vicki

The woods and the ocean

This morning started with a very bad painful back but took my cup of concrete and went for a gorgeous walk in Hagg Wood amongst the birds, deer and spring flowers. What a beautiful blue sky day and the woods were so refreshing. We obviously looked out of place just the two of us as one man said ‘Are you walking without a dog?’ As everyone else had one or two.

After a breakfast of fresh farm eggs…yumm…we headed off to Whitby. We passed through Malton, Scarborough and Robin Hoods Bay – what lovely towns. Pity we couldn’t stop longer. Arrived in Whitby and walked around. Scot headed off for a beer in the oldest pub and I headed to the chocolate shop as you do! What an awesome township Whitby is with so much history.

We are parked in a camping ground above the cliffs looking over the sea and the abbey ruins. Today has seen the most spectacular weather of all days – blue skies no cloud – t-shirt weather. Going to explore tomorrow captain cook museum and more.

Todays highlights: the deer in Hagg Wood, tonight’s sunset from our van window as we write this

Todays lowlights: My horribly sore back.

Warm spring days

I don’t believe all the stories about England being cold wet and bleak. We have had 10 days of mostly sunshine and no rain. Today in York it was about 18-20, a beautiful spring day. We’ve either been really lucky or its all lies☺ We have just about finished all the shopping we need to do for the van and we can get on with the job of being tourists. We’ve bought tools, wheel lock, food stuffs and containers etc. We are limited on space but I reckon we are here for 12 months and there are some things I wont do without.

Everyone up this way seems to want to chat to us and find out whether we’re Aussies or Kiwis so we find ourselves talking to random people all over- very friendly people.

We are staying in the Ashfield caravan park in Dunnington just outside York for the 3rd night and we’re off to Whitby in the morning – Captain Cooks birthplace.

Highlights today: Organised some van appointments for Thursday (with a kiwi fellow) when we had been told we would have to wait till end of May.

Lowlights today: Going into a really cool looking pub for a beer only to find it really ordinary inside…bummer!

On the road

We picked up the van on Thursday but there was an issue (blamed on Scot 🙂 with the side door. Drove to York today to find a locksmith but still need assistance from auto locksmith tomorrow.

We loved Bridlington – what a lovely little place and such friendly people – really bustling, but what a nightmare it would be in summer, so busy. Got pushed in on at a bakery by mistake and when they realised we hadn’t been served they damn near got on their knees and asked for forgiveness. We couldn’t believe it.

We are staying in a lovely rural caravan park tonight and just before Scot cooked tea, we saw all the van occupants from around the ground grab their chairs and head off in one direction. We wondered what we were missing out on so curiosity got the better of us and we headed off in tow to see what was up. Happened to be a van club all going to have fish and chips in the recreation room – and they didn’t even want us to join them!!! Never mind we had Salmon and veges – far better than their dinner!

4deg tomorrow morning, but how snug and cosy the van is – we absolutely love it. Tomorrow we’ll do a lovely wood walk to Stamford Bridge before we find the auto locksmith.

Some pictures so far

Scot in London on our way to the train

Bridlington Beach – we loved our walks along here each morning, what a great way to start the day. Brisk temperature but invigorating.

Our first days in England

Well we made it to England despite a few setbacks, like delayed planes, trains and automobiles. We stayed our first two nights in Kings Cross, where it looks like the area is being made into a trendy upbeat place. It certainly was buzzing while we were there.

We met up with our niece Lauren in London and spent the day at the Bricklaying markets and tried a variety of scrumptious food which was great. What a glorious sunny day.

On Monday we took the train up to Bridlington and met up with the motorhome owners who had been incredibly kind and trusting to keep it until we arrived here. The motorhome was everything we had expected and is absolutely perfect for our travels. The owners have left in all bedding, crockery, cookware, camp chairs, table etc which is a godsend with us not having to worry about buying everything. We are staying in a b&b in Bridlington at the moment and tomorrow (16/4 Thursday) we are taking our hire car back to Hull and coming back up to Bridlington and picking the campervan up to start our true adventure.

We had hoped to be over in France for Anzac day, but we now think it would be wise to stay in England for a couple of weeks to get a feel for the van as it has a lot of different things that we didn’t learn about when we hired the campervan in NZ last year. Plus we are thinking we want to do a couple of things to the van like a bike rack etc and talk to a Puegot expert about some of the things in the van. I have posted some photos of the van. Next blog once we are officially on the road.