UNITED KINGDOM
WEEK 3 - 2 TO 9 NOVEMBER - UNITED KINGDOM

Weather: Cold and wet most of the time.

2 November - Bainland to Bath
Woke this morning to beautiful sunshine, however, the further west we went the wetter it got. Plan A was to head for a park near Oxford but then we changed to Plan B which was a park near Hereford. We decided it was too far so changed to Plan C - a park near Bath in the Chew Valley (a BoB park). When we got there he wouldn't take a credit card so we had to resort to Plan D which was another park "somewhere between Bath and Bristol" (his words). It was still dark when we finally found the park, after driving between Bath and Bristol twice! Oh well... finally parked up for the night.

3 November - Bath to Goodington
More sunshine this morning so headed into Bath to see the Roman Baths. It was raining by the time we got there but set off to see them nevertheless. Just amazing!!! They were still finding relics as recently as within 100 years.

We continued on our way south with a plan to stay at Beverly Park (a BoB park) near Torquay - we made it with 1/2 hour to spare! Great park with hardly any campers so we got the pick of spots. It was cold and windy but from where we were camped we had a great view. There were still several spots of fireworks from Guy Fawkes night so I sat in the front seat of the camper after dinner and watched them. Here is the view from our pitch.

4 November - Goodington to Dial Post
More sunshine (how special is that??) as we headed north east. Again, we had several plans of attack, as where we went was dependent upon which parks were open. Many of them closed for the winter on 31 October so we needed to know that someone would be open for us. We had a pretty long drive today and ended up at Dial Post.

5 November - Dial Post to Kingsnorth
We decided to see the white cliffs of Dover and where the Battle of Hastings took place so we headed south-east from Dial Post. The weather started out quite nice but soon deteriorated the further south we went. We arrived at Battle (just up the road from Hastings) and parked up for a couple of hours while we tromped around the paddock listening to a recorded story of the Battle of Hastings. All very fascinating and quite historic - even walked through the old Battle Abbey.

These pictures are of the field where the battle occurred...

and of the Abbey as seen from the field

These are of Battle Abbey...

... and this is inside the Abbey kind of like a museum.

This headstone is on the spot where King Harold was slain.

All this history was very exciting - the UK is full of places like this and during our trip we tried to see what we could. Headed off to the park for the night after leaving Battle and Hastings.

6 November - Kingsnorth to Stansted
Woke this morning to rain and more rain. We needed to head back near to London as we only had a couple of days left. Before heading back we decided to look at the white cliffs of Dover. This was quite possibly the foulest day we'd had (weather-wise). Driving along the motorway we were buffeted by strong winds and heavy rain. Don't believe me? Here...

These were taken from the top of the cliffs. Check out the poor ferry!

We headed towards London to a park at Stansted where we pitched for two nights.

7 November - Stansted
On advice from the owners of the park we drove to Borough Green and left the camper in the Library carpark. We caught the train and headed into London for the day. The train dropped us at Victoria Station and we took a "Big Bus" tour in a to-deck open-air bus. In a word? BRRRRR...... However, we saw all of the sights, the Tower of London (although we didn't have time for the full tour), London Bridge, took a ferry ride along the Thames. The bus took us to Notting Hill where we had fish and chips for lunch (very trendy!), past Hyde Park. It was a great tour and although the day was fine, it was very cold.

We headed back to Victoria Station and caught our train without any hassle. We missed our stop, however, due to the windows on the train being painted with graffiti and hard to see out of, also the intercom wasn't working in our carriage and because we couldn't see out when the train stopped, we didn't know where our stop was. It was an express train so after a while we asked a passenger who told us we had missed Borough Green by one stop. After yelling abuse at the conductor we jumped off as the train prepared to move, ran over the bridge and caught a train coming the other way. It was dark by the time we got back to the van (only just after 5.00pm) so we bought something for dinner and drove back to our pitch at Stansted.

8 November - All Over Red Rover
We woke up this morning feeling quite ambivalent. Our trip had come to an end and we had to hand the van back. We had brekky and cleaned out the van. Before heading back to Mark and Susan's place we found a room at a hotel near the airport. It was pure luck that we found our way back to Mark and Susan's. We handed the van back and Susan gave us a lift to the hotel. We had dinner in the hotel that night and hit the sack.

9 November - London to Singapore
We caught a taxi to Heathrow (to the wrong terminal too, by the way) for our flight to By the time we found the correct terminal we were late for the flight and consequently were seated 32 rows apart!!! Boy... if you know me, you can imagine how well THAT went down. The poor girl at the BA counter in London... she probably has a terrible memory of that rude colonial woman!!

After leaving the UK we spent 3 days at Bintan Island mainly playing golf, sitting by the pool and relaxing. After a hectic 7 weeks it was a good change to do nothing.

I hope you enjoyed your visit - thanks for reading about our holiday. This link will take you back to the main page.

Thanks for visiting.