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So my blog today starts in Bristol, North West of London and about an hour and a half train ride away from Wokingham, our last stopover. Drama after drama with The Wizz meant the purchase of our darling camper was delayed another 4 days. There really was no point in delaying the holiday though so off we went without her!
Bristol city centre is nothing special to write home about, it's a little run down looking and not as much history as some other towns we have since visited. A little further out the suburb, Clifton, phooo! Much nice! The grass is definitely greener over there, it's beautiful and placed high on the cliff of the river that runs under their famous suspension bridge and through to the Bristol city centre. The suspension bridge didn't sound amazing at first, we had arrived in Bristol at noon and our accomodation wasn't ready until 8pm so given we had some time to kill we started walking, glad we did beacause it was pretty damn cool. The walk over to the bridge was just as good as Bristol, being built on the river, had a series of swing bridges and lock gates to
keep us amused along the way. I was pretty happy about the walk out there, it was long but we managed to kill a few hours and after a few Banksy shots, some Cathedral spotting and a ghost tour that turned out to be more spruik than spirit it was well after 9 and we were knackered. It was my bad idea to walk back to our new airbnb accom which took the better part of an hour - Eamon has requested tomorrow we catch the bus.
Unfortunately for Eamon we didn't catch the bus the next day. We took a nice walk down to the Arnos Vale Cemetery - a massive and beautiful cemetery with over grown forest on the outskirts which, although sadly means forgotten graves, makes for some really beautiful scenery. A bit morbid but a nice way to start the morning before spending the rest of the most enjoyable day at the @t Bristol centre (like Scienceworks but cooler). By far the highlight of the day - it's an interactive playground for big kids. A wedding was being held in the planetarium and just by luck I suppose we were able to get a photo
with the Stormtroopers that were escorting the bride down the isle. Lol.
After those 2 days in Bristol it was time to check out Bath. Bath was much nicer than Bristol. It's about a half hour train ride back toward London. It's perfectly small, full of history and is just beautiful with it's classic houses. We spent the whole day on tours and just took in as much as we could. The whole place is built on natural hotsprings so there's no suprise that the Roman Baths there date back to the 12th century - an age that just doesn't exist in Melbourne! We left Bath feeling feeling pretty tired, it had been a full 3 days and The Wizz should be ready the next day. Given our luck lately though we had no expectation that we would be getting on the road any time soon. We were trying hard not to get frustrated at the wanker that sold us the vehicle so we were very suprised that we got the call the next day to get her...huh?..what?...was not expecting that at all. We left Bristol still expecting something bad was going to happen...but it didn't. We got the
keys and faster than you can say "i hate used car salesmen" we were on the road, all the way to Tesco where we could buy all our crockery, linen etc. We didn't realise at the time that the Tesco carpark would be where we would spend our first night. It had been a busy few days, we were tired and the thought of paying 25 pounds (50 AUD) for motorhome parking didn't sit too well. Our thoughts were that motorhome accommodation would be around 5 - 10 pounds (10 - 20 AUD) but we were so wrong...we are definitely going to need to free camp as much as we can. With a fully equipped shower, toilet and kitchen it seemed like a good possibility, we just had to find somewhere to park...or stay in the Tesco carpark...done! Well until around 2am when we got a knock from security to move on which we quickly realised we couldn't do. We had managed to cluelessly drain the leisure battery of The Wizz aswell as our car battery and were totally screwed... It was about 4 am when we got out of that carpark thanks to some lovely highway patrol stopping in
to get a quick bite. Those guys saved us 215 pounds (430 AUD) for road side assist. They couldn't save us though for the 5 hour drive ahead to be able to charge our batteries to a level where we could actually restart the car...ugh...! So here we are at whatever o'clock in the morning heading down to Cornwall on the west coast of England. Nothing else can go wrong...right? Nope, plenty more to go wrong.
The next 2 days were pretty cruisy, we spent our time in a caravan park in Truro trying to work out how to use our motorhome, the switches, the 240/12 volts, water pump, bits, bobs, whatchamacallits and all the rest of the thinggymajiggys. Turns out a few things are broken so we need to spend a bit of money on our beast. We also couldn't use any water on board until fixed which means rag on a stick showering.....yay!
So inbetween searching for parts we tried to throw away our worries by being tourists. We took The Wizz down to Lands End, the most westerly point of England. Breathtaking views! Moving on to Penzance, still on the coast, to visit our first
castle - St Michaels Mount, positioned on an Island that can only be accessed by foot at low tide. It had some amazing views and beautiful gardens but nothing to compare what we saw at St Ives which came next. St Ives is known to be beautiful and that it was. We took The Wizz through the narrow streets, admittedly I was very pleased Eams was driving, I would have scraped the side of the old girl a few times or starting rolling backwards up some of the steep hills. Taking a walk through the beautiful town and up to The Island cliff you can clearly see the towns sloped cemetery, which receives the downing sun quite nicely. We got out the selfie stick and after a zillion billion attempts a think we got a semi decent shot of the bay - the wind was just not in favour of my hair!
Tomorrow we will head to an old mine and start our drive back to the outskirts of London, via Stonehenge, for some quick site seeing and then up to the Cotswolds where we can hopefully get the push bikes out and relax a little. I still haven't
found anytime to work on my crochet nanna blanket and I'm getting desperate for one - it's still freaking freezing here.
Adios for now!
PS still no good coffee here and I think I'm dying...
TL:DR - Finally got The Wizz- Broke The Wizz- Visited Bristol, Bath and most of Cornwall
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