Pilgrims’ Progress

Jgirl14’s story, based on Grandpa’s young-boy wartime exploits, and most probably incorporating the experiences of other people she has had opportunity to interview whilst on this trip as well. People like extended family, who provide another slant to the same stories; people like our couchsurfing host’s mother in Bath, who had an altogether different wartime life, and whose letters received from her parents are now in a London museum (even - or perhaps especially - the ones with portions cut out of them - that’s  censorship for you).

Here’s Draft One of Chapter One.

Anticipation

He sat rigid, waiting expectantly.
“Would today be the long-awaited day?”
As footfall sounded on the stairs, excitement mounted in Rupert’s heart. A woman walked briskly into the square sunlit room. Tenderly she lifted the light brown knit teddy bear off the bed and placed him on the chest of drawers.
Standing back, she regarded the appearance of the much loved teddy. Stuffing was falling out in tufts from a hole in his head, onto the bear’s embroidered face. And hanging on by a single thread was his right arm.
“Ah, Rupert, by looks it is about time to do your head and arm a favour. Joe will be happy, no doubt. When I’ve secured your limbs he needn’t fear for losing a part of you during his rambles.” Whilst talking to the teddy for company, the woman had been stripping the bed of its mantle. The task now completed, the bed was left to air.
Washday! Rupert loved this day of the week. The smell of soap, boiling water and, at the end of the day, crisp dry linen appealed to him. The only time Rupert was led to dislike washday was when he himself was given a scrub, but thankfully that was not often.
Rupert leaned back against one of many jam jars, which Joseph used for transporting tadpoles and the like, which was at present, empty.
Down in the garden he could hear the woman, Joseph’s mother, dunking the sheets, scrubbing vigorously, and finally hanging them out to dry.
He listened further; but he only heard the feeble cheeping of a bird, and his mind wandered, sleep overtaking him in spite of the early hour.
Rupert awoke to the sensation of being pulled together. The kind industrious lady was sewing him together with such tight stiches that he felt quite new.
“Wonderful! Maybe, now that I’m more respectable looking, just maybe Joe might tell me all about his latest adventure. Or even better still, he might take me along with him so we can share the excitement again.”
The door opened and in walked a boy. He was of medium height for his nine years and had a mop of red hair. In one hand he held a net and in the other, a pair of dripping wet gumboots.
“Mum, you know the stream that runs through the fields behind our house? Well it’s the best in all of England!” Joseph said, puddles following him across the floor.
“And why’s that?” asked his mother, tying off the wool.
“Because it is swimming with the most tadpoles I’ve ever seen. I hope you don’t mind, but I caught some.”
Joseph’s mother looked up sharply.
“Its all right mum, I put ’em in the tin bath,” Joseph reassured her.
Quickly she asked, “Did you change the water?”
“No, just popped ’em straight in.” Joseph sounded rather pleased.
“Joe,” his mother said in a sober voice, “the water in the bath was all soapy from washing clothes. I don’t think your tadpoles will survive.”
Immediately Joseph stopped grinning. Had he spent all afternoon catching the tadpoles, only to kill them in a tub of soapy water?
“Shall I go and fish them out?” he asked.
“I suspect it’s too late. I’ll tip the water out later. Here,” she handed Rupert to him. “He’s all sewn up for you.”
“Thanks Mum. I think that is the last time you will need to sew him up.”

Picking up his favourite section of the “Daily Express” from the table as he wandered past, Joseph carried both treasures up to the bedroom, which he shared with his older brothers, Ronald and Peter. Joseph threw Rupert up in the air and watched as the bear landed with a slight bounce on the double bed.
Opening the paper, Joseph started to read ‘Rupert the Bear’, a comic strip about a white bear named Rupert.
Now Joseph’s Rupert was in no way related to ‘Rupert the Bear’, but Ronald, who had enjoyed reading about the real Rupert’s adventures, had started to call Joseph’s teddy bear Rupert when Joseph was a baby. And though he didn’t even look like the newspaper Rupert, the name had stuck.
Joseph looked up from the paper and gazed at his teddy who had accompanied him on so many adventures and who he had snuggled every night since he couldn’t remember when. Picking Rupert up, he seemed to stand for an endless while and then declared, “You look a sight better than this morning!”
Rupert felt the old excitement rekindle. He had hoped Joseph would notice.
“But old chap,” Joseph paused, then continued slowly, “I’m getting too old to be seen with you.”
Rupert’s little teddy heart sank, a sense of abandonment filling it. “If only we could go on one last adventure,” he thought. Even though he had known this day was coming, it was hard to console himself now that it had arrived.

