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Published: November 2nd 2009
Road Trip
First night in York with tent Mach IIt was raining in London when we got back from Venice, but we weren’t too worried about it as we had a busy time in front of us before we headed away again the next morning on our English Summer Road Trip. We went straight from Gatwick to Simon and Anna’s flat where we dropped off the pack we had been carrying and headed round to our old flat to pick up some of the other stuff we had left stored there while we were away. On the way back I was carrying a pack on my back to which I had attached our tent, bed rolls and several other plastic bags of clothes and some shoes. On my front I had a back pack and was carrying a bag with our duvet in it. All in all it was about 40kg worth, if not more. I think Emma was carrying a pillow or two. I was dressed in my dishevelled pair of torn up jeans, and was wearing my faded Motorhead t-shirt, with a week or so of growth on my face and a dirty old cap. And I was sweating like a …. in a …. so I probably
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York - The Shambles reeked to high heaven as well. I was looking every bit the homeless guy and man was I getting some looks. It was great to see people’s uncomfortable reaction as we jumped on one of the big red buses.
Once we finally made it back to Simon and Anna’s and freshened up a bit we were off into town to watch Rhys Darby’s stand up routine. Rhys plays the character Murray off the show Flight of the Concords and he was an extremely funny act. It was a nice taste of home less than two weeks before we were due to arrive back in NZ.
Next morning we had a wee sleep in, then packed up everything we were going to need for the road trip. We picked up the rental car that would become our home for the next 10 days, a rather sleek looking Ford Focus, and loaded her up with all our worldly possessions. We were on the road out of London by midday.
Day 1
It took us about 45mins to get out of London. We had a map but figured rather than wasting too much brain power trying to plan a
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York - The Shambles route out of London we’d just keep driving north until we found the ring road then follow that round until we found the M1. It worked like a treat.
The plan for the first afternoon was to get as far out of London as possible and that meant spending the first couple of hours cruising northbound on the M1 at 130kph. A couple of hours later we pulled off the M1 and headed into the centre of Nottingham for the first stop of the trip. I had wanted to visit Nottingham earlier in the year as I thought it might be quite a nice town, but we never got round to it. We decided not to hang round too long though as we wanted to find a spot to set our tent up nice and early seeing it was our first night and all. So Nottingham was just a quick stroll around the central city. There was some sort of kids festival thingee on (it was the summer school holidays) so there was quite a lively buzz to the place, but it didn’t seem anything special. We did go to check out Notthingham Castle but were disappointed to find
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York - The Shambles out that it had basically all been destroyed hundreds of years ago in 1649 after the Civil War, although there is now an impressive mansion built in its place in 1679. We got lost on the way out of Nottingham looking for the way to York, but the outskirts we were lost in looked like very pleasant places to live.
York was another hour and a half up the M1 before exiting eastward on the A64. We actually drove right passed York before realising and turning round, but it worked out alright as we found a campsite on our way back into town. After pitching the tent and unrolling the bed rolls for the first time we headed in to town. York is very historic city, even for the UK. It was first settled in 71 AD by the Romans. The heart of the city is an area known as ‘The Shambles’ which is rabbit warren of narrow medieval streets and old Elizabethan buildings. We stopped at one of the pubs in The Shambles for the first of many Pub meals of the trip. After dinner we walked around the old roman wall, past York Minster and along the
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York Minster River Ouse. We made it back to the campsite just before dark and just as it started rain. We had been worried about rain during the trip so to get it during the first night was a pain in the arse. We only had a 30 pound tent from Kathmandu that carried a warning that it was not suitable for adverse weather conditions. We had tried to waterproof it with a spray on substance but weren’t terribly confident that we would stay nice and dry throughout the night.
Day 2
It rained quite hard all night long and unfortunately it was too much for the tent and the spray on water proofing to handle. We woke up pretty soggy the next morning but somehow we still managed to get a reasonable nights sleep. We packed up the wagon and headed off back into town for more exploring. When we got there and got out of the car we realised how hard and persistent the rain was and decided to give it a miss and hit the road so that we would give ourselves a good chance of reaching Edinburgh before the start of the first ABs tri nations
test that afternoon.
