After criticism of the lack of news from some folk out there, I have been persuaded to get blogging again. This page will be a summary of what has happened over the last eight weeks, since we got back from France. There is drama, excitement, generous friends, weight gain and late nights. Eileen has had her brakes checked, after a little red light was coming on; thankfully she has been given the all clear to continue on her travels with us. So, grab a cup of tea, find a comfy chair, ‘cos this is a big one; one blog for eight weeks which would have been about forty blogs in France!
I can’t believe where the last two months have gone. Our lives have been absolutely crazy and I am only just starting to feel a bit more relaxed. Since we got back from France, life has been ridiculous and included some fun, some tears and plenty of frustration. I thought, assumed, whatever, that because we owned a campervan home we would be using it in the UK too….. wrong! We’ve been living in and out of other people’s homes, B & B’s and house-sitting, I had no idea where anything was. We were spread between Andy & Carole’s house, Neil & Deb’s house, Andy’s car, the campervan and where ever else we happened to be each night. I’m feeling a bit more centred now because we’re all packed up with almost everything back inside Eileen.
Our first full day back in England was spent in Lynda & Mark’s garden in East Grinstead, not relaxing in the sunshine, but stripping everything out of Eileen and building a huge pile of “stuff”, so that we could valet our little home on the inside and the outside. We were quite stunned at how much we had with us and it was a relief getting everything back in place and knowing that we now had a cleaner home than when we went away.
After a couple of nights with Lynda & Mark, we moved to Caroline & Steve in Horsham, where we indulged in some retail therapy and I managed to buy a new pair of sandals to replace the shabby, worn out ones that had been ceremoniously dumped in a rubbish bin in Calais. On the Friday evening, Lynda & Mark came over and we all ate fish & chips, while watching the amazing opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics. It turned into a rather late night, but we managed to get up early on Saturday and Caroline drove the four of us, plus an enormous picnic, over to a village below Box Hill. We walked straight up the very steep path to the village hall at Box Hill and spread ourselves out beside the road. By the time the first cyclists came through in the men’s road race, the area was packed with happy people waving flags and cheering every time the cyclists, the officials and the police motor bikes came past. The cheers grew even louder when the police took to waving back to the crowds. There were no vuvuzelas, thank goodness, but there was one chap with a large and rather noisy cowbell; perhaps he was supporting the Swiss……? It was great fun and we were there for hours as the race does nine loops of the Box Hill area before returning up to London. I took advantage of a concrete grit box for a brilliant view of the cyclists each time they wheeled past. I may have been wearing the Union Jack sarong as a scarf, but I was loudly cheering the Aussie cyclists, as well as the Aussie support vehicle, which had a kangaroo on the roof.
Our next stop was a night at my brother, Neil’s in Dunstable and then we took Eileen to Hertford and parked her up for five weeks outside Chris’s warehouse. I, for one, felt quite emotional leaving her there and also found it very hard trying to work out what we needed to take down to Andy & Carole’s house, I had got so used to having everything travelling with us. On the last day of July, we caught the train down to London to continue our Olympic experience. We dropped our bags at Fred and Christine’s apartment in Westminster and then walked around to Horseguards Parade to watch the beach volleyball at 2.30pm. We saw two men’s matches, followed by two women’s matches, unfortunately both GB and Australia lost their matches, but we still enjoyed the wonderful atmosphere and the fun of being there.
We stayed at Fred & Christine’s for three nights as we also had tickets to see the women’s handball on the Friday afternoon out at the Olympic Park. Handball is such a fast game and probably the most exciting of all the events that we went to see. We arrived early and spent hours wandering around the enormous Olympic site and not queuing for a souvenir, or for a burger at the world’s largest McDonalds.
By our ninth day in England, we had already slept on two sofa beds and three beds; I was missing Eileen……
We went to see ‘Warhorse’ at the New London Theatre, which was really good; definitely worth seeing. The following week, we went back to Fred & Christine’s for another three days and watched part of the men’s triathlon cycling past Buckingham Palace six times and also spent another day at the Olympic Stadium watching athletics. We took Fred & Christine to see ‘Yes Prime Minister’ at the Trafalgar Studios Theatre on Whitehall, which was wonderfully funny and very topical.