Someone entered the room, causing Joseph to look up.
“Oh it’s you, Ronald,” Joseph said, still holding the bear.
Ronald smiled at his youngest brother. Although there was a six year gap between them, both were very close, as was the whole family.

“It’s about time you said farewell to that bear of yours.”
“Not farewell.” Joseph jumped up. “I just won’t…drag him through the mud with me, shall we say.”

Rupert felt a little hopeful upon hearing this.

“There’s always the possibility that Joseph might still tell me about his adventures. That would be almost as good as being there. And certainly better than not knowing anything,” he thought.
“I understand. But will you still take him to bed with you?” enquired Ronald.

“No…I’m getting too old, aren’t I?”

Ronald nodded. Giving Rupert one last look Joseph said, “Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed all the fun we have had together,” and with that he placed his dearly loved companion on the shelf and turned to Ronald.
“Guess what happened today.”

“I couldn’t. So many things happen to you it’s not funny,” replied Ronald.
“Well I caught some tadpoles…” Joseph could be heard recounting his latest adventure as they walked together down the stairs. Hard on each other’s heels they passed into the living room. As the footstep echoes died away, Rupert, finding himself engulfed in the silence, slowly realized he would now have plenty of time to savour the memories of his life- so-far. And so he laid his head back, closed his embroidered eyes and began to remember.

by Rachael
Stratford-Upon-Avon, England

I wonder how many of our blog readers think we are exaggerating when we say we have at least one detour every day! Today we had three; two due to wrong turnings on our part and here’s the other:

The police told us the road had been closed for a couple of hours and helpfully suggested an alternative route to our destination. Only thing is, everyone else must have been going to the same place and very quickly we found ourselves sitting on a little lane going nowhere. Visions of the Seven Hour Traffic Jam Around Antwerp replayed and it did not take long for us to decide to find our own way to Chippenham. Our smarty-pants route included one of the wrong turn detours, but I still think we arrived sooner than if we had stayed in Da Jam.

When time is at such a premium, why were we so set on going to Chippenham? It’s not exactly a tourist sort of town. There are no big famous anythings. That could be why it was a good place to evacuate young boys to during the war. Today we wanted to find the street, nay the very house, that Grandpa was sent to with Cousin M from Alton, who we met last week. Actually it was not just them – there were three families and a boarder and a few others as well all squeezed in to this semi-detached two-storey home. And when one of the fathers came to visit it tipped the already fragile equilibrium, and so Grandpa and his brother would be sent to sleep next door, something they never complained about as the beds were big and comfortable and there was a BATH. This is the house that had a ledge just below the second storey window, from which Grandpa and the same brother used to jump onto the back lawn when their mother went out. They had read that jumping from eight feet was good preparation for learning to parachute, so this ledge seemed a gift to young boys – how obvious a place to practise! This was also the house from which they pushed Baby Cousin C in a pram – sometimes at the park at the end of the street, sometimes in a nearby woods, usually on a Sunday morning, always far faster than Baby C’s mother would have approved of. Baby C survived, moved to America and now has grown children of her own.

So the stories started flowing again.
Jgirl14 observed eagerly, gathering information for the story she is writing based on Grandpa’s World War Two experiences. Grandpa is collaborating with her, having drawn some illustrations for the story (will it perhaps even be a book?) and so we took a mug shot of the two of them together to go on the back cover one day. You can read the first draft of the first chapter HERE if you wish.

But Chippenham was not the final destination for the day. We still needed to take another wrong turning and head towards Stratford-Upon-Avon. I had high expectations for this town, having heard how wonderfully beautiful it is, but it was already late by the time we arrived and so I cooked dinner while the others walked. Look at what they saw:

Tomorrow Aunty and Grandpa hire a car and take off solo for a quick stint further north; we’ll have time to savour Stratford. We might even do it without a detour!
(Postscript: pouring rain tomorrow means Rob will deliver Aunty and Grandpa to their rental car while the rest of us blob in the Bear Cave….they will pull out of our lane and choose the wrong one of two possible turnings….moments later they will return somewhat sheepishly andproceed on the correct road!!!! I told you we have to detour every day.)

by a linguistics graduate
Bath, England

That Bath is a university town was particularly apparent today – hundreds of black-gowned graduates were out on display, marching the streets, proudly clutching their certificates. It seemed an appropriate place to check out second-hand bookshops and augment our meagre-but-much-larger-than-last-week supply.

