The Return Of The Natives
Trip Start
May 06, 2008
1
50
Trip End
May 26, 2009
Scarcroft,
England,
United Kingdom
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
The Bay of Biscay is notorious for rough seas and I'm a very poor sailor (unlike John who has a cast-iron stomach) so I made sure I was dosed up with Stugeron, but I still felt a little queasy. The sea looked calm enough, with no white horses, but there was a strong swell which made walking around a bit difficult. In the evening I managed to eat some pasta, while John wolfed down steak and chips from the excellent cafeteria (there is also a smart restaurant, but I knew fine food and wine would be wasted on me under the circumstances!) Then we had an early night. It was an odd feeling to be lying in bed and still rolling about slightly, but I survived unscathed. However, the experience has confirmed what I already knew - a cruise would be my idea of hell! Oddly enough we awoke to much choppier seas next morning, but it felt better than the rolling swell. In fact I joined John in eating a hearty breakfast and lunch before disembarking just before 3pm.
It was about an hour's drive to the campsite at Verwood, not far from John's mum at West Moors. We were immediately struck by two things - the sheer volume of traffic on the roads, and how green everything was. We thought it was pretty green in Northern Spain, but the profusion of foliage in England has a sort of in-your-face quality that we found quite unnerving after a year away!
The campsite too was very verdant, set amid rolling meadows, but we'd forgotten the extraordinary rules and regulations of English caravanning. We were shown exactly where to park the caravan, at right angles to the road, with the awning on one side and the car parked on the other side. We were instructed to park the 'van on the grass and erect the awning on the gravelled area. The result was that the jockey wheel sank into the mud, making it difficult to manoeuvre the caravan, and the gravel was so hard we couldn't get the tent pegs into it! This was a clever ploy on the part of the management, as we had to buy a dozen extra-strong tent pegs from the shop on the site!!
We'd also forgotten that it was half term, and the campsite was full of families, many of them in tents. The problem with tents is that there is no noise containment, so what with TV's, music, squabbling kids and shouting parents, it was a less than peaceful experience! Also the weather at first was awful - wind and rain, and we were feeling the cold, but at the same time I had really bad hay fever, probably caused by all the fields of rapeseed. Add to this the terrible price of everything, and we were nearly ready to turn round and go back on the next ferry! However the weather improved, there was warm sunshine, and we had to admit that the English countryside is lovely.
We had a few days being reunited with John's mum and sister and enjoying fish and chips, Chinese takeaways and, in John's case, proper English beer. Then we were off again to Bladon Chains near Oxford, to see Helen. We stopped for a coffee break at a motorway services en route and had another culture shock. Instead of the normal-sized cup of excellent "café con leche" and a delicious cake that we'd been accustomed to enjoying for around 4 euros, we paid £10 for 2 indifferent cakes, a vase of latte and a chamber-pot of Americano. These were the smallest sizes available. What would we have got if we'd asked for "large" - a bucketful, perhaps.
Bladon Chains is the first campsite we stayed in at the start of our mammoth journey, over a year ago, when we were caravan virgins. Now we feel like old hands, casually name-dropping Romania and Bulgaria and impressing our less adventurous fellow-campers! Half term was over so the site was nice and peaceful, and set in quintessentially English surroundings, near to Blenheim Palace and the pretty village of Woodstock. We weren't able to spend a lot of time with Helen as she was working nights, but we enjoyed a meal with her at one of Oxford's many good restaurants.
After a couple of very pleasant, sunny days we headed north to see Michael and Nicole and the cats. Once again we had an interesting experience when we stopped for coffee at Leicester Forest. A coach arrived and disgorged a bevy of beautiful young Oriental women, rather sexily dressed. Walking behind them, we realised they were talking to each other in unusually deep voices, so decided that they were ladyboys on a tour of the UK!
It was good to see that Michael and Nicole were looking well, the garden was a mass of colour, and Stimpy and Queenie hadn't forgotten us. We now have a mountain of post to work through, doctors, dentists and opticians to see and finances to sort out before we decide where to settle down. We're hoping to find somewhere near the south coast, so for the next few weeks we will be travelling round looking at various options.
