So, we set off from Bath to do the four-or-so hour drive back “home”, stopping via a hardware store where (we think) we successfully solved our bed-condensation issue, with a couple of cheap camping mats!

About half-way there, just before Plymouth, my iPhone’s GPS was behaving a bit oddly, as happens from time to time lately, so I rebooted it, and it never came back to life! As it’s our navigation system, I pulled over by the road, pulled out the laptop and tried to coax it back to life, with no success. As a last resort I pulled out my old iPhone, which I keep around for testing, and fired it up, to find its GPS wasn’t working any more! Eek!

Katherine was, in the meantime, rather calm about all this, and in the end her suggested approach — slumming it along with everyone else and following road signs — panned out. Who knew?

So we pulled up in now-familiar Threemilestone, Truro and got down to the rather lengthy business of catching up on our blog and photo-processing.

There was a happy ending to the iPhone hiccup too — I discovered Apple’s online service request facility, ordered a repair, and a box arrived the following day for me to post the sick iPhone off in; two days later, I had a brand new iPhone arrive at the door! Impressive customer service, there.

And now, back to programming!

After our dismal coffee experience yesterday and Sarah’s crash course in UK “coffee” we put a little more effort into a place to patronise today. The girls had heard good stuff about The Boston Tea Party so we made a bee-line there. It turned out to be a place Mike and I had been to last year! Over coffee I presented Sarah with a birthday present to adorn her little cottage in a Tasmanian town with the delightful name of “Snug”.

Mike and I had been looking forward to re-visiting the abbey so we could shoot it in HDR this time.

I mused how much taking an interest in photography has affected how I now perceive the world around me. I got sooo much more out of our visit this time around – noticing details that I don’t even remember seeing before.

We briefly considered having a bath but thought better of it after realising (a) the price, (b) it would be all modern looking rather than ye olde Roman ruins and (c) it would be hot and it was a rather warm day already. We frugally decided to have another picnic and stopped by Marks & Spencer for some supplies. We struck on the brilliant idea of buying some cold white wine and a birthday cake for Sarah as well.

We found a spot by the river and sat down for a long, leisurely lunch, cheap wine, good conversation, and a dodgy supermarket birthday cake.

We went for a stroll to the The Crescent and read an interesting bit of trivia about it – Only the facade was constructed and then it was sold off in lengths and people built the rest of their house to their own specifications. We took a walk behind it and sure enough it was all higgledy piggledy.

Mike and I had yet another history geek moment when we read that the lawn in front of The Crescent has a ha-ha. A “ha-ha”, as described in “At Home: A short history of private life” by Bill Bryson, is “a sunken fence, a kind of palisade designed to separate the private part of an estate from its working parts without the visual intrusion of fence or hedge. Because they were unseen until the last instant, people tended to discover them with a startled cry of ‘Ha-ha’! – and hence, so it is said, the name”.

We also pointed out a feature of many houses in Bath that were the butt of many jokes on a comedic tour of Bath we went on last year. There are many recesses in the walls that look like there should be a door or window there. We’d read that when glass was still quite expensive people would paint these recesses to look like windows and doors – I’m still not clear on why doors where expensive though…

We waited out the train’s departure time at a very grand looking cafe over enormous beverages – what is it with this country and pints!? After our time with friends I was feeling a bit philosophical and reflected on how sad it is that, although I’d love to spend more time with friends, even if we were to move back to Australia half our friends would still be on other continents. Then I felt even sadder when I thought that we would still be spending more time with friends there than we can here and it will most likely be a few years until I see Sarah again. I at least count myself fortunate to have so many people to miss so much – I’d take that any day to the alternative.

After saying goodbye to the gals I couldn’t quite bear the thought of going back to Nettle and eating, just the two of us, so we grabbed some very tasty pizza in Bath instead. By the time we left we were racing the sunset, not relishing the thought of cycling through dark fields lined with thistles and hoisting our bikes over stiles surrounded with nettle (no, not that Nettle!). Luckily we made it just in time and rolled into our CL to the sound of our neighbour playing a lovely little tune on a harpsichord. He was sat outside but facing towards the open door of their little old caravan – I think he was serenading his wife. It was really nice way to finish the day – thanks little old harpsichord playing man!

As we drove up the driveway we were delighted to see that the field we’d taken an awesome panorama of last year had now been planted with wheat, so although the tire tracks were still there they were highlighted with bluey-green wheat instead of tiny white flowers.

Then

Now

Also, I had no idea wheat is so colourful!

We had a couple of days to kill until my high school mates – Sarah, Carmen and Sarah’s mum Diane – arrived in Bath. We were without electricity, however, and with a busted leisure battery, so Mike got a lot of reading done (of the ‘dead-tree’ kind of book, that is – Mike) and I put the finishing touches on a painting and whipped up a little birthday present for Sarah (who’s birthday is in a couple of days).

When the gang finally arrived in Bath we arranged to pick them up the next day and head out to the Cotswolds in Nettle. On the way to Bath we got a little lost thanks to GPS’ charming tendency to discombobulate in built-up areas – just when you need it the most. Unfortunately our “little late” turned into a lot late when I proceeded to walk around Bath looking for them, having made the mistake of relying on my memory instead of the map in my hand. Peeps finally found, we headed back to Mike and Nettle, generally mooched and caught up then discussed our plans for the day. The hefty responsibility of choosing which Cotswold towns to visit was delegated to me as I’ve been there before. Our first destination was Oxford. I’d only seen Sarah twice in the ten years since graduation from high school but we easily slipped back into our friendship and were giggling uncontrollably at the slightest thing like we always used to. It was hard sitting in the front, I really wanted to chat with the gals but Nettle’s rather prohibitively loud when she gets going.

