THE FINAL MONTH IN ENGLAND

We have made the difficult decision to leave the UK and go home, so we resign from our jobs the day after we get back from holiday. The standard notice here is one month, which will mean we have been working here for only a little over 9 months. It hasnt been a decision made lightly and there are many reasons. Upon reflection it perhaps was the best final month as we had several short weeks with which to get used to the idea and decide on our plan of attack.

The weekend following our return from Malta, we decide to go away for a weekend in the van. A lot of campsites arent even open yet, but we find one near Winchester and head there on the Saturday morning. We havent been anywhere in the van for a few months and we need to see if things are still ok. On setting up at the site, Scot opens the side storage locker only to have the strutt side hinges snap. That isnt good as it is near impossible to get parts for a van even this old. Then we find that the bathroom tap appears to be spurting water and not from the spout. The spout join has corroded so we have to keep the pump off whilst here now. On the Sunday we find that the tap on the fresh water outlet is leaking badly and we are losing water. This is life in a van. Winter is never kind to them here and they arent good sitting for any length of time. It is a good shake down though so now we have some work to do to find parts. The next weekend is Easter so i get searching the internet for parts and have most ordered and arrived before Easter hits.

We have been offered a house sit down in Brighton for Easter looking after 2 dogs. Although we said we wouldnt look after dogs again, we figure its only 4 days and the owner has said that Lola and Jimmy are very well behaved dogs. On the Thursday before Good Friday i get a call from my GP’s office to say they need to see me that day about an xray i had done on Tuesday. This is when i find out my bone is broken in my foot. No plaster though, they say try to stay off it and walk with solid base shoes if necessary. And we are looking after 2 dogs needing walking and we wanted to see more of Brighton, bad timing!

Needless to say we did walk the dogs and they were just adorable and very well behaved. Exploring Brighton didnt really happen, but we saw a little. It was a nice break away.

The following weekend we got to, with all the parts ordered and set to, to fix the vans broken bits. The universe works in wonderful ways, since we had very few tools, this place we were staying in was also a base for a removal company the owners ran. So there was plenty of parking space for the van and Norman had a multitude of tools he could lend us to get the job done. I had even devised a way of fixing our 2 year old broken hinge that was no longer available anywhere. We worked all weekend to replace the bathroom tap, put a new fresh water tap on, fit a new hinge to the storage locker and dummy up a new hinge for our door and screen. We had to do a couple of adjustments to the bathroom piping as water was seeping a bit but we managed to get a joiner the following weekend and it is fine now. The hinges are brilliant and i am quite chuffed to have worked out a way to fix them when new ones arent available. The van is fit for habitation and hope all goes well with our check coming up in a week.

The owners of The Farm and Boris approach us to sit over summer but we tell them that unfortunately we wont be here and they ask us to sit for a final week early May which fits quite nicely.

It is quite strange for us leaving here when we are just starting to make friends and just starting to feel like part of the community. We go to a local gathering at Lyne house near Rusper which is an old historic house that has been made into apartments so that it can be kept maintained. The Morris dancers have been going there on this particular weekend every year for over 45 years. All the locals come along and bring a plate and drink to share and we join in the festivities. Scot even joined the Morris dancers for their final dance of the day. Lyne House was part of the Broadwood Estate for many centuries. The Broadwoods made exclusive pianos for centuries to people like Chopin among many others, so this house is steeped in history.

Our final week and we join in with the locals watching a community screening of the movie Sully which is very good. We feel like the local teenagers as everyone at the community hall is much much older than us. On our last day of work we both say goodbye to our work colleagues. I get a beautiful gift to remember them by and Scot gets shouted beers all night – how appropriate. It still seems strange and i am not sure how i feel about it all. In a lot of ways it is sad as there are so many things i had planned. It was going to be incredibly difficult though to stay. We had to save about £10,000 to get a place to live and one of our wages would have been taken by rent and utilities alone. That would mean that plans to do all the many things would never have happened defeating the whole purpose of being here.

We are at the farm for our last few days and here we get ourselves sorted out and packed back up in our only home here, the motorhome Morrie. We have decided to head to France as it is cheap and we never saw much when in our van. We have saved enough to do some more travelling before coming home so plan our next move.

Once we leave the farm on the Wednesday we head to our favourite little camp ground in Slinfold for one night. We need to charge the van, test out all our fixes and relax. It has been a bit of a stressful month one way and another. The next day we head to a tiny village called Englefield. I believe this is where my family originated. It is just to the west of Reading. There is a magnificent estate called Englefield House and a church nearby called Englefield church of St Marks. The house belonged to Sir Francis Englefield until the late 1500’s when he had it taken from him by Queen Elizabeth 1st. This was due to the belief that Sir Francis was part of a group comspiring to de-throne Elizabeth and have Mary the catholic put on the throne instead.  The grounds are huge and they have many deer wandering freely. When we tried to take photos i was politely told to leave the property as i was trespassing on private property. We found out that Pippa Middleton was getting married in the church in 2 weeks so there was a lot of suspicion of strangers there. We left there after lunch and headed down to the new forest which we believe is lovely. In this area there are wild horses and deer that roam freely. Houses have an animal grate on their driveways so the horses dont come onto their property. It is amazing to see the animals just wandering where ever they want to go.

Friday we head to Weymouth to spend our last couple of nights with Michaela and Mick before we catch the ferry to France. We have a lot of laughs and enjoy our time here and then its time to head off. Sunday we drive the 2 hours to Portsmith and await our ferry.

More photos will come later. We have no power in France and it is difficult to upload photos from cameras and phones.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *