Our home for the last few months has been a lovely guesthouse on the seafront in West Sussex that we have been looking after whilst it’s owners are sunning themselves in warm and toasty Australia – quite ironic!! It’s been a lovely respite from the vigor’s of living on the road with the oven receiving a thorough workout with Jen cooking many roasts and rediscovering her culinary cake baking skills.   Digby, the resident Miniature Schnauzer in our care, has also been the recipient of many home baked doggy biscuits, not to mention his very own 7^th Birthday Party with many of his doggy friends!

Digby can’t wait for his cake!

I’m 7 today!!

Party Goers!!

The novelty of a nice hot shower on demand with no setup required has seen a dramatic improvement in our personal grooming!  Makes life on the road sound a little less appealing when I read back that last paragraph but it couldn’t be further from the truth!

We’ve been relaxing through the cold months of winter and whilst enjoying some lovely sunny days from our balcony overlooking the sea, you are soon reminded of just how far north you are when as you leave the house, you’re smacked in the face with the freezing breath of the northern winter.

Pretty Cold!

Always rugged up!!

Our temporary home!

Some lovely sunny days

Due to our location just south of the range of hills known as the South Downs, we are protected from the worst of the Northern Winter with our own little micro-climate* and despite news reports suggesting that the whole of the UK has been blanketed in thick snow, we have only received one day (well more like a few hours!) of snow and, whilst only a light coating, there was enough for a little snowman and I can loosely claim a white Christmas (albeit a month late!) Frosty mornings are common and the frozen beach sand was a novelty!!

(*Info provided by the locals we meet during our dog walking duties)

SNOW!!!! at least for a couple of hours

Overnight Frosts

Ice as the temperature drops below zero at night

Hence our location has proven fortunate, as we’ve not found the winter to be oppressive in any way and have enjoyed numerous day trips around our local area taking in the history and scenery that is southern England!

Local Pub

Arundel Castle – Home of the Duke of Norfolk

Arun River

Foggy Drives

Beach Huts

Mind you, not having to exit a warm bed in the dark and transit to a workplace followed by returning in the frozen darkness probably gives us a false reality of life through a British winter.  Our primary concern has been the amusement of a small canine with his primary concern being food!!! Visit’s to the local High Street shops, dog walking and grocery shopping round out our days!

Walking the High Street

Whilst on our temporary hiatus, Jen has also been beavering away furiously on family tree research and, with thanks to our friend Karen back in Australia, has traced both our families back to around 1500!  Amongst things discovered are an ancestor’s headstone dated 1666, which is amongst the oldest in Britain, a boot maker that stole a pair of boots resulting in his passage to Australia being one of my ancestors and Jen having a couple of convicts that were transported to the colonies on the second and third fleets!

So with Christmas looming, we received a lovely invitation to join our second family in Kent for the traditional British Christmas Dinner so with Digby packed into the Volvo (included with looking after the house!) we headed for Broadstairs and our first Christmas outside of Aus!  After a couple of nights spent in serious pursuit of over eating and drinking and now feeling quite at home here in England, we said our goodbyes and headed back to Littlehampton.

Xmas Cooking

I can’t resist making an observation at this point….

Back when we first entered the UK, we stayed in a small RV park in Ramsgate, which is around 200km east of us here in Littlehampton. I asked the RV park owner if he could recommend any parks near Brighton en route to Littlehampton and he replied that he’d never been to Brighton! Moving on, Jen mentioned to a fellow dog walker that we were heading “up the road” to Broadstairs for a few days over Christmas and was met with the comment – “I love you Aussie’s, a 100miles and you think nothing of it!” I could go on and on but I’ll finish this little observation with the latest comment.  Whilst once again trotting Digby along the seafront, Jen spoke to a regular dog walker and mentioned our forward plans for Cornwall, the Lakes District and Scotland – the gentleman’s response was to confess that in his 65 years he’s never been to any of them!

So it seems we Aussie’s do think of distance in a very different way to many other peoples of the world, however I’ve also met English with extensive travel resumes and very well used passports. It’s just interesting meeting people who have lived somewhere their whole life and never been further afield than 100kms

Life in this quiet little hamlet is not always what it seems and we have had some memorable moments whilst living here.  Inevitably, when you sit still long enough, you begin to notice all the little facets of life that generally go unnoticed when you are always on the move!

To date we’ve had 3 helicopters land on the park opposite the guesthouse, each with it’s own reason for doing so, but one story is a stand out so here it goes!