Staying in a book-filled home, we have delighted in snuggling on the couch poring over, reading every word in more Beatrix Potter books than you would imagine possible in one sitting! When we left home, ER(then 2) had her favourite books, but Peter Rabbit was not among them. Yesterday, after I had read aloud a couple of bunny books, she asked to read the next. And she made a valiant effort! I love this early reading and have really missed it. I also love cuddling on the couch, children draped all over me, experiencing a written world; I’ve missed that too. But I wouldn’t swap what we have had for all the books in the world – when we opened one of the books yesterday, the children recognised foxgloves, just like the ones where we were staying a few nights ago, just like at the roadsides all this last week. They hadn’t met real life foxgloves before!

With regards to reading, something has been intriguing/bothering/puzzling me over the past few days. When we left home Lboy8 was seven years old and a struggling reader. He was sounding his way laboriously through regular words.
The other day we picked up an armful of books from a High Street charity shop in Looe. Lboy8 took a look at “My Naughty Little Sister” and promptly devoured it. Ever since, current experiences with his own naughty little sister have been compared to the literary exploits, the every-chapter-starts-exactly-the-same rhythm has been duly noted and pointed out to all-n-sundry, and the irony of the big sister still being a little kid did not escape him.
So how did that happen? Sure, this particular book is “only” written at an 8yo reading age, and so it is nothing remarkable that he can read it. But for almost nine months Lboy8 has had almost no reading material (unless you count his own poorly creatively-spelt journal). There have been hardly any social reading opportunities in English (street signs or food packaging, for example) and, as already mentioned, we have not been reading aloud.
I am of the opinion that, just like with breathing, eating and walking, given the opportunity at a maturationally-appropriate time, a child will pick up reading without a twelve-step programme or huge amounts of blood, sweat and tears.
To be honest, I did think Lboy8’s already limited reading skills would be compromised with such a break, but within the context of our whole family, this was a sacrifice worth making, an opportunity cost not too great. He’s got the rest of his life to learn to read, but we are unlikely to ever walk the Great Wall of China with Grandpa again. Even when we have had time to read (like when we were slowed down in Luang Prabang for three weeks), other things took precedence. At that particular time it was more important to us that the children learnt to overcome the language barrier and play with the children we were living with. Reading, we figured, could wait.
Except that it hasn’t. It’s happened anyway. Without any input from us apart from playing word games on long train journeys. How? I did think we at least needed to provide the opportunity, but we haven’t even done that. So now what do I do with my learning theories????

On the topic of word games…..here’s a goodie our couchsurfing host taught us tonight. You think of a word with two meanings (like glasses or cold or sun/son or flour/flower or tongue….) Everyone else has to try to guess your word by asking you questions. When you answer each question, you have to include your word, but instead of saying the word, you say COFFEEPOTS. We’ll be playing this one again!

So mused I, as we wandered around Bath today….

by Rachael
Bath, England

Last night Rob crashed on the none-too-comfortable certainly-not-big-enough-for-him seat at the back of the Bear Cave…..and did not move for half an hour. Eventually he mentioned to no-one in particular, “I can’t keep this up!”
Our preferred pattern of *travel for a day and then stop for a few to explore one place* has been replaced with a race from one attraction to another to fit in as much as possible while Aunty L is with us. Perhaps it would not be so tiring if the driving were less challenging or if the children had adapted more favourably to the longer car stints day after day after day and very late nights. But the roads are narrow and windy, requiring relentless conscientious concentration and the children, combining the mixture of not being able to run around much and consuming unheard-of-before DAILY doses of sweets are processing all their energy out their mouths. LOUDLY. OBNOXIOUSLY. So the *parenting* requirement increases.
At the end of the day we are finding ourselves exhausted, and barely manage to keep up with photo downloading and financial record-keeping. Plotting our course on the map, scribbling in journals, reading information pertaining to the next day’s travels have been all but abandoned. Getting washing dry is a distant dream, and food-wise we have resorted to instant potato and boxed cereals (not that any children are complaining about that – or Grandpa, for that matter).