The route we chose took us over the North York Moors National Park, through Middlesburgh, past Newcastle and across the border and through to Edinburgh. The North York Moors were the first ‘wilderness’ area we had experienced (apart from the Welsh Valleys), and was also the first real Moor lands we’d come across in the UK. It was also where we first experienced driving on the narrow country lanes of England, and they were great fun.
Apart from the Moors and the quick stop at the border there wasn’t really too much of interest on the drive that day so we headed straight into Edinburgh. Again we hadn’t plotted a course in advance but knew we wanted to be to the south of the city, so we followed the ring road to the south then picked a point at about where we thought Amy and Michael’s neighbourhood would be and headed into the centre of the city. We were close but weren’t quite round far enough. We soon found ourselves at the familiar landmark of the Meadows so knew where we were from there. All quite simple and painless really. It was great to be
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City wall back in Edinburgh to just chill out at the flat with Amy, Michael and Cleo. We made it in time to enjoy the rugby test and a couple of beers before taking Cleo for some exercise and relaxing back at the flat playing guitar hero for the rest of the evening.
Day 3
On day 3 we had a leisurely drive through to Stirling where we had lunch before heading up to Stirling Castle for a look. From the outside it looked very similar to Edinburgh Castle so we figured it probably wasn’t worth the admission fee for a similar sort of experience. There are so many castles in the UK that you really have to choose what ones to visit and what ones to give a miss.
From the castle we drove round to the Wallace Monument that looks out over the spot where William Wallace famously defeated the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, as was so well depicted by Mel Gibson in Braveheart. The hike up the steep hill to the monument was rewarded with expansive views looking out towards Loch Lomond. I’ve only seen a small amount of the Scottish countryside but I
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City walls like what I’ve seen. Its similar to that ruggered beauty that you get in NZ, especially in the South Island.
From Stirling we headed along a country road towards inland Scotland where Amy and Michael introduced us to Hamish the Highland Bull. He was a pretty laid back looking dude.
After our audience with Hamish we turned back towards Edinburgh, stopping off at the Falkirk Wheel along the way. The Falkirk Wheel is a marvellous piece of engineering that connects the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal near Falkirk. The canals used to be connected by a series of 11 locks but as part of Millennium celebrations to rejuvenate Scotland’s canals it was decided to construct a large wheel to carry the boats from one canal to the other. A boat drives onto the wheel from the top canal, and one drives in to the bottom of the wheel from the bottom canal. Bulk heads then close behind the boats and the wheel starts turning, transferring the boat at the top to the bottom and vice versa. Its quite fascinating to watch so we watched a couple of rotations before heading back to Edinburgh.
As
it was likely to be the last night we’d spend with Amy and Michael for quite some time we treated ourselves to an old Edinburgh favourite. Jimmy Chung’s Chinese buffet. We ate well that night, and had fun doing so.
Day 4
The next morning Emma and Amy said their tearful farewells and we left Edinburgh for the last time (hopefully not for too long though). We headed south towards the English border. We didn’t really have a route planned but knew we wanted to be in the town of Keswick in the Lakes District that night. We drove through the Scottish Borders region through Galashiels and Selkirk, along the source of the Tweed and through to Lockerbie where we stopped in at the cemetery to visit the memorial garden to the Lockerbie Air Disaster.
On 21st of December 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 from London Heathrow to New York JFK blew apart over the border region with most of the wreckage coming crashing to the ground in and around the small Scottish town of Lockerbie. All 259 people aboard the plane (including many American students returning home for the holidays) and 11 people on the ground
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Clifford's Tower were killed. Visiting the memorial gardens in the Lockerbie Cemetery is quite a moving experience and its one of those things that is impossible to comprehend happening in such a sleepy little part of the world. There is an information centre at the cemetery that was run by one of the friendliest elderly woman you are ever likely to meet. She had been watching us in the cemetery and was eagerly awaiting our appearance in the information centre. The information centre was actually a tourist info centre for Lockerbie and surrounds but was dominated by the Lockerbie bombing. Its another one of those places that has become well known for all the wrong, ghastly reasons (like Aramoana or Port Arthur). We made sure we had a good look around as I had earlier been trying to tell Emma the story of the bombing earlier so we were both quite interested in the displays they had up. There were some horrific stories. What makes it even more horrific now is that the Libyan terrorist who was convicted for the bombing was freed from his Scottish prison due to his terminal illness, just a week after we’d been to Lockerbie. He landed
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Goose making himself comfortable in the piddles of the soggy car park back in Libya to a heroes welcome. I can only imagine what the families of the victims must have felt seeing that on the news. Good one Gordon Brown you tosser. The elderly lady kindly pointed us in the direction of the part of the town that was destroyed by the falling debris so we went and had a nosey around there before hitting the road again.