Once in Oxford we made a bee line to a park and had a picnic lunch that the girls had brought along, of baguettes, soft cheeses, dips and fruit. Our first port of call was Christ Church College as a few scenes from the first couple of Harry Potter movies were shot there. We didn’t end up going in as the admission fee was a cheeky £6 and we couldn’t really do it justice given that we wanted to see a couple of villages as well. We settled for wandering around the grounds instead. We looked on rather bemusedly at the things the girls decided were photo-worthy. It reminded me how it felt when I was here for the first time – coming from Australia where anything older than 100 years is considered historic and the grandest building I’d seen was St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne with an impressive 125 years of history. Given our speedy itinerary I suggested we just stroll through the city centre a little bit instead of heading to any sites in particular. For the next 20 minutes we walked through some pretty ordinary looking bits of town until we turned a corner and Wham! There you are, Oxford! Unfortunately in all the excitement of having new people around we don’t seem to have taken many photos. Here’s a vaguely interesting building for you:

We stumbled on an exhibition of an edition of Alice in Wonderland illustrated by Salvador Dali. I was a big fan of his in high school and of course love the story as well so we eagerly checked it out. I was kind of expecting he would have toned down the crazy for the project at hand but it was pretty much standard, wacky Dali. Definitely not children friendly. Oxford was absolutely teeming with tourists and even if we’d had a whole day scheduled for the town I’m not sure we would have chosen to stay for much longer. Eager to escape the masses we headed back to Nettle and onto Bourton on the Water – the name rung a bell so I was hoping it was the one I’d visited way back in 2003. On the way we spotted a field of deer. Like big geeks we reversed back and got out to take photos.

Mike and I saw a very pointless looking little structure sitting in the field and wondered if it was a “folly”. We’re reading a fabulously informative book at the moment, called “At Home: A Short History of Private Life” by Bill Bryson and are learning all sorts of random and fascinating things – from the ice trade, to Palladian architecture and the history of beds. A “folly” is a building on an estate “designed with no other purpose in mind than to complete a view and provide a happy spot for the wandering eye to settle“.

Arriving in Bourton on Water (Mike – ….and trying to get the song “Smoke On The Water” out of my head…) I instantly recognised it as the right place and just like the last time I was here there were quite a few people out enjoying the nice weather and dangling their feet in the icy water of the little stream. We leisurely wandered about, spotted some cute little ducklings and grabbed a coffee which we optimistically hoped would taste a bit better than brown water. After laughing at my latte being more like a cappuccino and Sarah’s cappuccino being more like a latte, Carmen and I declared that they didn’t taste too bad at which point Sarah kindly informed us that we’ve been in the UK for too long and have obviously forgotten what coffee tastes like. We defended our statement with the facts that it didn’t taste like brown water, the beans weren’t burnt, ergo not a bad coffee by UK standards, at which point Sarah died a little inside. There was a rather unfortunate but humurous moment when we were having this discussion when Carmen began to say that “we at least shouldn’t complain until…” with the waitress standing right behind her ready to serve the rest of our order. I felt bad for her when we all started laughing after she left but it was just such unfortunate timing we couldn’t not. I hope we didn’t hurt her feelings. Maybe we should have explained to her that we are Melburnians and therefore gigantic coffee snobs. Ah well…

A bit of engaging conversation and a joyless caffeine injection later we headed off for our final Cotswold destination – a town I may or may not have been to – Stow on the Wold. In Stow on the Wold we noticed little yellow boxes dotted around with the word “grit” on them. We were intrigued and opened one up not having the faintest of what we would find within… It was a substance that looked remarkably a lot like… well, grit. At which point we cracked up laughing and imagined people going around saying “I could really do with a bit of grit right about now”. We managed to deduce by the added ingredient of salt that it is for sprinkling on the roads when it snows – probably something quite obvious to most northern hemisphere dwellers but we’re Australians so allowances must be made. Now, who’s for some grit?

I didn’t remember much about Stow on the Wold, including if I’d actually been there before, and there certainly wasn’t anything that memorable about it this time around either. We strolled about the deserted streets and Mike and I had our second history geek fix when we spotted windows with a circular lump in the middle of the glass. We’d read that this method of production was much more affordable when glass was still quite expensive. As we walked Carmen relayed the history behind a couple of phrases she’d learnt about when she was in Edinburgh. To “cost an arm and a leg” stems from a time when cadavers were in great demand by surgeons who needed to practise their skills as much as possible due to the lack of anaesthesia and the need to work very quickly. Cadavers were in short supply however, as only those of executed criminals were allowed to be used. This saw a spate of grave robbing to supply the demand, as fresh cadavers fetched a pretty penny. Hence, something expensive cost an “arm and a leg”. Interestingly, as Mike and I had also read, a couple of particularly entrepreneurial chaps decided grave robbing was far too much hassle and a bit dangerous, what with the guards and all, so they decided it would be far more efficient to simply murder people. They did and one of them was eventually caught. He gave up his partner in crime and got off light. The other who was not so fortunate was executed, and in a very neat twist of fate his cadaver was used for surgery practise.