So I guess you can imagine our sense of relief that today was to be a short straightforward drive mostly on a main road.
Indeed, it might have been if one van had not accidentally taken a wrong route out of the carpark, requiring two big loops around the town, trying to get back to join the convoy. To make it all the more fun, Driver, Navigator and Back-Seat Passenger all had differing opinions on which route to take!!
Eventually success was in our grasp and we rejoiced that we had got our daily detour over with so early in the piece (would you believe that we have a “Today’s diversion is brought to you by Garmin” moment Every Single Day? True!)
Up the M5 we trundled, again rejoicing; this time that we were in for a spell of boring straight wide road driving. Only we got more of that than we bargained for, due to setting off in completely the wrong direction. Map-wielding Grandpa in my Navigator’ Seat alerted us to the fact, but it was a good many miles before an exit appeared to allow us to backtrack.
Backtrack we did…..and then some!
Life too boring for you right now? Try being the number two driver, the following car, some day. Driver One is trying to be following GPS directions, which do not line up with the GrandNav System (grandpa navigator with paper map). At 90km/hr discussion ensues as to which route to follow and on a hill where I have just lost speed I am told to take the lead and follow Grandpa’s “we need to take this road but I’m not sure how to get to it” directions. Hesitant about pulling out on a slope at ever-decreasing speed, I am urged on. The truck that flies up behind is none too impressed and lets me know by swerving swiftly in front once he gets past me, close enough to cause me to stomp on brake pedal in panic. There’s no time to apologise or explain I didn’t want to be overtaking or in the lead or even driving at all today!
Backtrack completed, we continue on. Too far. Despite my pointing out the road signs to Where We Are Trying To Go, we overshoot the mark. And by the time we manage to release ourselves from the grip of the M5, we are stuck on minor roads again. Those narrow hedge-lined ones, where you inevitably meet a bus at the worst possible place (oh well, at least it wasn’t a big milk tanker like yesterday – in that case we all had to go offroad and trim bushes before we could continue our respective journeys).
Maybe today was not going to be so simple after all!

But we still managed to pack in four attractions.

1. Cheddar Gorge
   WOW! England’s biggest steepest gorge. Magnificent! Climbing partway up would have been both possible and our kind of adventure, especially as Grandpa did it sixty years ago (actually he got three-quarters of the way up and stopped to look down and lost his nerve!)….but we had already endured three detours and had time to make up.

   

   

   

2. Wells Cathedral
   Our admiration was limited to the outside – we splattered ourselves onto the green for a picnic lunch and Didn’t Get Up. The kids ran and spun and cartwheeled and raced around to catch a glimpse of the little metal man donging the bell on the hour, but us drivers failed to find the energy to venture beyond our perfectly pleasant spot on the grass.







3. Wookey Hole
   It used to be a cave system and a paper making museum. It is now a theme park and circus and three other glitzy attractions – do people even go to Wookey Hole for the caves any more? At FIFTEEN POUNDS for adults and TEN POUNDS for every child, including the three-year-old, we fast lost interest and settled for locally-made award-winning ice creams instead, and an unbelievable chuckle too.
   One of Grandpa’s cycling mates back in the day got a bit keen on a girl with an enormous black gap between her two front teeth. Guess what they called her! Yep, for real. She was nicknamed Wookey. No, not *Grandpa* <gasp> <chuckle> <look sideways at Mama – am I allowed to giggle at his rudeness?> <laugh>
   Yes, Grandpa, but not to her face, of course!
4. Bath
   ”You’ll like Bath. It’s completely unlike any other English town, and so very Roman,” Grandpa had advised as we pored over itineraries. He was right. Crawling through at afternoon rushhour gave us plenty of time to soak in the magnificence, the regality, the sheer substantialness (is that even a word?) of the buildings – so generously proportioned, the columns, the sweeping rows of grand houses…..and we ended up staying in one of them! We had contacted all the couchsurfers in town, trying to find a driveway to legally park on – but the only one who could help lived RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF TOWN. She went way above and beyond the expectations of any couchsurfing request, and contacted the city council to check we could park in a particular street, and then invited us all to stay IN HER HOUSE (all twelve of us), because if we stayed in the vans we would fall out of bed due to them being parked on such a steep street, and then she cooked us all dinner as well. Not content with this contribution, she insisted we leave the dishes and head straight out for a walk around town after dinner. The children were dispatched with instructions to remember the words “doric, ionic and corinthian”, and we headed off to The Circus. There were no clowns or animals, but just as much to hold their attention. Comparisons between this circular arrangement of buildings and Stonehenge were pointed out by our hostess (they’re basically the same!), and we lingered at number 19. This house, one of the end houses, belonged to her parents, but after World War II, the city council passed a law requiring every home owner to clean these buildings. Black with coal smoke, they had to be returned to sandstone, at significant cost. Unable to pay the fee for having two sides cleaned, her parents had to sell their property. So began the evening’s telling of stories…..Couchsurfing Host’s Mother was with us, a lady, who had been evacuated to America at twelve years of age – and in her care were three younger siblings. Imagine the stories she had to tell! Jgirl14 talked with her as we walked through town and home again, late into the night. Her grandfather was governor of Hong Kong during the war….an unexpected story we heard about him. Ending up in a concentration camp, for some reason he was still held in high esteem by his captors, and so he was granted permission to go down to the town, because, as they said, “He was too old to consider escaping.” He informed them it was his duty to escape and so his freedom was curtailed!
   photo taken from traffic jam

