It’s up to you to have fun and be happy; you can’t wait for it to just happen.
And that’s what we have done as we’ve travelled around England in Eileen. It has been a somewhat zig-zagging route, but we’ve filled our days with as many friends and family as we could. And everywhere we’ve gone, we’ve talked and chatted and nattered and had a lot of laughs.
As soon as we arrived in England, we forlornly packed away our summer clothes at the bottom of our suitcases and lifted the jumpers and jeans up to the top. The boots started walking again and the suntans faded away. Rodney enjoyed being indoors glued to the TV at Sheila & Jacks’ and was overjoyed when the England team grabbed the Ashes from the record breaking (not in a good way) Australian team.
We’ve been wonderfully well fed and watered by numerous folk and also enjoyed some very hearty pub fayre, good Thai meals, tasty pies and mash, lovely fruit and veggies fresh from gardens of friends, some fish-n-chip dinners and of course that other well-known English food, the Indian curry. I may have overly gorged on fresh cherries, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries, but they are so very delicious at this time of year.
We managed to keep up with a bit of culture seeing ‘The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time at the Gielgud Theatre, a Sonia Delauney exhibition at the London Tate Modern, and a slow stroll around the Stoke Bruerne Canal Museum in Northamptonshire. Special thanks to Fred and Christine for taking us to Lords Cricket Ground to watch Middlesex v Surrey in a 20/20 match; my first visit to the hallowed ground. Thank you to everyone who provided us with baths, showers and washing machines, enabling us to be not-too-smelly on our travels and many thanks to everyone who has looked after us.
One particular day worthy of singling out was Sunday 16 August. My brother Neil cooked us a full English breakfast; there’s a theme starting here…….. We wandered around the lovely historic English town of Oundle after driving through some lovely Northamptonshire villages full of beautiful thatched cottages. We then followed the signs to Lyvedon New Bield, an English National Trust property. The three of us joined a guided tour around the very English garden full of ponds, a grassy green labyrinth and a huge fruit orchard, with the tour culminating in the house itself. The building was never completed, but it is quite an impressive ruin of an English Elizabethan summer house. After the stroll we stopped for a Cornish clotted cream tea and finally completed our day with bangers and mash with lashings of gravy. All in all, a thoroughly, quintessentially, completely, English day.
As for Eileen, she has been treated to a new dinner service, a gold service, an MOT by her makers and also a shiny new exhaust pipe. We’ve been approached by a couple of men, one in Horsham and one in Castle Acre, asking if we were interested in selling her; now I wonder if that will happen next year when we will be wanting to sell her. Ooo, I don’t like typing that, it makes my shoulders rise and makes me feel a little sad. I have a feeling it might involve tears when we do finally part ways with her in July 2016.
So with our zig-zag around England almost complete, we’re now busy packing our bags for another two weeks in France. On Tuesday the Eurostar will hopefully whisk us through the tunnel from London to Paris for four nights staying at Kevin and Julia’s apartment in the 7th Arrondissement. On Saturday 5 September, we will then travel down by train to Chatillon sur Loire with seven Aussie friends, for a week of cruising the Upper Loire to Decize. Another two nights back at Kevin and Julia’s will complete this year’s second European vacation, followed by three nights at my brothers to mothball Eileen and pack our bags yet again. Then a flight straight back to Sydney should have us finally arriving home on Saturday 19 September.
Despite having yet another amazing year travelling in Eileen, I have a very sneaky feeling that I, for one, will be very happy to be back home in Sydney again……….for a while……..