The second phrase was “to get shit-faced”. To get shit-faced stems way back to when people threw their effluent out of windows onto the streets below. If you’ve never before felt immensely lucky to be born in the time you have been born, feel free to take a moment now (I’ll wait). Apparently there was an agreed-upon hour to throw this stuff about which unhappily coincided with closing time of all the pubs in Britain. Inebriated fellows stumbled out onto the streets and in their drunken stupor looked up, instead of moving as quickly as humanly possible, when a warning cry came from above. Hence, the term “to get shit-faced”.

We admired a crooked building for a bit – anything slightly wonky is fascinating to a people who come from a country were everything is relatively new and therefore annoyingly uniform. On the way home we stopped off for a good old English pub meal – at a pub, incidentally, that was around long before Henry VIII was busy lopping off his wives’ heads – and a pint of cider. Sarah – a dietitian – ordered a burger with a deep-fried patty of spinach and two types of cheese – a dietitian ordered deep-fried cheese! We had a fascinating and horrifying conversation about all sorts of parasites and how they make their way into your body, punctuated with plenty of real life stories. (Mike – My favourite was the one about the African worm which made its way into its host’s foot, then all the way up into their bowels, where eventually it, well, made its way out, and out, and out, and out)

We dropped the guys off in Bath and flopped into bed as soon as we got home, absolutely spent and delighted to have spent a day with such awesome people.

We put on our wet weather gear, and headed out into the afternoon. Fairly quickly we were grateful that we’d left our bikes — the path we took climbed some rather significant slopes, so our ride would’ve been primarily bike-pushing. As it was, we ambled along the lane, bordered by fields with views out over the surrounding hills and valleys, took a turn along the public bridleway, met some curious Exmoor ponies along the way, and made our gradual way back to the nearby village and back along the main road home.

We loved the way the roots of this tree actually made up the boundary between fields:

We stayed one more night at the CL in Exmoor, then headed off down the little country lanes, towards Bath.

We’re headed up to Bath to visit some old friends of Katherine who are over from Australia for a few months of travel; we’ll see a couple of the sights with them while they’re here, and then get back to work!

Nettle remembered how to go splendidly, and we set off down the little country lane we’re so used to riding our bikes down while Noia the GPS navigator was getting her act together. The novelty was back (not that it ever truly disappears!) and it was great fun to be driving this enormous vehicle around. We drove up amongst gently rolling green hills with a patchwork of fields in many shades of green, and followed Noia’s directions towards our first destination: Tintagel (which we learned was “tin-TAA-gel”, not “TIN-tah-ghel”, and most certainly not “tin-taggle”), which was recommended to us by our good friends Tara and Tyler.

On our way there, we narrowly avoided getting stuck down an ever-narrowing road, but were luckily turned back by a friendly local, with assistance turning around from another local, who let us into her field to turn.

We made it there, parked in a sloping grassy field marked out as a car park, and wandered down a little pathway heading across some fields and signposted towards the cliffs and the castle, and requesting care as there were badger homes nearby that wanted protecting. There was a mother with her somewhat obnoxious-seeming ten-ish year old boy who was complaining loudly about something-or-other, and we shook our heads judgementally about “UK children”. Get off my lawn, you kids.

Tintagel is, as the informational signage at the site proudly proclaims, the legendary site of King Arthur’s birth. Legendary is the key word here of course — it’s only because a monk named Geoffrey of Monmouth decided to make Tintagel the birthplace of Arthur while reinventing the story that it’s considered as such! The power of the story…

A short documentary playing at the entrance explained the several different forms the King Arthur legend has taken throughout the years, and how it had been “reinvented” periodically to suit the era.

We walked through the churchyard of an old church and towards the cliffs, getting our first proper glimpse of the coastline, and gasped — it was beautiful, and completely reminiscent of the Causeway Coast in Ireland! Bright green fields descending to a smoothly-rounded coast edge, crinkled in parts, and a rocky edge meeting the startlingly blue sea. The vision was completed by dramatically swirling white clouds across the blue sky. The path led along the cliffs, sided by tall grasses dotted with colourful flowers in yellow and purple.

We drew alongside the outcrop of land that Tintagel castle once stood on, rising precipitously from the blue water with jagged, rocky cliffs, and squatting roundly like a bar of soap. A bridge connected it to the mainland, with a zig-zagging path that led up and around the low ruins. After approaching the start of the bridge and noticing the hefty admission price, we balked and did an about-face, choosing to wander the surrounding coastline instead of going for a close-up look at the ruins. It was all very beautiful and what we now think of as “Ireland-esque”.

Bellies rumbling, we took the hedge-lined path teeming with butterflies towards the village, for a couple of pasties and tea/scones in (of course) King Arthur’s Bistro, beside King Arthur’s Bookshop and King Arthur’s Car Park. That guy has it all.

Hunger nicely satiated, we ambled up the street past some very charming rickety old stone cottages and the old post office, roof bulging and dipping whimsically along its length. Back to Nettle, grinning at the enthusiastic collie sprinting around the field, tongue lolling, we set off again towards Exmoor National Park.