The scene – about 9:30pm and with few glasses of red consumed, we hear the sound of a nearby helicopter! A look out of the window and we see it landing across the road!  Now earlier that evening, we’d noticed a few boys in blue and an ambulance make their way past but hadn’t thought a lot about it since.

Air Ambulance opposite our accommodation

With a helicopter in the mix, the bait was too strong, so grabbing Digby we wandered out into the cold blackness and strolled west a couple of streets to where emergency services lights were glinting!

Bright Lights

Incident Response Units

After asking some other interested locals, we weren’t really left much the wiser and had to wait until the next morning to catch up on the gossip! So, not too far from us (in our 4 star guesthouse overlooking the sea) there is a half way house for ex-cons as it turns out! Seems the English have a similar ideology to Australian’s, which is, if you mix people up from all walks of life they will inevitably get on!!!! Bit of sarcasm there in case you missed it!

Anyway during his stint in the local half way house, one of the newly re-entering society residents decided life was easier back inside and devised a crafty scheme to achieve his desired goal!

He set fire to his top floor apartment, climbed out onto the roof and started throwing roof tiles at locals and the subsequently arriving fire and emergency services!

Anyway he eventually retreated to street level; well actually he fell through the burning roof and was chauffeured to his new accommodation by heavily armed riot police.  Oh, he did also receive a band-aid for a cut!

Headline News!

Result – 11 cars damaged, one person injured with a minor graze to his stomach after being hit with a flying roof tile and one burnt apartment.

So a very expensive helicopter along with a few ambulances, 2 large riot police vans, a few pursuit cars and several fire trucks!  Not sure if that’s overkill for one tile wielding bandit but I guess it’s lucky he fell through the roof before the SAS were activated.

After all of that excitement, we had our own little introduction to life in suburban England.

The following morning we were greeted by the first malicious damage to our Patrol so far! We had our vehicle parked on the street within view of our accommodation, as does nearly everyone else in Britain. The old saying – “a rolling stone gathers no moss.” Once you park up for a while you are noticed.

So with a nice 8mm bullet hole through the now shattered passenger’s window we decided it was time to move the Patrol into secure parking where it still is!

The window remained in place thanks to the window tinting and fortunately no one had broken into the cab.  Jen called the local Plod and they suggested it was most likely a BB gun or air rifle received as a Christmas present – you’re able to have .19 caliber air rifles here unlicensed!

Whatever!!

The Police were rather embarrassed when we enlightened them to the fact that we’d just traversed 1000km along the Afghanistan border along with travels through nearly every other of the Stan countries and hadn’t been the recipients of anything other than waves thrown at us! (left out the rifle shots in the Wakhan valley as I didn’t want to take the edge off my story!)

Luckily a replacement window was found at a wrecker so £50 and a couple of hours and all was back as it should be!

New Window Installed

Sadly we missed the Russian heavy bombers flying down the English Channel!!!

I don’t wish to put a grey shadow over our stay here. These sort of random incidents can occur anywhere! We’ve met so many lovely people here who could not have made us feel more welcome and we have had an outstanding time.  It’s easy to settle in and I love the English sense of humor. Maybe all of those generations of my family that had their roots here have somehow crossed over at a cellular level!

Friends

Fireworks

Seaside

Seafront Pier

Littlehampton Harbour

Seaside Park in front of the guesthouse

View from the Balcony – more helicopters!!

And we found the StarGate….

The Stargate

The Patrol has just received a full service and a thorough clean of the camper so we are ready to hit the road again soon and start filling our posts with fresh stories.

We aren’t really sure how this year will pan out! At this stage it’s a lap of the UK and Scotland before heading back to Holland and then Norway.  After that, we’ll head towards Turkey and around the Mediterranean before crossing to Morocco.  It will then be back to the UK for Christmas.

Morocco Planning

Our original plans have changed quite a bit and we don’t feel we’ve quite quenched our desire to see Europe primarily due to the Schengen visa restrictions so intend on a little further investigation. We were going to cross to Egypt and head for Cape Town at some stage this year, however there are some difficulties in the current environment with regard to getting the Patrol to Egypt.

There are quite a few vehicles still making the crossing and it is possible but shipping appears a little hit and miss at the moment.  One of the biggest factors, however, in our change of plans is that if we cross to Africa we have around 10 to 15000 km to Cape Town and the end of our journey and we aren’t quite ready to consider an end date at the moment.