The following week, we had yet another day in London with Andy & Carole, after the Olympics had finished. We watched Tower Bridge (with the Olympic rings on it) being raised, then caught the Docklands railway out to the Excel Arena for a mooch around. We ‘flew’ (boarding passes required) the Emirates Gondola over the River Thames to Greenwich which was amazing; you get big views of parts of London that you never usually see and can see how much the Thames snakes around in big bends towards the centre of London and also way down the river past the Thames Barrier.
We then had lunch in the O2 (North Greenwich Arena) and wandered around there for a while before catching a boat back up the Thames to Westminster. Unfortunately, the one we were on didn’t go as far as Westminster, it turned around at Charing Cross and started heading back towards Greenwich!!! The first stop we could get off at, was back at the Tate Modern, so from there we walked over the Millennium Bridge, around St Pauls Cathedral and then hopped on a bus up to Trafalgar Square. So in the one day, we covered the full set – trains and boats and planes and buses and shanks’ pony too.
The four of us shared a couple of Ploughman’s in a pub on Whitehall (how British!) and then walked up to the Haymarket to see ‘Spamalot’, which was hilarious. We finally caught the tube and train back to Hertford exhausted and with me (badly) singing “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life”.
We’ve had some very long and very full days, on foot and also riding Boris’ bikes, discovering places we’ve never seen before and revisiting the old favourites, but London is just so busy and alive, with so much going on this summer, that we really have enjoyed ourselves up there; if Sydney was anything like this during the Olympics then we really did miss a good time there, for sure. Rodney has revelled in having so much sport to watch and at times it has been hard to drag him away from televisions. He is now recovering from the “greatest summer of sport” which seems to have ended with Andy Murray winning the US Open. Quite amazing, I didn’t think he quite had it in him. The Paralympics have been amazingly well received here and the coverage was brilliant. After the massively popular Olympics, the huge popularity of the Paralympics really has taken everybody by surprise. Rodney wishes we had bought some tickets, but we had originally planned not to be around. So he’s glad we were able to see so much on the telly, it was just as good as watching the Olympics. The support for the athletes was tremendous and the noise generated by the spectators has never been experienced at such levels at any Olympics, or Paralympics, before, except of course for the blind soccer where the spectators cannot make a sound……
After catching up with everyone in and around the Hertford area, we headed north west to visit cousins Philip & Val, in Happisburgh, Norfolk for a couple of days. We stayed in a gorgeous, very new, B & B, with the best breakfast in the country, but we had the smallest room in the place and the bed was at chest height for me, which involved getting Rodney to haul me up on to it! We then moved down to more cousins, Sheila & Jack, in Suffolk, followed by friends Kay & Al near Stowmarket and then two nights in a B & B in Wivenhoe, Essex catching up with Kiwi friends, Heather & Roger. My birthday was comically spent in Essex….at 56 I am an Essex girl!!!! I wished we had taken Eileen on that trip, but we did have a brilliant time with way too much food and drink.
After Essex, we headed back to Hertford for a surprise, belated birthday, pub gathering, which was lovely and then we packed everything back in to Eileen, left Hertford and headed to Horsham to stay at Caroline & Steve’s for a session of house-sitting, while they went away for five days. We were left in charge of a rather noisy chatty parakeet called Ed, some non-laying chickens, and a couple of fish. We enjoyed having the time to get loads of banking, paperwork, shopping, mending, fixing, washing, etc., etc., etc. done. We also managed a lovely afternoon bicycle ride that took us along some bridle paths, through various villages and gave me the chance to pick and eat lots of blackberries along the way. We enjoyed Horsham, it is bigger than we expected and I really enjoyed chatting away to Ed, he reminds me a little bit of the lorikeets in our garden at home. Plus I loved having the campervan parked right outside the front door and being able to grab things as I needed them, and not be constantly packing and unpacking suitcases. On the Saturday, when Caroline & Steve returned, the girls went shopping and the boys took to their bicycles and headed down the South Down trail, a converted disused railway line between Guildford and the South Coast. They managed, of course, to squeeze in a couple of stops for pub refreshment on their four hour outing…..
From Horsham we moved west and camped under a huge oak tree in the Forest of Dean for two nights and did a really long walk to Symonds Yat and along the Wye Valley. The first hour was spent walking in a full circle back to the campsite, oops, can’t believe we got so lost!!! Fortunately, it was a lovely walk and we managed to squeeze in a cream tea on route and there was an ice cream shop on the way back and after that we really did need the exercise!