After a brief stop-in at a supermarket to stock up on supplies (no flour-and-water pancakes for us, no!) we turned onto the lovely little country road that led to our destination through more patchwork fields, bordered by hedges full of those great purple flowers — the view out the window looked like a painting, perfectly aesthetically arranged. I jumped out and hung off Nettle’s roof to snap a few pictures, then we arrived at the CL that would be home for the next day while we did a little exploring of the national park.

This is a beautiful country!

Our decision to remain stationary until Mike’s new app is up and running and out in the big wide world led us to the intriguing prospect of finding the cheapest CL in the UK in a region with strong internet coverage. What fun! We had no idea where we would end up for the next few months – just lots of little dots on a map – it was like a lottery!

Mike spent a while trawling through the Caravan Club site, looking in ever-expanding circles for a suitable place to relocate to.  They were all rather expensive for our liking, so he embarked on a massive project to write some software to drag the entire several-thousand-site CL database from the Club’s website, and make it easily searchable for price (which isn’t searchable on their site).  Several days later, he had a spreadsheet of the sites across the UK that were within our price range, and proceeded to call through the list to confirm the prices, which are invariably inaccurate.

After a rather silly number of hours of work, he’d narrowed our choice down to 4 sites around England’s south-west. The winning CL turned out to be Langarth Farm just outside of Truro in Cornwall. Looks like we’re going to spend a few months in Cornwall then! At first I was a bit under-whelmed at the prospect, despite having wanted to tour Cornwall for quite some time. Before we changed our plans we were going to travel up the east coast of the UK to Scotland and then go back down the west coast. I’ve been pining for Scotland for months now and it looked like I’d have to wait a few more months yet. As the aforementioned friend pointed out, there is something rather funny about feeling let down at the prospect of spending a few months in Cornwall!

During our trundle over to Cornwall we picked up our new (to us) vintage bikes that we’d bought on eBay! Mike’s is a surprisingly shiny blue beast circa 1960s called “Apollo” and mine, also blue, circa 1970s named “Way” short for “Wayfarer”. We’d been looking for these bad boys for a long time and we’re absolutely thrilled with our new purchases.

Mine was in Plymouth which, from our brief drive through looked like a lovely little city.

We made our way to Langarth Farm down ever-narrowing roads, pleased with the promisingly scenic drive on the approach. As we drove we thought about cycling along these very roads with anticipation. Langarth Farm turned out to have many other features of benefit to an extended stay that we hadn’t even thought to check for – grocery store and fish and chip shop in walking distance, small city with everything we could ever need – namely Indian and Thai food – in cycling distance; there’s even an honesty stall down the road selling eggs, potatoes and leeks!

Our days leading up to meeting up with friends in Bath were spent quietly working away, Mike on his new iPhone app and me in my new marketing role as well as my own projects, albeit to a lesser extent as previously. I’m hoping the next app will do well enough so we can hire someone to do the marketing next time and I can get back to my art and creative biz. In the meantime, I don’t mind the work and I’m learning a lot which I’ll be able to put to good use in my own online biz when the time comes.

We also spent our days going for bicycle rides on our new vintage steeds and marvelling at our friends doing this across continents! The hills (and slight inclines indiscernible to the human eye) of Cornwall defeat me every time and I end up taking my bike for a walk half the time, which Mike kindly documented.

The scenery we cycle through is quintessentially English – gnarled trees, bright purple flowers growing along the side of the road, and of course everything is very, very green. This is an achingly pretty country. It reminds us of Mike’s pretty hometown but on steroids. On one of our rides I commented to Mike how I used to think it very funny that the English settlers in Australia found the landscape depressingly barren and wholly uninviting and that they would try to re-create English gardens around their outback homes – how silly, I thought! Looking at this beautifully lush landscape now I completely understand why they pined for the beauty of their abundant colourful flowers and gentle leafy green woods. The area I grew up in in Australia is characterised by dry scrub, the plants are hardy, tough looking things and the trees are tall, straight and skinny with sparse leaves – and forget about flowers. I can see how this may have proven a slightly depressing state of affairs to our English ancestors.

We missed the lambs at Wootton, and the antics of the local pheasant, Monsieur Squark-and-Flap, but the void was somewhat filled by a rather enthusiastic rooster who I realised sounds just like someone over-excitedly yelling “WOOOOO-HOOOO!”. So, we dubbed him Party Rooster. Every day’s a party for that guy – he loves a good time.

Punctuating the uneventfulness of our quiet days spent in Cornwall, the only other things of note are that our boiler miraculously fixed itself and we now have a functioning shower again – reaffirming our “If it aint broke don’t fix it; if it is broke, don’t fix it – it’ll fix itself” policy; Mike sent his passport and Australian drivers license off to the DVLA with baited breath hoping they send us back a British license and preferably don’t lose his passport in the process as we hear they are prone to do, and we finally got around to “spring” cleaning Nettle. Huh. I didn’t know our skylight was white. And what happened to our windowsill terrarium?

“”Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” — Mary Oliver”

I celebrated my 28th year on this planet recently. Twenty eight years of my one wild and precious life. This is what I decided to exchange a day of my life for on this particular day.