So we hope to finish this year back here in the UK and then head for Canada, maybe Alaska and then make the big run to Ushuaia in South America. Well that‘s the rough new plan and should the budget hold out that little bit longer we may still be able to offload in South Africa on our way back to the best country I’ve visited so far – Australia.

It’s a rough guide and as usual it comes with a caveat – plans are very fluid!

I will, however, miss English TV:

To Fat To Work – Benefits

17 Kids – Benefits

Cant Work, Won’t Work – Benefits

Immigration Street

Can’t Pay – We’ll take it away

The list goes on! hahaha…

On that note, we are excited, energized and can’t wait to get back into it, all the best to you all and thanks to the wonderful people of Littlehampton for making us feel part of their community!!

Digby!!

Cheers for now

Justin.

We are on the move again!

We said our goodbyes to friends and with Littlehampton disappearing in the rear view mirror, we set the sat-nav for Stonehenge.

Saying Goodbye!

Jen and Gerry!

There are plans afoot to sink the nearby highway to the iconic rock structure and this will apparently make the visitation experience much more pleasant by removing the visual and audible pollution of the highway! At near £15 a head to enter the site and limited to just over 7500 visitors a day – (you do the math) it just might kick the gate numbers along as well when you’re unable to see it from your car – a very popular way of visiting currently. Undaunted we spotted a few vehicles on a local by-way and managed to park a couple of hundred meters away from the prehistoric masterpiece! We wandered around taking a few pictures and learnt from security personnel at the main gate that if wandered a little further down the road and made our way through the farmer’s paddock we could get quite close and have a better look.

Stonehenge

Stonehenge

We followed the instructions and ended up within about 30 meters of the main event! It would have been nice to wander amongst the stones but $AU60 for the 2 of us (exchange rate allowed for) seemed a little steep. Whilst taking in the view, we noticed a couple of vans a little further along the by-way and they were obviously camping. We headed for their location and camped about 300m from the Stones!! Of all the places I would have expected to find some free camping, within view of Stonehenge certainly wasn’t one of them!! So all in all it was a great day!

Camped Within View!

Stonehenge Selfie!

Next stop was Lyme Regis; a lovely little village nestled in an amazing section of geography known as the Jurassic Coast. After a wander around town, we headed west a couple of miles and found a campground in the town of Charmouth, located smack in the middle of a World Heritage fossil finding location.

Lyme Regis

Lyme Regis with Ammonite inspired street lights

The Brits love their Beach Huts!

With low tide being touted as the best time for fossil hunting and Jen quite keen on rocks, she was out the door at 7:30am and off into the sleet and cold and down the trail to the beach.  I, however, am not as intrigued by the fossil hunting pastime and slept in through the sleet, only emerging once the sun had risen and warmed the whole area. If you have ever spent time in high mountains or areas with lots of snow and wind then you will relate to the temperature differentials that we are currently experiencing. When protected from the wind and the sun is beaming on you directly, it’s T-shirts, cold beer and the clean crisp colours of blue water and green fields! The very moment a cloud interrupts the sun’s rays and their attempt to reach you, and it’s anoraks, beanies and hot drinks. It’s just like flicking a switch! Definitely 4 seasons in 1 day!

Jurassic Coast at Charmouth

Charmouth Waterfront

Over the course of the day, we found quite a few nice fossilized ammonite specimens, all the while listening to the sounds of erosion and collapsing earth from the cliffs behind the beach. Serious erosion is constant along this coast and with the rich hoard of fossils hidden away in the silt, there is a constant renewal of interesting creatures revealing themselves for the first time in millions of years.

Ammonite Fossil

Justin’s Rock Balancing!

Fossil Hunting

Ammonite in the silt

Ammonite Graveyard

180 Million Years Old

Continuing along the Cornish Coast, we parked up for a short time in the town of Teignmouth to discuss our options for the night’s accommodation. We were trying to find a free site somewhere! As fortune would have it, a motorhome made it’s way through the car park and stopped right alongside us. I said hello through the window and inquired as to whether they knew of any free-camping sites locally. They had just purchased their new house on wheels and were out for a test drive.  Luckily for us, they were well versed on the area and pointed us in the direction of a lay-by on the Teign river which proved to be a great stop for the night.

Our First Free Camp in the UK!!

