D & A rarely make campground reservations. D doesn't like to over plan. Consequently, he occasionally under plans. They try to do most of their touring in the Fall when most families are locked into work and school schedules. However, holidays sometimes present a problem. D & A prefer to camp in a comfortable and secure campground but these places tend to get booked up over holidays. The last weekend of August is the last Bank Holiday of the Summer in the UK and therefore also the last big hurrah of the Summer for most campers and caravanners in the UK. Naturally, D had not made campground booking for this long weekend. He thought he'd try to find one near London but the closest he could get was for one night at WYATTS COVERT C.C. campground ... read more

Now that the van has been given a clean bill of health, it was time to D & A to put a few more klicks on it. They headed south to Southampton to do some camping supply shopping at TOWSURE, a place they'd found the previous year. Among the valuable items purchased were a pair of Wellies (They call them gumboots at home) for each of them and a satellite dish for the TV. Towsure didn't have any more battery powered satellite receivers. So, that item had to go back on the shopping list. In the previous year, one evening found them stranded in Southampton camping in an empty Toys R Us parking lot with drunks climbing onto the bikes during the night. Consequently, they made sure to get out of Dodge (Southampton) heading east before ... read more

Rested and ready to hit the road D & A loaded up the motorhome and headed back out on their favourite motorway the dreaded M25. At least they didn't need to go so far this day. They headed south from Heathrow to Chertsey, Surrey where they were able to load up on groceries and begin getting the motorhome in order. ... read more

D & A managed to get their bags checked in at the Vancouver airport and paid $50 each for the two suitcases containing the bike and related gear. They changed planes in Minneapolis where apparently their bags were checked for security purposes. Each bike suitcase has a device that helps prevent squashing the bag in transit and consequently damaging the bike parts. This device had been disturbed enough in one bag to allow it to be somewhat squashed. They wont' know if anything is damaged until they assemble the bike later on. Since D & A no longer consider themselves Spring chickens, they had booked a hotel for two night near Heathrow Airport in Greater London in order to help recover from the long flight as well as jet lag and to pick up their motorhome ... read more

Large: Small: ... read more

D's Grandfather was raised here.... read more