.
(One example of British drivers' usual attitude toward the other guy: on the Continent, flashing your headlights at another driver means “I have rights and I mean to exercise them,” e.g., to drive through this narrow section of road ahead of you or to go as fast as I want in the passing lane that you, a slower driver, are improperly occupying. In Britain, though, flashing your lights at another driver means “You may go first through this narrow section” or, as you are attempting to merge with traffic on the M, “Come on into the lane ahead of me; I’ll actually slow down to let you in.” And that attitude is common among truckers as well.)
July 3
We were off the ferry in Denmark within minutes of its docking. We had purchased a good map of the country on board and were able to drive (on the right!) right out of town and on our way. Our first impression of Denmark: flat, And very little traffic for a Friday afternoon. We drove on reasonably wide roads to Billund, the home of Legoland amusement park, and to the campground across the street from it . . . and discovered where all the cars in Denmark were.
We arrived too late to visit Legoland, and the next day it was raining, so we decided that that was something we should do with our granddaughter anyway. We then left for one of our longest drives yet: 172 miles to Frederickshavn. We had traveled about five miles when, almost together, we both said, “A hill!” It really was the first real hill we had encountered since leaving the ship. Traffic, again, was very light until we reached the E, the Danish version of the interstate highway. It was very busy, and we saw many camping trailers and motorhomes going south. We later learned this was the first day of the major “everyone goes on vacation at once” period that is common over most of Europe.
July 12
Adding things up took a little time this year because we spent US dollars, Norwegian Kroner, Euros, British Pounds Sterling and Danish Kroner. In the past we have paid cash for virtually everything. This year, though, we had to use our debit card often, especially for campground reservations. We use a dedicated debit card/checking account which charges only a 1% foreign transaction fee. We rarely had to use our credit card, which has a 3% fee. None of the ATMs we used charged a fee until we got on a ferry to Denmark.
We normally plan to have $1000 a week available for all expenses and hope that we won’t really have to spend it. Then we put a little extra in the account for backup in case of emergencies. This year we also planned on three ferry trips, which were unusual expenses. And, of course, everything turned out to be far more expensive than we had hoped! We spent all that and a little more.
Gasoline: $3047 for 363.7 gallons (averaging $8.37/gal). We drove 3373 miles, averaging 43 miles each day; as close as we can figure, Rover got 9.2/mpg. We had only ten days where we traveled more than 100 miles, including one day of 200+ miles.