They also told us about a “wildcamping” website in the UK that we have since joined which has lots of overnight stops listed. With our fairly consistent use of the site since, we’ve found it quite good and although many of the sites aren’t the sort of location that we would normally attempt to find, some have led us to really scenic spots that we would have missed otherwise.   So while it takes a little getting used to –  parking for the night in carparks and other quite public locations – they certainly are a great budget saving backup to paid camping.   I also have to add that as we are in a pop-up camper, we are quite obvious when camped as opposed to a hard side motorhome where you may be able to appear simply parked as opposed to camped!

The lack of public open space that’s accessible is such a contrast to that of Australia, everything here is owned by someone or it’s been bought back by, or donated to, a trust such as the National Trust. You head for a nature reserve with expectations of forested areas of wilderness only to find farmland and open fields! There just isn’t really much left that’s escaped the touch of man!

We have had a few mixed comments about being in the 4×4, such as “that looks like it would be good for pushing things over in the desert!!” Mind you those types of comments generally come from the more challenged of the population with not much idea of what the world has to offer other than what they see on the BBC! “Generally deserts don’t have a lot of things to push over hence the term desert, you moron”- that would have been the appropriate response but not really a helpful one…

Polperro was our next target. Many locals had recommended this village as a must see and I’m glad to have taken their advice. I’ll let the pictures of this Historic Fishing Port tell the tale.

Polperro High Tide

Polperro Low Tide

Driving in and around the back roads of Cornwall is an unusual experience, even after some of the countries that we have traversed! Once off the highway and on the more interesting back roads, they are all quite skinny single lane roads with slightly wider sections here and there for passing. Many of the smaller roads are limited to vehicles of width no more than 6 feet and although we are a little wider, we haven’t come unstuck –  yet. We have been on sections where both wing mirrors have been in constant contact with the leafy embankment, which really makes you concentrate on your steering!

Hedge Driving!

Speaking of embankments, nearly all of the roads are bordered both sides with ancient stone walls or hedges covered in tangles of vines that are usually around 5 to 8 feet high. You can’t see anything of the countryside once in the maze and have to constantly wait for a low section to provide a vista of your surrounds. It’s a little annoying actually but it’s also the character of Cornwall and possibly a lot of the UK. Oncoming traffic is always met at the most inconvenient of times. If I had a pound for every time I’ve had to reverse to find the nearest section that provides a little more clearance for passing then we’d have a much larger travel budget than we are currently on!

Luxulyan and the Treffry Viaduct sounded interesting and we arrived in the area late in the afternoon. The beauty of the countryside amazed us!! Built in the late 1800’s, the centerpiece of the area is a 30-meter high dual-purpose viaduct that carried steam driven machinery and water for mining. The whole area was fascinating and easily consumed the rest of the afternoon. We ended up camping in the car park, as it seemed like an OK option late in the day, reasonably remote and quiet, well almost – other than some illicit substance smoking locals at 1am whom parked no more than a meter from us and then proceeded to blast their horn as they left in order to get a rise out of us! Seems they are a little short of Friday night activities to engage in around here! Doesn’t help if you haven’t got any teeth and can’t read!

Treffry Viaduct

Luxulyan Valley

On top of the Viaduct

Amazing Engineering!

We make our way from village to village and I’d have to say that most of them are lovely, some with more character than others, but all with something of interest.

Roche Rock and it’s 14th century chapel appeared in the horror film “Omen III”

Roche Rock

Charlestown where the “Onedin Line” was filmed

Charlestown

Historic Cider Press

Pentewan Sands was our next stop and provided us nice blue skies for the next couple of days.

It may be sunny but….

A walk along a section of the coastal path that traverses much of the Southern England Coast was fantastic – majestic views of rugged coastline with carpets of green fields capping the cliffs, really stunning stuff!

South-west Coastal Path

Coast Path

Mevagissey Harbour

St Mawes Castle built by King Henry VIII at the mouth of the River Fal

Using the King Harry Ferry for a 300mtr crossing of the River Fal saves 20 Kms of driving!

Daffodils are everywhere!

Continuing our travels, we arrived at Lizard Point, the most southerly point of the UK. Freezing cold and windy but also spectacular and picturesque!

The Lizard, The UK’s Southermost Point

Kynance Cove famous for it’s serpentine rock and idyllic beach

When in Cornwall have a Cornish Pasty

Marconi Monument at Poldhu Cove

Site of the first Wireless Radio Communication by Marconi

Mobile Fishmonger!

St Michael’s Mount was on our must do list, England’s version of Mont San Michel (and historically related) and it proved to be a really enjoyable visit. Firstly, we camped in a pub car park that was listed on the website that I spoke of earlier. It was obvious to us that you couldn’t camp there but with no signs to say otherwise, we decided to play the dumb Aussie card and waited until quite late to pop the roof up! As locals wandered past observing the rather strange Australian vehicle we felt as though we should direct them to “move along, nothing to see here!!”