The Eden Project in Cornwall houses the world’s largest greenhouse. Inside the artificial biomes are plants that are collected from all around the world. It was delightful and quirky and beautiful – the perfect birthday setting for a girl who loftily aspires to bring more of these very things into the world through her art. There were charming little details like stairs designed just for children… and Mike.

And quirky sculptures throughout.

Despite having looked forward to the rainforest biome the most, it was the gardens I got the most joy out of. I found myself thinking about elements I would like to incorporate into our future garden, namely wonky little fences made out of sticks, little stick teepees providing a vertical home for creepers and rows of lush edibles. Plus, who doesn’t love purple balls on sticks?!

Surprisingly, another highlight for me was the cafe! It seems somebody told them it was my birthday because it was a baked goods extravaganza – we’ve been without an oven for a year now and every now and then we crave cheesy baked comfort food and apple crumbles – exactly what we ordered at the Eden Project cafe and it was excellent! The cafe itself is surrounded by a beautiful, brightly coloured vegetable garden. Staff filled up their buckets with delicious looking edible bounty presumably for use in the cafe’s cuisine. There was something very satisfying about watching them work and I found myself thinking what a wonderful job that would be.

We topped the day off with a very satisfying Indian feast – our first Indian (not including the horrible, over-priced quasi-Indian we had in Rome) since we were in England this time last year! A foot massage over an episode or two of our new favourite and surprisingly educational TV program, “The Tudors”, topped off the perfect day. Ooh I almost forgot to mention the triumphal birthday present. I’d had my eye on this skirt for a little while and this was the last one they had – the one on the mannequin in fact – and it fit perfectly! It was meant to be! Thank you mum, dad, Margaret and Chris! I definitely wouldn’t have bought it without your kind birthday donation. Oh, and chartreuse is totally my favourite colour now thanks to the top I also found that goes perfectly with the skirt! Aaah, birthday serendipity.

I am super proud to say that I saw in my 28th birthday, confident that I am putting my one wild and precious life to very good use.

England! Ah, England.

Our first stop, via an unsuccessful initial attempt to book into a site for a few days, was the local big Tesco Extra supermarket. Words simply can’t express our excitement at the range of things we found in that cornucopia of plenty — one of the benefits of being in a multicultural society: There were bagels and muffins, chai tea, the great curry powder we’d missed, cider, coconut milk and Thai curry paste, peanut butter (even Vegemite, to our delight!), and most exciting of all, cheddar cheese. Good times.

Stocked up and excited about the meals to come, we found ourselves an available CL site (basically a field with the bare basic facilities for campers) in a tiny little village delightfully named “Wootton”. Our drive there involved wending our way along a little country lane past a vast bright yellow canola field, through cool, shady woods, past fields of deep green grass and sheep, with views over the gentle hills in all hues of green. What a beautiful country.

The CL (how we’ve missed these!) was a grassy field, beside a paddock of sheep and little adorable frolicking lambs. We parked with a view out our main window over the lambs — “lamb view”, many times better than TV or sea view — and watched them chase each other around, running and springing, as the ewes patiently abided the lambs’ aggressive lunges at their undercarriage for milk.

Our stay began at about a week or two, then rapidly lengthened to almost a month. While pondering our finances, and running some numbers, we initially thought that our finances were going to last only another 8 months! With that fearsome possibility, we decided it was as good a time as ever to stop travelling for a while, and focus on developing some products and getting a more steady income stream established. Then, I realised I’d not incorporated current earnings from app sales, after which it became clear we had enough money to last us three years. Certainly not breaking even and saving money yet, but that’s quite a substantial difference!

Despite that realisation, however, we’d become rather attached to the idea of stopping for a while and having a break from travelling. We get an equal amount of joy from creating as we do from travelling, and the thought of devoting all of our time to it was quite appealing.

The decision carried ramifications for our previously planned schedule — three months in the UK, then back to Europe — so, we did a little re-thinking of our plans. In theory, at least, time isn’t a particularly important factor; as far as we know, even when our 2 year UK visa expires, we still have the Schengen visa available for 3 months out of every 6, and the remaining three months can hopefully be spent in the UK on a tourist visa, or perhaps even in an eastern-European country. So, we fairly relaxedly decided to postpone our prior plans and spend a bit longer in the UK.

We set up shop in Wootton, working at our laptops from about 10 or 11 in the morning to around midnight. I was steadily redesigning the interface for my new app, developing a beautiful vintage appearance with Katherine’s guidance. Along the way, we realised just how much work the non-programming aspects of the project really are — the social networking, research, assorted PR and marketing activities. The likelihood of taking the time to do it properly, and ever actually releasing a product seemed slim, so along the way, Katherine decided to lend a hand, devoting the time she’d been spending on setting up her art business to helping me get Cartographer released. I was really touched by the faith that she put in my work and the generosity in giving up that valuable time. I love that girl!

Aside from “working”, we had a bunch of errands to complete. Our bed, badly prone to condensation, had developed a veritable forest of black mould which had rotted away some of the base — we were sleeping in the “guest bedroom” in the meantime. So, over the course of about two or three weeks, we found a carpenter who was happy to cut a new piece of plywood to size, sourced an appropriately sized piece of ply (not an easy task, given that the standard sheet size was too small!), dismantled the bed and delivered the new plywood and the old base as a template, found an upholsterer and sourced some vinyl to replace the covering, transported the newly cut base to the upholsterer and painstakingly reassembled the beautiful new creation. A vast amount of work, but we’re very pleased with the result — and are taking new measures to make sure we never have to do that again! One side-effect of the process was that it took us a long time to trust that the bed wouldn’t collapse under us, after seeing how it was constructed — just 25-or-so screws around the outside. The edges of the base don’t even rest on the frame — they’re screwed onto it from underneath! Ignorance was bliss, there!