We hit the A74/M6 and followed it down across the border and into the English town of Carlisle. We had a hell of a time trying to find our way out of Carlisle. It was like being sucked into a black hole that we couldn’t climb back out of. Eventually we made our way out and down into the Lakes District and our camp for the night at Keswick.
Even though the weather was diabolical the town was very busy. The Lakes District is a very popular spot for walkers and they were everywhere. And they were all English, not foreign tourists. Our camping ground was again full of English holidaymakers so it actually felt like we were doing something very English for our holiday. We pitched the tent in the
North York Moors
Cruising through the Moors last small patch of grass we found crammed between 4 other tents, then walked into town for another hearty pub meal. This time it was the local favourite of Cumberland sausage and mash with a smooth, rich Guinness.
Day 5
Day 5 began with a bit of back tracking back up towards the Scottish border. On the way down from Edinburgh we had run out of time to check out any of Hadrian’s Wall so decided that we would sacrifice a bit of walking in the Lakes District to explore the wall. We headed east across the Lakes District to the town of Penrith where we then followed a narrow country road over a spectacular pass from the top of which we stopped for some marvellous views. On the other side we drove down a cute little valley with cute little villages, some of which were partaking in a Scarecrow festival which made for some good photo stops. Eventually we followed another narrow little road off the A69 near Greenhead and found ourselves a nice section of the Wall to wander along. We walked westward for an hour, enjoying learning all about Hadrian and his wall along the
North York Moors
Wet North York Moors way, before turning around at one of the ruined Roman forts and heading back. The Wall is nigh on 2000 years old and is still relatively in tact in some places. In other places it has largely disappeared due to the farmers using it as a readily available source of stone for their own walls, until it was finally decided in the 19th century to protect what was left of it. The wall was built by the Roman Emperor Hadrian supposedly to defend against the invading Pictish people of Scotland.
That afternoon we took a fairly leisurely drive back to Keswick, this time driving through the Lakes District from another direction taking us past Ullswater on our way back to Keswick. And it was pissing down again.
That morning we had decided to invest another 30 pound tent to replace our soggy old tent that again got drenched the night before (how it stayed up in that gale I will never know). For 30 pounds the Mach II tent was a little bit smaller than tent Mach I but offered us more protection from the weather. Once we had torn down the old tent and put up the
North York Moors
RAF Flyingdales - high security radar base to provide warning to US and UK of iminent ballistic missle attacks new one we headed back into Keswick for another pub meal. This time it was the local Lakes District specialty, trout.
After dinner we decided to take another drive around the opposite side of Derwent Water then over the Honister Pass and along Buttermere and Crummock Water and back round to Keswick. The scenery on that little piece of road was amazing. I could have sworn I was back in NZ in some parts of it. We’d heard the Lakes District was nice but we weren’t expecting it to be quite that spectacular. Its so different to everywhere else in England.
By the time we got back to Keswick the weather had finally cleared and we were able to finish the evening with a nice relaxing stroll along the lakeside. It was mint.