Camped Near St Michael’s Mount – spot the Aussie!

Well, we got away with it but received the knock on the back door as we were packing up the following morning. No motorhomes allowed! The security guy was easy going however and not really bothered by our presence, so we drove off down the road a couple of hundred meters and parked in the designated car park for the day for a few pounds! You can’t stay overnight in any of these car parks, lots of signs telling you to go away politely! The local caravan park was charging £24 for the night as it has a captive market! Ahhhhh tourism, have to love it! Anyway the castle was fantastic, I enjoyed the visit immensely. It’s still lived in by the St Aubyn family whose hands it’s been in since 1659 which I thought made it feel more real than the now tourism based plethora of castles that have become Museum pieces open to receive the tourists dollar elsewhere the World over. It’s small as castles go but oh what a piece of real estate!

Castle upon St Michael’s Mount

Incredibly thick walls!

Love a good sundial!

One of the methods of transport to the Island

St Michael’s Mount

Have to love religious imagery in churches!

We have since joined the National Trust (£99 for 2 Adults, 12 months), which provides free parking and entry to a host of sites around England, including St Michael’s Mount, along with access via a reciprocal agreement to sites in some other countries including Australia. The Boroloola Post Office, in Australia’s Northern Territory, was on the list (Hmmmm don’t quite know what to make of that one!) For those wondering what I’m talking about, Google it and see if you can find the similarities between St Michaels Mount in Cornwall and the Post Office in Boroloola and let me know what I’m missing. Linda ask Deb what her memories are of Boroloola – hahaha.

3000 y.o. Men-an-Tol stones – smaller than you think

Crawling through the Men-an-Tol stone ring is meant to have healing powers! 

Merry Maiden Standing Stone Circle

We headed for “Lands End”, the most westerly point of England. After entering the car park and seeing the theme park with the “Shaun the Sheep 3D Experience” we exited the other side of the car park and headed for Cape Cornwall with it’s wild, woolly and less commercialized coastline. The entire coast along here is awe-inspiring, beautiful little coves between rough vertical cliffs with ancient stone walls crisscrossing the countryside above. Small villages with tiny roads, farmhouses and barns with ancient build dates smattered all over the area. It really feels as if time has stopped in some of these areas – sensational.   Levant mine was the next attraction, with the only remaining operational Cornish Beam Engine. It was an eye opening experience, mining for copper and tin a mile out to see but 2000 feet below the waves!. Photo opportunities galore present along the coast here, stunning in every direction.

Remnants of Cornwall’s Tin and Copper Mining Days at Botallack

We spent the next few nights in the town of Botallack hoping to see the return of pleasant skies. What began as a one night stay extended as the weather went slowly and then more rapidly from nice blue skies upon our arrival to drenching rain with freezing gale force winds, capped off with visibility of less than 100 metres. What to do but go to the Pub!

Local weather phenomena known as “mizzle”

The local drinking houses in the UK really are an attraction in themselves – I love them! Quaint little centuries old buildings with real ale pumped by hand from the keg! If you like your beer, it really is paradise! With a bit of effort, you’re generally able to strike up a conversation with some locals or the bar keep and have a great local experience!

On two occasions now, I’ve observed gents in these small pub’s that could easily have been having a night off before heading back to Biggin Hill ready for an early morning air-raid in their Spitfire’s or Hurricane’s! The quaffed hair, scarves and swagger along with long leather coats, has them only missing the classic MG in the car park and the forlorn sound of an Air Raid Siren!

Our last night in Botallack could probably be compared to a Whitbread Round The World Yacht Race – it was so windy that it felt like we were tacking our way across the Atlantic! Enough was enough by morning and with deplorable weather still showing its ugly little face, we began the journey north. I won’t go on about the beautiful Cornish Coast, just get there and have a look if you haven’t already!

Old Mining Shafts on the beach at Perranporth

Bedruthan Steps

Bedruthan Steps down to the beach

Old Tintagel Post Office

Remnants of Tintagel Castle – rumoured to be the birthplace of King Arthur with Merlin’s Cave below!

24hr parking allowed but just don’t go to sleep!

Entry to Boscastle Harbour

View of Boscastle – site of a devastating flood in 2004

The Iconic British Phone Booth!

Cheers

Justin