Hi de hi….. Hi de ho

 

Ey ‘up. Well, we’re embracing the holiday park culture – last night there was cash bingo followed by karaoke and the lovely man who won the bingo shouted us a drink – go the Northerners!!!! We also made some new friends who have a permanent/static caravan/cabin at the park.

So, backing up the bus (or motorhome) a bit, since I last wrote, we’ve arrived in the UK. London was a lovely surprise with beautiful weather and mid-twenties temps. We stayed at a fab “BnB” - Chez Camilla, and after a wee nap, I took a wander down the Embankment along the Thames – Chez Cam is in Lambeth one block back from the river, so within 5-10 minutes I was staring across at Parliament Buildings. It’s been a good 10 years since we were last in London and I had forgotten what a lovely, vibrant city it can be. There were lots of tourists wandering about but also lots of residents out enjoying the sun. Cycling has really taken off since I was last here with bicycle hire stands everywhere. Also, along the Embankment is the Covid Memorial Wall – which went for miles. People have painted a heart in memory of a loved one who died during the pandemic. The sheer volume of hearts really highlights how many people London (as well as the rest of the world) lost during this time. After tasting some local delicacies (fish ‘n’ chips), drinking a few beers and wines at the local pub, we slept about 10 hours and woke up refreshed and ready to head to Newark-on-Trent to pick up our new home away from home.

After picking up our motorhome, getting a tutorial on how everything worked (we seem to have missed some stuff as still finding things out!!!), and provisioning the motorhome from sheets/towels/plates etc to food, we headed a mere 1½  hours west’ish to Glossop to catch up with an old school friend from Singapore days, Sara, who I hadn’t seen in 37 years! What a fantastic visit it was – it was like we’d seen each other yesterday – poor Trap had to put up with crying, laughing, reminiscing and LOTS of hugging. The motorhome was very comfy  and luckily, we had good heating as the temperature dropped to a chilly 4° overnight and 10-11° during the day!! Out came the winter woollies…

Outside the motorhome

Inside motorhome

Glossop

We then headed NE to York – which I had never visited before and was really keen to see. We loooooved York. It has a population of around 250,000 – a quarter of whom are students and has a really nice feel about it. It has lots of old buildings and streets including the Shambles which is rumoured to be the inspiration for Daigon Alley in the Harry Potter Books – which you’ll see in the pics they are definitely capitalising on with an alchemy shop, witches café, ghost merchants etc. We visited the York Dungeon which was an interactive tour and well worth the money – hilarious – Trap & I ended up in the dock – me for witchcraft and Trap for sheep stealing, then I was also beheaded with the guillotine for being a House of Lancaster supporter! Following this we headed to the Jorvik Viking Centre – where you get in these motorized hanging gondola-type contraptions which take you on a journey through Viking history in York – also a very good tour. We then spent the afternoon at York Minister Cathedral - a magnificent gothic church that is the seat of the Archbishop of York - the second-highest office of the church of England. It’s pretty impressive. We finished off the visit with a walk along the city walls – the longest town walls in England, which was really cool. There’s 3.4km of surviving masonry, and the walkway is about 2m wide and 6m high. There’s a few points where you can enter and exit the walls - we got on at Bootham Bar and off at Monk Bar.

Yorvik Viking Centre

After a lovely 3 nights in York, we headed further north via Scarborough to our current location of Beamish not far from Newcastle upon Tyne. We did a detour via Castle Howard and then proceeded to get lost after we took a wrong turn – thankfully google got us back on track!  Scarborough is a very cute (although busy) seaside town on the East Coast. Whilst it was a beautiful sunny day, it was freezing with a very cold wind. However, the Brits proved what a hardy bunch they are by swimming, sunbathing in bikinis and walking around in singlets and shorts while I needed about 15 layers!  We caught the funicular down from the top to the beach which was very cool and wandered along the paved walkway – a sign caught our attention with a notice saying beware of waves crashing over the walkway which considering we were 6m above the beach is somewhat worrying.

Scarborough

The beach funicular

We’re now headed for Edinburgh and the rest of Scotland via the east coast (Berwick upon Tweed, Dunbar etc). We’ll then head to Ireland, west England, Wales, south England over the next few months.

So, till our next update, tarra.

J&T xx