Day 02 Arrival and down to Hampsire

---

Today we arrived at Heathrow and as usual had to walk half way across Heathrow from the plane to customs and immigration. It seems every time we come here, our aircraft is parked at the furthest extremity. We cleared customs with no problems and then had a cup of coffee and went to get the shuttle to collect the car.

We were taken to the Avis depot and within 30 minutes were on our way in a blue Peugeot 207. Nice little car.

We then headed off around Heathrow Airport to pick up the motorway and head south to Basingstoke in Hampshire. We had the guy at Avis print us off an AA route listing of where we wanted to go in Basingstoke but he printed us off a route to someplace else, Kettering, we think. Not bad, but about 100 miles away from where we wanted to go. Right street, wrong town.
We headed south and turned onto the M3 and headed west into Hampshire but as we were running a bit earlier than expected we decided to call into one of the motorway service centres and have breakfast. We stopped at Fleet Services and found a Starbucks and had a coffee and then we continued west to Basingstoke.

Because the directions we got from the AA were incorrect, we spent some time driving around Basingstoke Town Centre. Strangely enough, three or four of the street names were identical, and it wasn’t until we stopped at a garage that we found out the directions were for another town. Great start, but the lady at the service station at Morrisons was very, very helpful and eventually we arrived at Wally and Maureen’s place about 9.30 am.

We spent a couple of hours with them and had a shower and a couple of coffees and then started to head south again through the beautiful Hampshire countryside towards Alton and the A32 to Fareham.

As we had all afternoon, and only about 40 miles to travel, and were in Jane Austen country, we decided to head to her old home at Chawton, just outside Alton.

This is a lovely Georgian style brick house set on a large block of land. The property consists of the house and barn, stables and an external bakehouse. There is also a new addition built in the style of original property to house a visitor and learning centre.

We firstly went for a stroll around the gardens, which are typically English with the flower beds and the brick walls enclosing the gardens. They have been sympathetically planted with the type of plants that would have been used in the era of Jane Austen living in the house. They had a short audio visual of Jane’s life in the learning centre so went and watched that before heading off to house.

Regrettably, no photography is allowed inside the house so we have no images of the interior of the property. It’s a shame really because you cannot buy a book with photos of the interior. The house is referred to as a cottage, but it seems to be a rather largish cottage comprising of several lounges, a dining room and kitchen downstairs and 3 or 4 bedrooms upstairs. The property is very well maintained. Each room has lots of memorabilia of Jane and her family. Some of the artefacts are certainly of the era and not specific to the family but does show how life would have been lived in those days.

We then went for a stroll through the village, which is very pretty with a lot of thatched cottages before we headed to the local pub for lunch. I had a Ploughman’s lunch and Gina had asparagus soup made with fresh asparagus with a couple of fresh tips. It’s the season at the moment so it was really fresh.

Once we had had lunch we got back in the car and headed south to Fareham. We arrived late afternoon about 4 pm and headed off the supermarket to stock up on toiletries and a few snack foods to carry in the car with us. We also went for a stroll around Fareham mall before we headed off to see Carole and Paul.

It was really good to catch up with Carole once again and also to meet Paul for the first time. We hope you have a long and happy relationship. After a good chinwag we went to a local pub, The Buccaneer for dinner. The meal was excellent and the conversation uplifting.

After dinner we headed back their place and after a long and tiring couple of days we finally headed off to sleep in a bed.

---

Comments

[Andrea]

So love the thatched cottages and the awesome gardens, kitchens are pretty cute too!!!