Day 6
We spent a large part of the previous day in the car but today’s drive was set to be one of the longest of the trip. We were aiming to be in Birmingham that night which was a six or seven hour drive via the Yorkshire Dales, Leeds and the Peak District. Our route took us further down the Lakes District
North York Moors
Emma trying to find the route to Edinburgh and along various lakes and through the towns of Windermere and Kendal. Then we headed along the A684 and into the Yorkshire Dales turning south at Hawes and driving over another nice mountain pass and along a narrow river valley (up hill and down dale as they say), through Deepdale and a bunch of other gorgeous little villages until we hit the A65/A660 just after Bolton Abbey, following it right into the centre of Leeds. The Yorkshire Dales was probably one of my favourite parts of our trip. The scenery was gorgeous and the driving along extremely narrow country lanes (we often had to reverse if we met a car coming the other way) through cute little settlements and along pretty little rivers. It was more of the idyllic England that you learn from the tv and movies, as opposed to the Lakes District which is completely different. It felt just like we were driving through the set of Emmerdale.
We were pretty pooped by the time we got to Leeds so were looking forward to a couple of hours there to recharge the batteries. We have a family connection to Leeds so I was pretty keen to check
North York Moors
Sheep all over the road through the National Park out it out. It was a nice enough city but again all these British cities seem to look the same when you’re only passing through. And they’re all grey.
We made our way out of Leeds via the M62 and turned off just before Huddersfield to take a route through the Peak District. The Peak District is pretty self explanatory really, but it doesn’t have anything on the Lakes District in terms of scenery. By this time I was getting a little tired of the narrow and often clogged B roads and was hanging out for a good blast on the motorway to get us into Birmingham so we could relax in relative comfort for a little bit. I say relative because ordinarily you wouldn’t rate the Etap Hotel chain as particularly comfortable but when you’ve been spending your nights in a cramped soggy tent it does make a pleasant change.
We stayed close to the centre of Birmingham, and it was a bit of a shithole to be honest. The main shopping district was quite pleasant and well presented, and we had nice meal in there and enjoyed wandering around some of the interesting buildings, but as
soon as you went a few blocks out of the centre it seemed to get quite dirty and seedy. We came across a rather intimidating group of youths near our hotel (which had a burnt out car parked out the front) which is the only time we felt at all nervous during the trip (large groups of youths can be quite dangerous at times in the UK).
Day 7
The next morning we got lost heading out of the city and conveniently stumbled across the Cadbury chocolate factory so couldn’t pass up the opportunity to stock up on chocolaty treats. The good thing about getting lost in these unfamiliar places is that, aside from stumbling across random chocolate factories, you get to see places you normally wouldn’t have any reason for visiting, and some of these places we went through in Birmingham looked liked very pleasant neighbourhoods.
We had a terrible day for directions on Day 7 and what should have been just a short hop to Bath (after a heap of driving the on Day 6 we had planned to do only a couple of hours driving on Day 7 to help us recover) eventually took
North York Moors
View from the road us most of the morning due to us taking lots of wrong turns on our trip through the Cotswolds. Highlight of the morning for me was stumbling across the aeroplane wreckers yard where several 747s were rusting away in pieces.
Bath is a great spot. We had passed through the year before (almost exactly the same time in August) but hadn’t been able to find any accommodation. We had considered staying in a little camping ground a few minutes out but it was raining so we had given up and driven all the way to Cardiff. This time we went back to the same campground and set up camp in a break in the rain before heading back into Bath where we decided to splash out and buy a couple of hours in the roof top natural hot bath. It was a great way to spend an afternoon and was nice to be out of the car for a while. Just as we left the city to head back to camp it started raining. Murphy’s Law I guess. The day we stay in a hotel it’s a beautiful clear night and as soon as we head back into the
Road Trip
Angel of the North as seen while whizzing by on the M1 just outside Newcastle tent it starts pissing down again. That night we also had a horrible nights sleep due to rowdy neighbours. All our neighbours thus far had been very, very good, but this middle age couple thought it would be great to wake everyone up at 3am with loud conversation and chuckling. They were completely ignorant to the close proximity of their neighbours or the thinness of their tent walls.
Day 8
The next morning was pretty much a straight drive from Bath to Newquay in Cornwall. Cornwall is a popular English holiday spot for this time of the year so we spent a little bit of time stuck in traffic on the A30 in amongst all the caravans. We had phoned ahead night two nights before to try and book some accommodation in advance as we knew Newquay would be pretty busy. We hadn’t had any luck finding any space so were fully expecting to spend the night in the Focus in some beach car park or something. However as we neared the outskirts of Newquay we found a cluster of holiday parks, and what do you know, the first one we stopped at had plenty of space for
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The Scottish/English border us. So it was a relief to have a bed sorted for the night so early on in the day, and we headed into the centre of Newquay for some lunch.