After a stopover with Jean, my lovely ex mother in law, near Tewkesbury, we drove down to the Cotswolds to my sister Candice for a couple of nights. We then went back to Hertford for a night, intending to meet friends in London for the evening, but one of them had suffered a bereavement, so the whole evening was cancelled, plus neither of us felt too brilliant, so we were a little bit relieved that we could crash and have an early night instead. On Saturday we drove over to brother Neil in Dunstable and then on Sunday we had the big Blake family gathering in Leighton Buzzard, which we had been planning everything around. It was great fun mingling with lots of Blakes, one of whom Rodney hadn’t seen for 31 years and who I had never met before. It was a lovely afternoon and it was so good to catch up with everyone. Thank you very much Sylvia and Taffy for organising the great event.
We were going to head North after that, but decided to head more east, via Norfolk, to hear some news from Sydney with Vanea, who is over here for a month. We ended up spending two nights on her Dad’s driveway in Aylsham. Unfortunately their shower was broken, so we had to use the campervan shower and it did seem very strange being naked on someone’s driveway within earshot of the smokers outside the British Legion Club just on the other side of the road….! I made sure both the blind and the curtains were closed….! Robert & Jackie, more of Rodney’s cousins were holidaying in the same town, literally just around the corner and so we popped round there for lunch in their holiday cottage. I love coincidences like this; we’ve never been to Aylsham before and suddenly we had two sets of people to see on the same day in the same place!!!!
We are enjoying all the selection of food back in England, we felt that France was rather narrow on choice and a little bland sometimes. Trouble is, we’ve both put on a bit of weight again, then again that’s probably all the beer for Rodney and for both of us there’s the roasts, oh and all the chips with everything here, even the lasagne! Now we’re back on the road, I think we’ll start trying to eat a few more salads (without chips) and there’ll definitely be less alcohol drinking without friends to encourage us….. We’re aiming to spend most of our time in the Lake District and Scotland for the rest of September and October. The weather still looks atrocious up there, but we think we might as well go there now and then concentrate on all the other bits of Europe next year. Happily it is very cosy inside Eileen, when it’s not too nice outside and we’re all set up with a DAB radio, an iPod full of music, a cupboard full of books that we want to read and lots of DVDs to watch on the laptop.
Our flights are booked out of Heathrow to Singapore on November 12th, but before that we still have to get down to Polegate in Sussex to see Rodney’s brother Rupert and to pop in on my Aunt & Uncle in Seaforth, not too far from Rupert. After a couple of nights in Singapore, we’re going to spend a week in Brunei with Ian, a friend who teaches up there and also visit Rick and Lam in Ho Chi Minh City before spending a few weeks travelling the length of Vietnam from Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi. We’re booked to house-sit at Kenn & Pla’s beachside apartment for a few weeks in Singapore from around December 12th while they are in Switzerland and then we’re flying back to Sydney on New Year’s Eve, arriving on New Year’s Day. We’ve been offered a house-sit at Mark & Fiona’s, lovely Harbour view apartment at Pyrmont in Sydney for a couple of weeks and then we’ll probably stay at Vanea and Peter’s for a couple of weeks while we sort out tax, car, superannuation, dentist, etc., etc. And, if we can get everything sorted out quickly, we may try and do a trip up the coast.
So, as you can see, the next four months look like being just as hectic and crazy, not sure I’ll survive, but the current plan is to come back here again next year and see more of Europe in Eileen, without the added pressure of the Olympics in the middle. Unfortunately, we’ve just heard that our tenants have got behind with the rent again and have now been told they will be taken to court to pay up, or move out. We’re really peeved about it and have been trying to think through all the options of re-renting for twelve months; if the agent can find another tenant. The trouble is, our sofa is in there and any new tenant might not want it…. Oh it’s all a bit tricky, but there’s nothing we can do until we find out what is happening with the current tenant. We had hoped they would stay on in Naremburn until November next year, but I don’t think we will give them the option to stay on after Feb 1st, even if they do get up to date with the rent….. Ah well, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Right, I better finish off here; at least you now have an idea of where we’ve been and where we will be, over the coming months. And now we are definitely going to head north, mainly…….
