On the Road

We had a great night at Grease - amazing show and hard to believe we saw it in London. Brent was in his element before the show as he had fish, chips, peas, bread and butter at the pub.
Up early on Tuesday morning and joined the Hop On Hop Off bus tour of London - great to see the history and icons of London - as we were driving past Westminister Abbey the bells were ringing, went past Big Ben and he tolled, watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace with a couple of hundred oops I mean several thousands of other tourists, absolutely incredible. We caught a ferry out to Greenwich Village, you know where GMT comes from - that night caught up with Rachael Cassidy (ex BNZ)and enjoyed a couple of wines with her.
Up extra early on Wednesday morning as we were going to pick up our camper. After several hours of Brent finding out how everything worked and Rae stocking the cupboards we hit the road - oh boy the first turn we took was the wrong one and Brent trying to reverse in a small street without the backing camera on and lots of swearing as he couldn' t find reverse made Rae very nervous!! We then just drove and drove as Brent couldn't get Sat Nav (GPS) working and Rae was navigator and she got us to Clacton-on-Sea by 8.00pm so two very stressed, hungry and thirsty people set up camp for the night in a Hi-de-Hi Camp. Hilarous camp and we waited next morning patiently for the office girl to arrive to give us some change for the washing machines - she had slept in so arrived at work at 9.10am!! We are on English time!
Next night we stayed in great camping ground in Weeley - yes we weeley been there! Great place for the night and we just cruised and got ourselves more familar with the camper - Brent worked out how it all works and Rae worked out oven and lazy susan pantry!
Friday feeling a bit more confident with driving we headed for a place called Beckley which is in East Essex, SE England where Anne Thain (from Motunau) lived and worked, we called into her local and were made to feel very welcome and ended up staying in someones Timberyard for the night after several beers at the Rose and Crown - a true local pub where they don't really get the tourists.
This morning we have been to a place called Rye - a beautiful old town with extra narrow streets lots of bars and antique shops - you even get asked if you would like a cuppa as the jug has just boiled when you are browsing in the shops. Talking about pubs they are just everywhere and good job we are not on a pub crawl as we wouldn't get out of the area for a couple of months.
Surprise surprise we are now in a pub having a beer in a place called Hastings which is on the SE coast and a real British seaside resort. If you think of the song Beside the Seaside, beside the sea and all the pictures that use to be in our story books when reading the song, ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds, penny arcardes, clowns, morris dancers and thousands and thousands of holiday makers - well that is this place!!
We are going to try and book a ferry crossing to France in the next couple of days - just as we are getting use to British narrow roads and their driving, we will start driving on the right hand side of the road - oh dear high stress levels again!!
As we are driving down the lanes it is funny seeing the lambs in the paddocks, spring flowers all in bloom and people feeling like summer is around the corner! We have been really lucky with the weather and only had 1 wet day.
We will down load some more photos again later when we have better access.
Great to see some more people have joined as followers, we like seeing who is following our travels.