Newquay is the surf town of England and it used to home to one of the rounds of the professional World Surfing Champs. Its also a very popular spot for stag dos and hens nights. The surfing culture gives the place quite a chilled out relaxed vibe but then there is an awkward mix with the boozy trouble making culture of the ‘Chavs’ (similar in many ways to our ‘bogans’) who come down to Newquay to get hammered and start fights etc. There are lots of surf stores and neat little bars and cafes catering to the surfer dudes, but lots of bigger rowdier pubs and clubs and gaming lounges catering for all the Chavs.
We had some lunch at the Walkabout then spent some time wandering along the beaches and cliff tops. We also spent a couple of hours at Fitstral Beach watching the surfers. This was the beach where the pro surf comps used to be held and as it so happened that there was
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The border a festival on that weekend which featured a surf and skate comp featuring some of the top European surfers and skaters etc. We were also amazed at all the old fellas with metal detectors wandering up and down the beaches scavenging for loose change. Each to their own I guess.
As the sun went down we got some picnic food and a few beers from Sainsburys and headed back to camp where we listened to the last episode of the BBC radio serial about a gay Muslim MP being blackmailed by his political enemies at Westminster. Interesting.
Day 9
Day 9 was set down for exploring the rest of Cornwall. We started by driving along the coast from Newquay to St Ives, stopping along the way to enjoy a stroll along a beach in the still morning air as all the holidaymakers were beginning to set themselves up for a day at the beach.
We got to St Ives and ignored the warning from Emma’s parents about not driving down into the town. We soon found out why they had tried to warn us. The streets were extremely narrow and covered with thousands of people, and
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Gaz and Cleo watching the rugby once you’re in there, there is no way out. You have to follow a route that takes you right through the big crowds before coming out the other side. We made it out but couldn’t find any car parks on the outskirts of town so we decided to give it a miss and come back later in the day.
Instead we continued our route along the coast to Lands End. As the name suggest, Lands End is the western most point of mainland UK. As with a lot of popular tourist spots in the UK some developer had set up a bit of a fun park at Lands End and charges the poor tourists a million pounds each to park their cars. There were a few ‘experiences’ which I’m guessing wouldn’t be worth the price of admission, and the usual souvenir stores and food outlets. We decided to have a genuine Cornish Pastie for lunch and then went to take photos of the famous ‘Lands End’ sign. Not surprisingly that had been hijacked too and people could pay exorbitant prices to have their photo professionally taken beside the sign.
From Lands End we headed across to Penzance where
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Thirsty Cleo we stopped for an ice cream and a wander around the water front. We didn’t see any pirates but there was a Pirate ship, of course. After watching the fisherman off the wharf and the yachts out in the bay we headed around for a look at St Michael’s Mount which is a small island located close to the coast, with a fairly prominent castle planted on top.
After Penzance we headed back across the peninsula to St Ives where we parked the car at the top of the hill and walked down into town. It wasn’t quite as busy as it had been earlier in the day but there was still a busy vibe to the place. We strolled through the narrow streets looking in the various shops selling art, kick knacks, fudge, pasties and the like. We strolled out along the breakwater where we sat for an hour or so watching families crabbing. They were all doing pretty well at it too and there were some massive crabs ending up in the buckets of some hungry looking families.
We began to get a bit peckish ourselves so we made our way back into town to get
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Stirling Castle some fish n chips. We returned to the idyllic little beach and sat down to enjoy the best fish n chips I’ve had outside of NZ (it was also the last until we got back to NZ - saving the best until last). Two bites in our pleasure turned to deepest darkest despair as we were mugged by a nasty little seagull. He flew low across our shoulders from behind us thieving the majority of my cod right out of my hands and whacking me in the face with his wings as he fled the scene of the crime.
