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Published: April 15th 2008
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Hi everyone - well we have now made it to the UK and are preparing for our vantastic tour of Europe. We landed last Saturday week and set up camp in a hostel at Greenwich for a couple of days to find our feet and get over a little bit of jet lag.
London was a bit of a wake up call cash wise, with a mental flinch accompanying every price conversion we did after being so used to the costs of India and Asia. However the biggest change greeted us when we got up on Sunday morning to SNOW coating the city! Man, we were cold, having just come in from a 35+ degree climate to face ice falling from the sky.....Thank God we still had our thermal underwear in our packs from Nepal :-) The city looked very pretty (from inside, behind a window) so we went for a bit of a womble around in the snow to check out some of the sites in zone 1 (photos attached) . We are back in this neck of the woods again in September so we have decided on doing the tourist stuff in the UK while we are trying
to sell our van after our tour. This is probably the best way of doing things as we will know by then if we are short of money, as most attractions cost at least £10.
Our main focus has been getting some transport, and right now it is definitely a sellers market. It was pretty common to ring up for something advertised one or two days ago and be told it had been sold that morning :-( We were lucky enough to catch up with relatives of Sandra's, Martha and Simon who hosted us in their flat in Brixton for a few days. This lucky couple would be treated to the continuing saga of our van hunt each night on their return from work.
One particular Ford Transit caught our eye, and we decided to take it off the vendors hands - just as soon as the ATM network could spit out the right amount of money over a few days to get around the daily withdrawal limit. Two days later we were insured and had cash in hand - only to find the vendor had switched off his cell phone and dropped off the face of the
planet (presumable because he had already on sold our van!). However, the second time around for us was the charm as we found a specialist second hand dealer with a rather nice old Bedford Van which we decided to take then and there to save further hassles and disappointments. We had also decided to be organized and bring the probable purchase price with us in cash, so were not too keen on walking the streets of Brixton carrying £2000 again. Our touring van (now christened 'Bert') is a 1978 2.3L petrol standard CF Autosleeper model of indeterminant mileage (8800 miles on the clock so he has probably been around the dial once already) with an integrated gas cooker, internal water tank and sink and a fridge which runs on both 12V DC and gas. We have also attached some photos, but you will have to use your imagination for the bed which folds out from the two bench seats/couches in the back.
Over the last few days we have been doing some running around the country side to make sure everything works, and to buy the bits and pieces we will need in the coming months (kitchen utensils, folding
deck chairs etc). Our first destination was Stonehenge just a short drive west of London. We trotted around the stones (roped off so no rock climbing photos) in a rather cold wind, with both of us being thoroughly impressed by the size of each stone and their regular shapes and arrangements. Bert started to come into his own here, giving us the capacity to brew up a nice hot cut of tea in the car park to recover from the wind and also to modify our itinerary on the fly to check out some local chalk horses carved into nearby hillsides. We have been experiencing the joys of van touring since then, pulling up to a camp site and having the dinner on in five minutes - all without stepping foot outside of the vehicle :-) The only down side to this in the UK is that we have had very little luck finding lay-by / picnic areas where we can pull off - every road is bordered by hedgerows and the only parking on offer seems to be small bays right next to the road to change flat tires etc.
With our trial outing complete we zapped back
into London to catch up with Avril, another relative of Sandra's for dinner/the night and then our European tour was officially started with our first stop being a look at the colleges of Oxford. Thankfully we found a park and ride facility - meaning we didn't have to take Bert into the center of the city and risk reversing into some rather unique old buildings. We liked Oxford, especially the view we got from the tower of Saint Mary's out to the camera and into All Souls college (photos attached).
Right now we are making our way to the Dublin ferry leaving from Holyhead in north Wales - hopefully the Irish weather will prove Bert to be water-tight!
S&S
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trev
non-member comment
hi ya
oh man, brings back memories! If it's any comfit, it was slightly chilly here this morning. How's the gas mileage in the van?!