   “our” house will turn out to be just round this corner, this one:
   

   

   

It may not have been the quiet day we were anticipating, but it was rich. And don’t you think this is a wonderful way to reinforce book knowledge of Greek columns?

by Rachael
Weston-super-mare, England via Clovelly

He used to cycle out to this little beachside town back in the day. Way back when, the street was so steep it was closed to vehicular traffic; only donkeys and sledges plied the cobblestones. Today it is exactly the same. And if you ignore the commercialisation of having to pay to enter the village and the monstrous tourist information cetre-cum-cafe-cum-bookshop-cum-souvenir shop that you have to walk through to get to the village itself, nothing has changed. If anything, Grandpa was surprised – he reckons the lane is narrower and steeper nowadays!

Back then there was no audio-visual presentation to give the history of the town – over two thousand five hundred years old, and owned by only two families that whole time. Can you even imagine that? Now there’s a very informative documentary film presented in a creative theatre complete with fishing boat and old church pews.

Back then none of the houses were open to the public. Now a couple have been made into a museum stuffed full of photos and newspaper articles and voice recordings of a poem written when some of the men didn’t come back from a fishing trip (very sobering, a moving poignant moment in the visit – only days after arriving home for a month’s leave from the war, a young man in his thirties with three young sons was one of the unfortunate – in the photo of his wife and boys taken shortly after the tragedy, their grief could not be concealed). There are displays of how the cob/brick walls were made (and continue to be repaired today), an indoor well with supposed-to-be-thought-provoking questions about water usage (how would you live if you had limited water? Well, how ARE we living with limited water in the motorhomes? How would you live if you had to collect water from a well? Rephrased to how DID we live when we collected water from a well in Mongolia?), there’s the memorial to sailors who never came home, the tide chart down at the quay (oh the mighty Atlantic Ocean – we are feasting our eyes on its beauty each day), there are shops selling homemade fudge and printed silk (and southern fried chicken and plastic water guns), there is the stable of donkeys and the old police station sharing its quarters with a medical centre, there is a handwritten poem adorning a wall – all 26 verses of it, there are cottage gardens and wooden gates, there are milk bottles delivered to the doorstep and washing hanging on the clothesline; there is evidence of life and history and future.

Visiting Clovelly made me think of our visit to the ancient town of Yangmei in China. We had to pay to get in there too! And there were handmade souvenirs for sale. But other than that, people were continuing life much as they had for a couple of thousand years. Of course, in Clovelly there is now running water; in Yangmei they still have big water pots outside their houses and take the washing down to the river. In Clovelly there are cafes with cafe prices; in Yangmei there were roadside sellers with very basic food, nothing geared to tourists. Come to think of it, we were the only white faces we saw there. But in Clovelly we heard as many Germans as English. The Industrial Revolution has moved Clovelly on – in fact, it was the steamships, which enabled a major influx of tourists to descend on the town, people wanting to see the setting for Charles Kingsley’s Westward Ho! (You may know him better a the author of “The Water Babies”). The Industrial Revolution has not yet impacted the daily life of Yangmei residents, other than taking them away on a bus occasionally or bringing some of us to live with them (by the way, you can check out the Wikipedia article about Yangmei and see Rob’s first famous photo if you like!). Our children LIKED Clovelly, but would prefer to live in Yangmei! The reason? It was a more “real life” town, instead of one filled with tourists.