Along the way we also took Nettle in to have her wheel alignment fixed up (which ultimately made no difference to her gentle rightward drift — she just likes to go right, is all), fix our leaky tire, and spent a truly vast amount of money on some entirely insignificant minutiae (very, very slightly wobbly headlight, and something about a fog light on the wrong side) getting Nettle’s MOT (the annual registration/checkup) done for the year. Whew. Oh, and I finally got a haircut!

We paid a visit to the rather charming town of Canterbury, and spent a while wandering its streets shopping (his and hers: I got my first hands-on with an iPad, which I was rather besotted by, and Katherine found some much-needed shoes). I got some cool pictures of the Cathedral and the Christ Church gate, and the Old Weavers’ House, dated 1500 AD!

So, we wrote code, designed interfaces and got the marketing ball rolling. The lambs played and napped out the window; we attempted to assist every now and then when one of them got a head stuck in the fence. At around the same time every day, they’d all start making a huge racket (we called it “baa o’clock”), and sure enough, a minute later a car would pull up and the farmer would bring some pellets, wrestle a sheep or two to give it an immunisation, and bring a little black-faced lamb out for its daily bottle, which it would attack with glee. The local pheasant, who we named Monsieur Squark-and-Flap after his routine and his rather uppity bearing, would roam around and, well, squark and flap. Grey squirrels and rabbits were our other entertainment while the work continued.

It’s a good life.

This turned out to be Youghal, a delightful seaport town with Irish Heritage status. Much of the town wall, the first record of which is apparently dated 1275, is still present and marked by a rather impressive clocktower in the middle of the town. We found a park at the harbour, and went for a walk around the town in, as usual, the mist. The town sloped down towards the sea, so walking away from the harbour took us up above the town, giving us views over the rooftops to the boats moored offshore, hidden in the mist. Something about the town, perhaps the sense of eerie quiet, the mist, and the presence of the clocktower, gave me fond memories of Cyan’s Myst.

We were briefly and awkwardly witnesses to a funeral taking place in the main street, which we only identified as such after we curiously approached the large and dispersed group of quiet onlookers. We quickly and guiltily scurried back to Nettle.

Another day of driving followed, and we reached the Rosslare ferry port. We stayed the night tucked into an overgrown track to a field, while a storm raged around us.

Up early for the ferry the next day, and five hours later we were disembarking in Wales again. A brief stop for supplies (we accidentally exited the supermarket through a fire door, to our embarrassment), and we drove on.

We chose another arbitrary destination on the coast for a stop-over, a town called Tenby. Another jackpot: Tenby turned out to be a beautiful little seaside town, sunny and warm. We spent quite a while trying to find a park, with little success until we found a park located below the town, on the south beach. We took a walk around in the late afternoon sun, through the colourful little alleyways and along the promenade above the harbour, all pastel buildings and colourful yachts.

My aunt Marion told me while we were in Tenby that this was where my grandparents had their honeymoon, a delightful little fact.

Utterly failing to find anywhere in cramped Tenby to wild-camp, we drove further afield and found a nice little stretch of bitumen with a view over the sea in a nearby proto-village. We stayed the night, then returned to Tenby so Katherine could do a little shopping; I fussed about online back in Nettle, doing something or other that seemed of vital importance at the time.

A long drive towards Bristol and Chipping Sodbury, where we were to meet up with a motorhome service guy to get a couple of things looked at (including my dent from Kerry), followed by a longer amount of time driving around trying to find a decent place to stop overnight. It turns out, the UK is very difficult to free-camp in, or at least this part of the UK — everything is so densely packed, there’s no out-of-the-way places to park.

We ended up settling for the main street of Chipping Sodbury, which we knew at least was relatively nice and had parking. This choice turned out to have good and bad consequences.

The good we encountered relatively quickly: Having just had dinner (which was also lunch), I started feeling a little queasy. I slouched, then made to lie down, then thought I was going to throw up and headed for the bathroom. Then, everything started going dark, my ears started buzzing and I lost consciousness! The next thing I knew, a very distressed Katherine was next to me with the emergency services on the phone, and I made it known that I was back. Still woozy, I guiltily tried to let Katherine know I was okay, then the ambulance arrived outside. The two guys were brilliant, and did some poking and prodding. I discussed my prior history of blackouts with them, the most memorable of which was in primary school when I opened the door of the classroom, everyone watching from inside, then blacked out and fell backwards into the hallway — what an entrance. They surmised that I had blood pressure ‘on the low side of normal’, and that these things just happened sometimes. Drink plenty, eat regularly, plenty of protein and I’d be fine. Not that that made Katherine feel too much better; she told me that I actually passed out with my eyes open, so I looked like I was awake, but there was no one there. Jesus!

So, it was fortunate we were within reach of an ambulance — it was important that we had some answers and comfort. Later, when drunk passers-by were jumping on Nettle, we felt less positive about our choice of park. So, we moved the next day to a CL site 20 minutes or so away, very much enjoying the sense of security there.

