Goodness knows what woke me early yesterday morning, but I was
wide wake long before 4am and my mind spent the next couple of hours making
lists, lists of things to do before we leave England, and lists of things to do
when we get back, lists, lists and lists!
I thought too about little gems that I had missed writing up, like
the hot air balloon I saw rising above the mist one cold morning when we were
at York, or the story of the yew clippings at Castle Howard which were being
shipped to Germany to be used in magic medicine for cancer treatment or the pipistrelle bat we saw curled up on the ceiling of the cloister at Durham Cathedral when we were all sheltering from the rain. All of
these thoughts, memories and memos swam through my head and further sleep was
elusive.
Chris woke early too, although not as I had; we ended up rising
with the birds on the hedgerows and were breakfasted, packed up and out the
gate by 8.20am. This might have been madness, merging with the work and school
traffic, but our route out of the city, or rather, along the ring road, was
easier than expected.
So we travelled west on the A64, then south on the A1(M), then
onto the M18, then south on the M1 until we neared Rugby, where we turned east
onto the A14 which brought is through to Stowmarket. Our route took us across
five pages of my road map book and seven hours, although that did include three
breaks at service centres along the way; 244 miles in all, at least 44 more
than I had originally planned.
As we neared Bury St Edmunds on the A14, Chris just expressing
warm fuzzy thoughts for the town that he will always consider his “home town”,
the engine stopped, the power steering stopped working and we relived the nasty
experiences of the road from Exeter to Tavistock. Fortunately, we were able to
roll off the “motorway” down the exit toward Risby, through the roundabout and
to a halt beside the road. After a few minutes we were able to restart the
engine, proceeding to the turnoff to the crematorium but instead of continuing
up to call on family resting places, turned and headed back to the main
highway. We continued on through to Stowmarket, without undue acceleration or
aggressive overtaking, with no further trouble except that niggling in our heads.
We fiddled around setting up camp, electing to establish ourselves
in a similar position to our first stay here, and it was a full one hour after
our arrival that we finally were ready to relax over a cup of coffee. It had
been a very long and tiring day, and I hadn’t done any driving! Chris remarked
that the distance travelled from York was far less than many of our transfer
trips in Australia, but the highways and motorways here in England are far more
stressful to drive than the wide open dirt roads of DownUnder.
This morning we woke at a more gentile hour, with nothing in
particular planned, no tourist attractions requiring our immediate exploration,
although those “lists” had moved from my head to scraps of paper by lunchtime.
We lived a day as normal retired folk do; a little cleaning, visiting
relatives, shopping and relaxing before dinner. We have a fortnight ahead of us
before we travel down to London for a few days there ahead of our flight back
to New Zealand, and while that seems a long time to organise everything, I am
sure the days will whizz by. In the meantime, I should flick a few emails off
to prepare for the trip across the globe and ready our motorhome there for the
next phase of our life.
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