Three fishers went sailing away to the west,
Away to the west as the sun went down;
Each thought on the woman who loved him the best,
And the children stood watching them out of the town;
For men must work, and women must weep,
And there’s little to earn, and many to keep,
Though the harbour bar be moaning.

Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,
And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down;
They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,
And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown.
But men must work, and women must weep,
Though storms be sudden, and waters deep,
And the harbour bar be moaning.

Three corpses lay out on the shining sands
In the morning gleam as the tide went down,
And the women are weeping and wringing their hands
For those who will never come home to the town;
For men must work, and women must weep,
And the sooner it’s over, the sooner to sleep;
And good-bye to the bar and its moaning.
~Charles Kingsley

by Rachael
not sure where we are – somewhere between St Just and Land’s End, England

Guess where we were going! Or where we thought we were going. Yup, Penzance. But we couldn’t find any pirates coz whole town was in party mode – and closed to traffic. All we managed was a snapshot of the boat-filled harbour from a moving van  and the parade just before we were turned around.

Actually that was the third thwarted plan of the day….number one was the Eden Project, which turned out to be outside our budget (but meant the kids could spend the morning climbing trees while I blogged nonstop, so it wasn’t all bad – and Grandpa went with Aunty and they bought a book so I can read all about it, which we all know is nowhere near as good as being there, but will certainly be a good alternative. Besides, I grilled Aunty with tough questions for the entire duration of the afternoon’s travelling.)
Here’s a picture from the road (lots more pretty countryside):

Second thwarted plan was St Mawes Castle. I cannot for the life of me figure out why such an attraction would be closed on Saturdays (well, maybe they hire it out for weddings or something, but that seems jolly inconsiderate for those of us who would loved to have gone and had to go on this particular Saturday).

So when nothing had worked out, we nipped off up a side street, coz we are big and bold in our vans now and will tackle the tiniest of Cornish roads, even after receiving an email this morning warning us (and I quote), “Beware cornish country roads, very narrow and easily misjudged - what look like hedges and shrubs on the sides are often concealed solid stone banks or walls…” Yeah, well we trimmed a few hedges today <wink> Remember that photo from the other day of our van filling the whole road? It was just like that again. Only for longer! And the widest vehicle we met was a bus!! Needless to say, a spot of reversing was in order on more than one occasion. Anyway, we chose this side road, because it led to Chysauster Ancient Village, the surprisingly well-preserved remains of a two thousand year old community of houses. Having spent time recently living with fire for cooking and central meeting places to congregate, we could easily imagine how this wee community functioned. Interesting to consider people are still living similarly today.

Millions might live with no running water, but we opted for luxury tonight. Our intended location of a carpark at a beach or a layby, of which there were supposed to be plenty, did not eventuate. I don’t know if our local advice-giver had some insider information, which he was not sharing, but at the end of the day, there was nowhere for us to stay, not where we had been told to. So we travelled on towards the southernmost tip of England. Not that we got that far – en route we found a real camp ground with unlimited hot showers and that was enough to sway us to pay for accommodation for a night. The fact that it was right at the top of a cliff leading down to one of Cornwall’s most famous and prettiest beaches was a bonus. As was the sunset, which Mboy6 described as, “It looks like the clouds are burning.” And they were. Broad brush strokes of deep red splashed across the underside of clouds, and quickly turned to pink and purple. From the bright white moon on one side to the dark clouds across the other side, it was a magnificent picture, one we just couldn’t capture on film. But it will remain in our memories – standing barefoot on cold grass in a biting wind should ensure the experience lingers.

~ photo half an hour before the sky turned red ~

Oh, and just because……dessert tonight……

Time on the road: 3 hours
Distance covered: 118km

by one of the drivers, who is wondering when the roads will widen
Tintagel, England

She is wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Never mind that a gale is blowing across the fields; it is summer and one wears shorts in summer (in fact, one begins wearing shorts in April!) Besides, they say, it is but a gentle breeze today, not a gale at all. We all have polarfleece jackets on as we stand chatting, exchanging adventures, information and addresses. Then they are off and so are we.

Aunty L wanted a photo of Newquay for her surfie husband, so we were on a detour before we even got started. Not being a surf follower, I failed to appreciate the significance of this particular beach – I mean, wasn’t last night’s beach a pretty picture? I giggled when Grandpa, my front seat travelling companion for today, murmured words to the same effect. However, Newquay turned out to be quite a picture, despite there being not even a ripple in sight. The beach itself was down a steep cliff and as the English summer rain was beginning, we didn’t venture down the stairs, preferring to remain in the comfort of the Bear Cave for sandwiches and fruit.