A night there at the CL site, and the next morning we met up with Justin to get Nettle looked at. They did a great job ironing out the ding I put in the back (which Justin described as a ‘terrible injury’, to my great dismay and guilt), which is now almost as new. Phew. He left me with instructions for some DIY work, errant window blinds that wouldn’t close and a draft around the kitchen.

Quick Skype call to Timmy and Jen, our friends who had arrived from Australia on holiday, and who we are meeting in France, then a visit to the DVLA, the vehicle registration/licensing organisation for the UK, to tax Nettle. There’s an expense I’d rather not dwell on.

Finally, we were off on an epic 6 hour drive across the UK to Dover, arriving after dark. We found a road along the cliffs at the side of which we stopped for the night, then made our way into Dover proper. With time advancing, and not having yet managed to obtain maps for France due to some technical issues, we were getting a little concerned. Then, in the nick of time, we happened to park right within reach of an open wi-fi network, and in the final minutes before we were due at the ferry port, I managed to download the maps and load our GPS, Nigel, with them. Phew.

So, all set, we drove onto the ferry, said au revoir to England and watched Dover’s famous white cliffs recede. Next stop: France!

Errands to run, we drove the next morning into Bath, in search of a variety of things like a hose, bucket, liquid for the chemical toilet, and a few other bits and pieces. Being the very clever people we are, we checked ahead of time for a parking place, by looking on the Google Maps satellite image for a likely parking space near the Halfords shop we were aiming for. This, of course, turned out to be a multi-storey parking space with a height limit way below our height, so we ended up driving around for a while in search of a park. We spotted a very convenient one after about 5 or 10 minutes — a coach park, of all things, but also open to large vehicles. We parked amongst throngs of tourists disembarking from their tour buses and paid the hefty parking fee.

With little success had at Halfords, we pushed deeper into Bath, breezing past ancient Roman architecture and the imposing Bath Abbey, and found a Marks and Spencer store. Mid-shop we were caught by a salesman for the Marks and Spencer electricity company and asked about the electricity bill at home. In the non-committal, trying-to-avoid-eye-contact nothing-to-see-here way I address all people trying to sell me something, I explained that ‘home’ was actually a motorhome and our electricity was a non-issue. He immediately brightened and took an interest in our travels. Instant friends, we spoke for a few minutes, and he recommended a few activities in the UK: Paragliding in the Lake District (he recommended a guy he had paraglided with), and Guy Fawkes’ night in a village in the south where festivities are particularly entertaining, in a bring-your-own-skin-graft-surgeon way.

After a fare-well, we pushed on and finished up, having acquired a hose, bucket, bike straps and lock and a nifty gas-burner-toaster thing. Along the way we found a brochure for a ‘Bizarre Bath’ comedy walking tour which sounded particularly appealing. Back with Nettle, we scratched our heads for a while over whether to drive back to our field, and return later for the walking tour at 8, or whether to pay the £7 ($14-ish!) to stay on and have a walk of our own first. We opted for the latter, having made plans to see Steve the next day to get the final bit of work done on Nettle and thus not being able to stay on around Bath another day.

So, we went on our own walking tour, one Katherine found in a book at Pauline and Bill’s (my great aunt and uncle’s) house. It took us into the Abbey, an immense, mind-boggling and beautiful construction, eerily silent and reverential inside, lined with epitaphs going back centuries, extending across the worn floors and spilling up the walls, and with acres of intricate scenes in stained glass.

Onwards, through the very pretty Parade Gardens, across the Pulteney Bridge and back, through streets that largely look as if they haven’t changed in centuries, past some sweeping arcs of Roman-esque apartment buildings at The Circus and Royal Crescent and meandering our way back to Nettle for baked beans on toast and time to rest our aching feet.

Time having arrived for the Bizarre Bath walking tour, we followed the trusty purple line on my iPhone to the start of the walk, paid our host JJ, and waited for the other fifty people or so there to do the same — with JJ’s brilliant ad-libbing, this turned out to be very good entertainment in itself.

The walk, entirely devoid of history (at least, the true kind) or other touristy stuff, was utterly brilliant, eye-wateringly hilarious, even in the unscripted moments, and something I couldn’t recommend more. It had cheeky digs at surrounding architecture, passers-by and members of the audience, awful puns, rollicking anecdotes and plenty of magic tricks. If you’re ever in Bath, do it — 8 pm every night.

So, back to Nettle and back to the field for the night. Up the next morning and we prepared to leave for our next neighbourhood, but not without stopping to admire a yellow field with tyre tracks going through it, filled with little white flowers. Wow.

The moderately short drive turned into a moderately lengthy one due to a number of wrong-turnings with interesting consequences, but we arrived intact and happy with nary a stressful moment. Having been assigned a site by the very friendly warden, we quickly invented a signalling system and Katherine stood behind Nettle and waved me in, in my right-hand mirror, while I reversed into the site. Piece of cake.

Feeling hungry, we walked back up the road we came in on, and into a pub proffering good food. The girl behind the counter explained, in a charming accent, that they didn’t serve food on a Monday (figures), and that the nearest place we could find some food was well out of walking distance. Damn!

So, we drove out into the night in search of…something. We ended up in the car-park of a big Tesco supermarket and stocked up on supplies, until we were virtually chased out by harried-looking staff ready to close up.

Back to our site, we invented a new night signalling system using a torch, and Katherine waved me in, airstrip-personnel style. A few minutes later, we had pasta cooking on the stove. Brilliant.

A fairly fitful night’s sleep, despite the comfort of our pull-down bed, with sleep hindered by our excitement at starting our new life.

The next day, we spent a little while online, picking the next place to stay, talking to friends and family over Skype and iChat (I gave Timmy and Jen a tour of the van over iChat AV video conference, taking the laptop around like a video camera), and Skype-calling the Caravan Club to sign up so we could get access to Certificated Locations, little privately-run sites where caravans and motorhomes can camp for very cheap (£3-£10 typically), with water/waste disposal, and often electrical hook-up facilities.

That sorted, we went for quite a long walk through the woods and meadows nearby, along the edge of the Chew Valley Lake. Sunny and warm, lots of birds, bumblebees, even a blue dragonfly or two; meadows full of yellow flowers and purple thistles, tall grass waving in the breeze, impressive and solid-looking cloudscapes in the blue sky, and deep dark green woods thick with ivy.

3

This is who we’re with in UK.

3 are a good option as they are starting with the premise you have a phone and you just want the card whereas the others are still trying to presume ‘locked’ phones and cards (Louise says “being highly techie I don’t have to tell you that there are a variety of unlocking/evasive options”).

For PAYG mobile broadband, you buy a USB dongle (works with PC and Mac), for £20, then top up of 3Gb is £15, 1Gb for £10 or 7Gb for £25. Not too shabby.

The dongle listed on the website is a ZTE MF627, but I got a Huawei E156G. It is unlockable, which means one can re-use it in other countries. To unlock, one needs a simlock code that is generated specifically for a single device, identified by the IMEI number. There are services that charge for this service, but there are also kind individuals who will generate these codes for you — see this thread. I suspect one needs to use generic software to retrieve the IMEI number, and to subsequently unlock; Huawei provides (in the loose, do-the-bare-minimum, our-customers-can-go-jump-off-a-cliff sense) ‘Mobile Partner’ which hopefully fulfils this role, a Windows app available here, from DC Unlocker (it works in Parallels or VMware, Mac users).

One hassle with the E156G is that the driver is very buggy and has crashed my Mac four or five times so far, mostly while trying to sleep the laptop. There may be workarounds, I haven’t experimented much yet. Update: I found an article that describes an alternate way to use the Huawei modem, with different drivers. This doesn’t seem to cause any havoc, unlike the software provided by 3.

A side rant — what ever happened to consumer protection!? Surely this ‘locking’ practice should be illegal, and yet it’s the norm! Apparently it isn’t possible, ever, to unlock an iPhone in the UK, even when you’ve paid it all off and you’re out of contract. So, if you ever plan to travel, you essentially have to buy a new phone. Absolute bollocks.

Mobile broadband with 3 seems to be quite flaky, although I haven’t narrowed down the cause. Both on my iPhone and through the dongle, I am frequently disconnected and the network frequently just breaks down requiring a reconnection. On the iPhone, I just receive ‘Could not connect to the Internet’ errors. Their tech support staff don’t know anything, not surprisingly. I don’t know if this is just 3, or it’s a UK telco phenomenon, but one should be aware.

3 was great in order for me to use Internet on my iPhone too — they offer all kinds of ‘free’ goodies with a PAYG account, including 120Mb of data with every top-up. We also get free calls between us, which is perfect.

The alternatives, in my assistant Louise’s words:

T Mobile

There are some pretty bad reviews out there from users about T mobile coverage and technology BUT there are techie reports that say it beats others (personally I always take large number of neg reviews as reality especially if referring to coverage etc). I also dislike the fact they seem to sell only £2 per day daily usage if not contract though supposedly there is a £24 3 Gb option…. Am not liking their website for real info and no obvious free call option, though you can get ‘free SIM’ here personally think it is no different than just going and buying a pay-as-you-go card!

Orange

Their data option is 3 Gb 30 day PAYG which is £14.68 price of dongle which is £29.99 which I believe makes it a total of £32.99 which is £7 cheaper than 3 mobile and their 3Gb top up is just under 3 mob. So let’s see what their calling plan options are….. Ok, no ‘family & friend’ type offer just lots of different SIM card names to confuse one, cheapest call costs would be 10p per min so not free and not much to sell it over 3 mob as you would spend the small amount you’d save on set up and top up on data card…..

O2

A rolling 30 day PAYG data card with higher set up costs at £58.70 and then £14.69 per 3Gb top ups…. for £14.69 1 mth SIM card you can get unlimited O2 to O2 calls…. BUT double the amount of texts if buy online than in a shop but you also have to buy SIM for £9.99

Vodafone

1gb data for £39 set up and then top up would be £15 per 1gb…. hmmm – not really making sense as an option in comparison to Orange or T mobile or 3 mob…. Their SIM only for calls is well positioned at £10 buying 100mins talk & 500 texts (you do know that many of us use texting as quickest and cheapest way to communicate over here?) AND their essential free roaming for THIS summer (ie no commitment to continue past Sept). Still, probably not enough to swing it as also critically it is a 30 day plan (use it or lose it).

Local broadband countries