Farewell to Old England

Now, where were we?

Back to Old England! From Cambridge we headed down towards London, skirted it on the east, over the Thames via the huge toll bridge, many lanes of traffic but we were on the right track for Canterbury in the east! We found a car park next to the cathedral city walls though not without doing a roundabout first! An hour’s walk and tour was enough. Canterbury Cathedral is bigger than huge with nooks and crannies, chapter house, crypt and chapels and ante rooms everywhere, not to mention all the tombs.

From Canterbury further east to Dover and a tour of Dover Castle (never knew one was there). Thought we got lost but had taken the correct turn for the castle entry. Our English Heritage membership got us in free of charge once again (we have used this with good effect since Stonehenge). Within the castle walls, an old Roman lighthouse. Church of St. Mary, Bailey and castle keep from Medieval times, more modern buildings and battlements from WWII. All in good repair despite having been under attack in WWII. A look over the battlements to some of the white cliffs, not a good look unfortunately,

From Dover we took a coastal road toward Little Hampton, our final resting place in England, with SERVAS guest and now host, Eileen Williams. It took us 31 hours including nearly 1 hour through the very congested seaside town of Hastings, with rolling fog and fading light. We arrived in Little Hampton, nearly got lost but still had to phone Eileen to come and rescue us. Eileen arrived like an angel out of the fog, directed us to a local supermarket where we stocked up on provisions for the evening meal and finally got unpacked by about 8.00pm. Eileen is like an eccentric professor to me, she has hundreds of interests and stories and her house is like a museum with interesting things to look at everywhere. Needless to say we had a rather long night. Packed up in the morning ready to tackle London we headed off in the now slightly greening countryside. It took about 2 hours to drive to within 8 miles of the car drop off place, and another 90 minutes, with detours, screaming sirens, wrong turns, three trips over Tower Bridge, one trip into the “Congestion Tax zone”, my mistake again, being stressed by following police sirens and amid confusion to Howard’s directions, took a right turn we shouldn’t have and pop, flash (I assumed) we were photographed driving in the wrong place. I thought I got a little of my own back by performing two U-turns in mid London, when there was no oncoming traffic! We arrived at the car hire place with a half hour to spare. Howard mentioned that he thought we had wandered into a congested zone and got information on how to deal with the fine. If we paid within 24 hours it would be £8, each 24 hours the fine would double! After incorrect information which sent Howard off to a post office to pay we knew we could pay by phone from the airport, our next challenge! With British Air employees going on strike the next day we wanted to make sure we were through the airport formalities early in case late comers were booted off to make way for other passengers. We hurried through the underground to I think, Victoria Station where Howard wandered off to find the ticket office for the airport connection. Much later he came back with his tale of woe and crowds and 1 ticket. So off we went into the direction of the ticket office with all luggage in tow (did I say we were travelling light?), the express was leaving within minutes, and we were nowhere near the ticket windows, when I spotted a ticket machine on the platform and Howard stuffed it with notes!! Bingo, we were on our way again but had to get onboard via the first class carriage, at least one passenger of which gave Howard a hard stare for having the affrontery to haul bags through their territory.

Made it with I think 2 hours to spare and a decent meal time to share, well, almost decent, we tried for a roast for Howard and roast veg for me, we got a big plate of meat and a big plate of veg but managed to rearrange and even downed a glass of Pinot relaxant. Traffic fine paid, we waited for our plane to be called and had quite a long way to our gate which put us among the last on board! Oh, yes one last hassle, we couldn’t be seated together even though our booking was for a couple and was made months in advance and BA had told, David our travel agent, that he couldn’t prebook, or we couldn’t do an internet check-in, which we found at the airport, we could have but by then, too late! So, there is another snippet of news for travellers. You can do 24 hour prior internet seat arranging with BA. So, as instructed at check-in, I asked the attendant if there was any possibility for a seat swap and within minutes Howard was sitting next to me - all for a 90 minute flight! It turned out there was a watch fair in Basle and we sat next to a bright young thing who was off to show his extremely expensive pieces. Sorry can’t remember the brand, but we did learn that they only made a small quantity, each piece numbered - a collector’s item at the time of purchase.

And so into the arms of our friends, Hanspeter and Maja Geschwind!

Don't forget to check the photo albums online