Thankfully the rain had cleared by the time we arrived at King Arthur’s birthplace, Tintagel Castle.

We had planned to push on further today, but by the time we had finished exploring the castle ruins, there was just time to buy Cornish pasties and scones from a man we had watched making them earlier, and decided to bunk down in this carpark for the night so as not to push the little kids over the edge. Pays to watch the steep cliffs, literal and figurative.

PS By Rob. 
Taking advice from a now-NZ-based former Pom (thanks Derek), Dad and I went out in search of a scrumpy tonight. How does any self respecting tourist choose which pub to go to? The one with the wifi you can see from the carpark of course! Unfortunatelu scrumpy was out… instead we got a “rattler”… a similar cider with a sting in the tail. Good stuff though! AND we got free wifi

by Rach, again
St Austells, England

I can see why he was disappointed. It had cute buildings and Cornish pasties and cream tea (scones with jam and thick clotted cream), but the character of days-gone-by was diluted by the rampant commercialisation of made-in-China plastic goods spilling out of most shops onto the cobbled streets. It certainly wasn’t as Grandpa remembered from just after the war.
However, that said, the Cornish pasties were delicious and Looe was still a cute wee fishing village.

We will remember our time here fondly. Not for the view, although that was amazing. Not for the horses, though they were friendly and followed us around.
Not even for the Celtic spiral, though that was yet another something special.
Sometimes you meet someone, who is just a very interesting person, and our latest couchsurfing hostess was exactly that. Vivacious, gentle, knowledgeable, welcoming; she brightened our day with stimulating conversation. It’s not every day you meet someone who can talk about crystals and rainbows, training bad eyes and language learning theories, metaphysical relationships and the history of Cornwall, human evolution and sustainable lifestyles. She enriched our experience of the southern coast of England.
C, we are pleased you have emerged from your darkness and blessed us so richly.

by Rachael
Looe, England

There’s a famous cathedral in Salisbury, and while we could see the spire from our Parking Spot For The Night, we thought it would be nice to see it in its entirety. Usually we would have walked to it – didn’t look more than a couple of kilometres away – but we knew wer already had a full day of driving ahead (due to Mrs Non-Techno-Gadget Lady having used the GPS to determine route distances, but having done it incorrectly – let’s just say the crow flies a lot straighter than the roads round here - and so leaving us with some mega-drives, which don’t leave much time for looking at things on the way, cooking dinner when we arrive and washing clothes or finding fresh milk). And so on this occasion the executive decision was made to drive past on our way out of town.
Well, we tried. We saw school-uniformed children carrying musical instruments, we saw enormous pots filled with flowers, we saw an old stone gate across a street, we saw cute little storybook houses and pubs and shops – and we saw the cathedral steeple. Perhaps influenced by Constable, we had imagined an open space around the monument, but it just ain’t that way. The town crowds it on all sides – and judging by the look of the buildings, has done so for a very long time. There was no way to Womos were going to get any closer than a sneak peak. So Grandpa walkie-talkied from the front van, “View coming up above the wall” and Aunty hung out the back van trying to take photos. At least we got a story! After two attempts, we admitted defeat and pointed our vans in the direction of Stonehenge.

We can guess and we can presume, we can calculate and we can conjecture, but we will never know. We can see what is there today. We can understand that the seasons are inextricably linked to the structure, and we can have myths and legends surrounding the behemoth monument. But we do not know WHY Stonehenge is and was. Stonehenge is a good starting point for discussions about limitations of knowledge and differences between facts and assumptions. Set in the Salisbury Plain, it’s also a not bad place for photos and provided a very well done audio tour.

Then we drive and drive and drive. Over hill and dale, through countryside that I totally don’t see. Not being the most confident driver around, my eyes do not veer far from the white lines on the roads where squashed rabbits, hedgehogs, badger, birds and even a deer lie. Occasionally I flick my eyes upwards to ensure overhanging branches will not pick up one of the bikes off the roof.
Somerset….Devon….Cornwall – apparently it is all very pretty. On our first day in England we had pulled over to admire the view  - we need to do it more often. When there’s room, that is. Take a look at how we fill the road on our last leg today:

(Actually, the picture is taken tomorrow on our way out again, but, believe me, the lane had not widened an inch overnight!)