After unwittingly becoming a victim of a devastating crime we cheered ourselves up by buying some fudge to enjoy as we strolled around the bay to another beautiful beach and finally headed back to camp as the sun began setting. A few more beers, some more fudge and another BBC serial (some period story similar to Pride and Predjudice - boring!) was a relaxing way to finish a pretty chilled out day.
Day 10
On Day 10 we drove across to Plymouth where we were hoping to meet up with our old mate Helen. Unfortunately she had buggered
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Robert the Bruce off Exeter so we didn’t get to say goodbye to her, but we still spent a couple of hours looking around Plymouth. Plymouth is quite a historical city given its importance as a port and naval base. As a result of its naval connections it has been a target of military aggression from Britain’s continental enemies.
We started by having a wander around the CBD and were underwhelmed by the ugly modernist architecture. The city was heavily bombed during WWII so was rebuilt to a hideous style similar to what you see in parts of NZ, like Invercargill. But although it was pretty ugly, it was quite different from the centre of most of the cities in the UK that are generally quite old and historic, and I guess in that regard it had its own special character.
From the CBD we walked up the hill to the Hoe. It was from Plymouth Hoe in 1588 that Sir Francis Drake was playing bowls when he was informed of the approaching Spanish Armada and decided that he still had enough time to finish his game of bowls and defeat the Spanish, which he did. We had a wander around
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Looking over towards the Wallace Monument the Hoe examining the various memorials before walking along the waterfront to the older part of town around the harbour. There we spent some time looking in the old antique and knick knack shops that are always very interesting in these seaside towns.
From Plymouth we headed inland to the Dartmoor National Park. This is quite aspectacular, wild national park and we enjoyed hiking among the cattle and horses up a couple of tors for amazing views across the Moor and back down to the coast.
Through several charming little villages and quaint, narrow country lanes we made our way back to the coast and on to Torquay. If you’re cruising these narrow country lanes the best way to get around is following a tour bus. It may be a bit slower but you don’t have to stop for anybody as everybody else is trying to get out of the way of the bus, so you can just sneak through behind him. When a bus comes the other way though things can get a bit interesting. We spent 20mins in a traffic jam on this narrow road between hedgerows as two buses slowly negotiated a way passed each
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The Wallace Monument other. We had to squeeze right over as well and scratches to the rental car were unavoidable.
We got to Torquay no trouble though and soon found ourselves the last camping spot for the trip. We spent the rest of the day wandering around the beaches and water front of Torquay. The marina was full of rich looking yachts owned by the rich and famous and we spent quite some time in the late afternoon sun watching the pleasure boaters come and go. Torquay’s beach was not that flash. It has a reddish, muddy, stinky beach that wasn’t particularly appealing, but the central part of the city was pleasant enough.
Day 11
On Day 11 we woke up and packed up the car for the last time. It started raining just as we started packing so it seemed our trip was destined to end the way it had started, in the pouring rain. By the time we’d packed the Focus up and driven her round to Bournemouth (encountering massive traffic jams, and several army tanks along the way) the weather was absolutely ghastly. We stopped in Bournemouth for a quick bite but didn’t stick round for long
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William Wallace as the weather had well and truly closed in. It looked like it had a very nice beach and pier though.
We headed from Bournemouth up to Southampton where we got on the M3 and followed it all the way to the M25 on the outskirts of London which we then followed round to the M4 that took us all the way into Chiswick and onto our flat in Acton. We were quite keen to get back to London as we had lots to do before we flew out the next day, so that last afternoon was really just a blast along the motorway, similar to the way we started the trip.
By the time we dropped the Focus off to the rental place we had clocked up 2002 miles and had a blast doing it. At the time it was quite tiring in parts and it seemed that we were always eagerly awaiting our next stop to have a break from driving, but looking back on it now I think that that last road trip was probably one of the best holidays we’ve had. Living in London for so long with only short excursions into other parts
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Looking towards Loch Lomond over the spot where William Wallace routed the English Army in the Battle of Stirling Bridge of England you start to get a false impression of the UK. But with this trip we finally felt like we’d been out and experienced a different England, the real England, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. It was the perfect way to say goodbye to the UK.
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