Hi All,
Back in the writers rather than drivers seat. Quite an adventure. Already forgotten most of it without adding too much alcohol, so at least will be able to recall it without any accuracy or resemblance to the truth at all to make it more intersting and more adventurous than it ever was at the time. At least the story is partially truthful up to my last blog entry.
Summary. It rains a lot in the UK. The green, green hills are a give away. I think there are plenty of them in Scotland but couldn´t see them for the rain. I think the weather is mild and wet in summer and cold and wet in winter. No wonder people from the UK generally have little to no melanin in their skin. They have no need for it.
Where did we go since last entry? northern ireland then look at a UK map and everywhere in Britain.
========================
Northern ireland.
Belfast. Grimy city. We went out to shankill road. The peace wall murals are about half a km away in an area that felt particularly uncomfortable and rough. We retreated and went and got the hire car and drove through the area instead. The local boys were building massive bonfires stacks of tires and wooden pallets in empty area ready for the orange festival. The tension between the catholics and protestants is still alive and well. We visited the orange headquarters also in the area.
Londonderry.Fascinating walking around the bloody sunday murals and visiting the museum. The area is not much to look at but the murals are powerful. There were heartbreaking letters about people who died in the troubled times in the museum. The impression that I got was that they will never forgive or forget. You could feel the emotion and the underlying tension. We also got a walkaround within the walled city the orange museum by a pationate devotee. He gave us more information than we ever wanted to know; even went through the symbols. Felt like a cult recruitment drive.
=========================
Soooo 8000 miles of driving around the UK and we are back in London and I am glad of it as it was quite a long journey. We were initially camped on the outskirts of London near Epping forest and found that if you added the cost of transport on the train it was a similar price to a cheap hotel room in Padington with easy walking access to the town centre. Additionally the rental car was only being used to drive to mcdonalds for internet wifi access anyway. Just not worth the effort. We had made arrangements the previous day and used the rental car to get to the hertz location in the area and took a GPS mark. It took some checking but hertz on edgeware rd, while within the congestion tax zone, is not part of the charging zone but any roads either side of it are included. So it meant driving into the zone without mistakes and turning across the road into the hertz driveway. All went well. It took almost 2 hrs to drive the 10km from the camping area at the caravan park to hertz without any problems. The desk person was amazed that we had driven 6000 miles during our journey. Maybe he should have looked on the computer as this was our second contract as the first was changed in scotland after 2000 miles after we realised we didn´t have comprehensive cover for the vehicle.
So a few observations from the trip:
1) it rains almost every day. Sometime with full sunshine. what the...? Mostly it is dreary, overcast and about 20 deg C in summer. The lazy forecast is for sunny showers each day. We sometimes slept in the car if it was raining rather than put up the tent in a camping ground.
2) the lanes off the main roads are really skinny but have little overtaking positions. The locals have seen it all before and mostly position themselves and flash their car lights to invite you to come past. When two tourist vehicles or a truck arrive it can become much more interesting.
3) Nothing much happens in the country tourism areas before 10am. Probably because the morning rain doesn´t stop until about that time or the farmers doubling as tourism people have finished thier morning chores.
4) Petrol is expensive. The average was about 1.02 pounds / litre and the vehicle economy was about 100 miles per 10 litres. The diesel vehicle we used in France had much better economy.
5) Camping grounds are easily found when not needed and very scarce when needed. Sometimes we would be finished driving for the day and looking for a camping ground with none to be found and given up and slept in the car only to find camping grounds in abundance not far away in the morning.
6) There are plenty of badgers and hedgehogs but we didn´t see any alive. So much road kill. It was a real pity that so many were laying dead on the side of the roads and a shame that we didn´t see either species alive in the wild. We did see something quite odd in Durham down near an old abbey when we saw a black stote running along a river path with a white ferret in it´s mouth. We did see a lovely red fox in a forest in Dartmore national park.
7) There ARE wild deer that get on the roads after all. We were looking for a quiet parking area one night and it was getting quite late. We were in a forest area and all across the UK there were signs warning of deer on the road. So I was getting pretty skeptical about the deer having seen none until coming around a corner and nearly crashing into one then watching one bouncing around in the car headlights for a while. We had seen a couple of deer in a field near the white horse near avesbury but that was our only other live deer spot for the trip.
8) Our tent often get condensation build up on the inside of the fly. This meant packing up a wet tent in the back of the car and waiting for the moments of sun during the day to dry it. Generally this worked fine as the tent was nylon but sometimes it just rained all day. We worked out later in the trip that the tent could be dried using the car heater as we drove along. The ground sheet also seemed to allow moisture to pass which was a little inconvenient as it was generally wet ground.
9) The showers in some caravan parks need tokens for water or hot water. Imagine paying 10 pounds each to camp and then have to pay 1.5 pounds more for a shower. It happened in Dublin! No water at all in the shower without a token. Generally it was just no hot water without a token. Sometimes the caravan parks had free hot water which was quite generous considering we felt that it was already paid for in the camping fees.
10) Carparking is a real problem in the UK. It is hard to find an area that isn´t park and pay. They even had park and pay in the middle of nowhere at hadrians wall! Too bad for them as they didn´t have parking inspectors as well.
11) Speed cameras. How many speed cameras can fit on one island? You could just about light your path by speeding at night on the main highways near London if you desired the loss of license and compulsory donation to the government. Apparently some suburbs are switching them off as they can´t afford to maintain them. All about safety right? They still have handheld speed cameras and the most obvious vans with cameras looking out the back windows.
Random paragraph I felt like writing. We needed to charge the laptop and batteries while on the road. We didn´t have either for the car so in Edinburgh I purchased a car AA battery charger and a 30W DC-DC converter for the laptop. The laptop needed a 44W charger so this was a problem and the electrical store guy rightly told me. I figured that the overcurrent protection would prevent the converter from blowing up and we could charger the laptop when turned off to reduce the power requirement. The DC-DC converter lasted about 1 minute before stopping working and I was back in the electronics store getting it checked with the guy still telling me I needed a larger converter. Was just a blown fuse so I bought a pack of 10 and we found that the fuse only blew when the car was stopped. Why? Technical. DC-DC converter outputs 12V and when the car is running gets an input of about 14.4VDC which is chopped to produce the desired voltage but when the car is stopped the input voltage is closer to 12VDC so requires more current and blew the 1.6A fast blow fuse. Vanessa mastered pulling the plug out when the car was stopped.
Another random paragram. I made a habit of checking out the camping grounds before deciding to stopping. Generally this meant completely ignoring the check in at front office before entering the park signs and proceeding. Anyway I went into one in the beacons national park and on the way out there was on old man with a red face and steam blowing out of his ear. He had a thick accent and was giving me a blasting so I just turned off. When he got to do you understand what I am saying? I couldn´t help myself and said mate I can´t understand a word your saying with your THICK accent which made him even
madder and then walked off saying I think I will find somewhere else to stay. Turns out the somewhere else was a beautiful abbey mill by a river anyway. Vanessa thinks that I am a trouble maker sometimes. Maybe she is right.
Guess at the end of the day the road trip was all about choices and compromise. We wanted to see the UK and do it as cheap as possible but have as rich an experience as possible. We wanted to look around but bus companies were excessively expensive against the price of hire car; when travelling in a car we were isolated from the locals quite a lot of the time which was a shame; Staying in a tent saved money as the accomodation was ridiculously prices but the tent was not particularly comfortable or secure; being together 24hrs a day can be a real problem and there is no space to escape in a car.
So we came, we saw, we photographed and now we are back planning for the next part of our adventure.
Oh. Yes we liked the trip and have plenty of places to visit in detail in the future. There will be no distractions as we already know in a broad sense what is contained in each area of Ireland and the UK. We think of this trip as a fact finding effort so that we don´t have to waste time in the future when we will probably be more pressed for time.
One reason for stopping in London again was to make some progress on the trans siberian railway trip. One of the major hurdles is that we need to get visas for Russia, Mongolia and China. Unfortunately they cannot be issued until 3 months before use which is a problem for us as we will be in the European Union at that point. Actually being in the UK is probably no better. We have to give up our passports for about 1 month or so to get the visas. See the problem? foreign country and no passport. The only safe solution we can see is to go back to Australia for the visa processing. This would be expensive so we are probably going to have to wing it and send our passports to Australian and get a visa processing agent to do the leg work then get them sent to a friend in either Germany or Austria. Our trip just doesn´t fit into the rigid visa system. We will have to cross our fingers that nothing goes wrong when this happens in September or October.
Another problem is that before we cant get a visa for Russia as we need an invitation and need to provide a full list of towns and dates for visit for the trip. Not our style but we have to do it. I think that is why we gave up last time we were in London. It really is a painful process.
We hit the book stores yesterday and now have a lonely planet for trans siberian railway, china and south eastern asia so we can plan the rest of our trip. Africa and the galapagos keeps coming up in our conversations but it will have to wait for another trip. I think it is necessary to have the books despite the extra weight as this will be our last native english speaking country for quite a while.
Our general plan for the next leg of our adventure is to head to Eastern europe and travel until we are able to re enter the European Union in 5 Sep and start heading up towards Scandinavia then into Russia. From St Petersberg we will cross to Vladivostok and then backtrack to Beijing. We have often talked about catching the train to Tibet so this is an option. Then we will head south travelling into southern China then head into south east asia and keep travelling south where we will find some way to get back to Australia. Most probably fly. Needs more work.
So we are running away again without any progress with the Russian visas...The flight is now booked and we will be heading off to Romania on Tuesday so it is becoming reality again. Luckily Romanian is another romantic language country so it shouldn´t be too difficult to understand and a soft reentry into the world of foriegn ways.
Still avoiding going back to work and living the dream!
Bye,
David and Vanessa