Up the 17% hill (that’s steep, really steep, go-up-in-first-gear-steep), turn right at the animal sanctuary and go down the hill. Rob had real fun on this road today with a police car behind him and meeting oncoming obviously-non-reversing-able traffic….Bear Cave and Mr Plod had to reverse back to a slightly wider stretch for a squeezy manoeuvre (it will be my turn tomorrow!)
The gate was open, but even still we did not fit through. It had to be completely removed to allow us passage – there was JUST room to squish on to the white and grey pebbled driveway.
Our stopping spot for the night commanded perhaps one of the most spectacular views of all southern Cornwall – straight out across tall grass fields, over a haha, past short grass fields filled with sheep and horses to the sea, the village of Looe tumbling over the headland in the distance. Just beautiful.
At our feet the children were discovering frogs and five different grasses, some taller than themselves – plus a stone tiger hiding up a hill and the black and white Cornish flag flying from the rooftop, and we learnt that Cornwall is the only English county to have their own flag.
We were surely somewhere very very special.

Time on the road:
Distance covered:

by Rachael
Salisbury, England via Winchester

They thought they hadn’t been good enough hosts yesterday and so Cousin M and his wife called the manor, where we had slept so soundly we had not heard the foxes barking, with an offer to show us around Winchester. Although his premise was completely wrong (who could complain about the parade of families arriving to visit the long-lost relatives from New Zealand he had organised and the never-ending drinks and biscuits and delicious French cheese?! – tasty innit? amazing hosts, they were), another day with this couple was a delightful proposition and so we took little convincing to accept their offer.

But before setting off for Winchester we attended to chores that have a habit of creeping up on us – when the opportunity to use a washing machine presents itself you do not ignore it, food supplies needed rationalising, and anticipating a late day, we got dinner underway…..and then one of those sentences that takes only a moment to write, but took an age to perform: Rob organised air tickets home.
(We fly on 26 December, arriving 28 December)
All the while, children explored and adventured. Hard not to here, innit?
A picnic lunch was cobbled together and stories of history continued to flow as we filled in gaps on the family tree, asked questions, clarified understandings and laughed a lot under the cream umbrella in the sunny garden. (Oh yes, everyone kept talking yesterday, and again today, about how we have brought scorching weather with us. To be fair, it was high twenties, but by tomorrow the English Summer will be back with morning drizzle, and in a few days we will drive into a late afternoon mist blowing up from the sea. That’s summer in England, innit?)

With an invitation to return to this idyllic spot on our way to France, our leaving was made easier. We have found a wee corner of the world that we would love to explore further (Jane Austen’s House, thatched cottages as yet uncaptured on camera, lanes and footpaths for walking, naturalist Gilbert White’s House) and people we would like to get to know more….we look forward to returning.

WINCHESTER
King Alfred greets us as we shuttle-bus-from-the-park-and-ride-depot into town.

Flower boxes are a profusion of colour. Tudor, Norman, Victorian buildings cluster on narrow streets, character oozing around every corner. A green park filled with tombstones emerges, and rising up from it behind a black wrought iron fence, Winchester Cathedral. A cathedral like no other we have been in. Impressive from the outside, almost beyond belief once inside. With the longest nave in Europe (?and perhaps in the world?), it has an imposing presence. Massive. At first glance, the inside is not too dissimilar to other cathedrals – stained glass windows, stone, pews, candles, organ, banners, statues, icons, vaulted ceiling. But as we stood, we started noticing differences. There were many stone busts of famous people from ages past, memorials to the fallen on the walls, inscriptions in the stone, choir stalls surrounded by the most intricate wood carving, and if you walked around that, there appeared to be another church inside the church like Russian stacking dolls. There were crypts with statues lying on top, some fully clothes in flowing robes, others mere skeletons. There were highly decorated chests containing bones dating back to the seventh century, there were coats of arms painted on the ceiling with a cleverly placed mirror to save your neck from undue strain looking up. Yes, this was a magnificent cathedral.

And just around the corner was a teeny tiny church atop a gate. Cute, innit?

In some ways it doesn’t seem right to only spend two hours in a town, but we had to move on, considering it a bonus that we had stopped at Winchester at all.
On to Salisbury, with another famous cathedral rising majestically from the late-day haze when we crested the hill. A carpark not far from the iconic building ended up being our final resting spot. Not exactly the grounds of a mansion or a beachfront location, but you can’t be in utopia every night!

Time on the road:
Distance covered: