Gulliver’s Milton Keynes Club Site, Buckinghamshire

It is still only mid-afternoon as I write this, having returned to camp like mature people after a Sunday midday dinner and a bottle of wine, an unfamiliar state for us. But the focus of the day was to celebrate the anniversary of one of our many milestones, and so I should not beat myself up about not having done more, and the fact there are many attractions or wish-list places unchecked on our list.

We woke to another fine day, this the last day of the summer mid-term break, and it was not long before it was evident that more than half the campers would be gone by midday, something worth celebrating all by itself. It was also a morning to wake and find on one’s iPhone news updates that the world had tilted for some; there had been another terrorist attack in London, the third in as many months. I hung another load of washing on my diminutive line, watched the squirrels scurry hither and thither about the park immediately behind our caravan, listened and watched as the many different varieties of birds made themselves known, and thought how strange life is, that disaster can be occurring in one small corner of the world while in another, life goes on unscathed.

We delayed our departure, initially hoping to catch the last Sunday morning political commentary before the election, now just days away, and  then to catch up with English family, arriving just beyond the satellite suburb of Great Linford at 11am. We booked a table at The Black Horse located on the banks of the Grand Union Canal and set off northwards along the tow path, planning to walk for three quarters of an hour before turning back. This was not to account for the lengthy chats we had with canal dwellers along the route, so our morning constitutional was not as vigorous as planned.

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The first encounter started when we stepped over a small Toy Yorkshire Terrier on the pathway, which we subsequently learned to be blind. His owner poked his head out of a porthole and was quick to confirm his best mate’s pedigree, before stepping onto the pathway himself and filling us in on his recent personal history which included his mother’s death, the adoption of the dog and the wonders and eccentricities of this particular terrier. We also learned about the day to day housekeeping of maintaining a narrow-boat canal side, very little of it news to us as motorhomers and caravanners, but apparently a surprise to those who take up the narrowboat lifestyle with little research or thought. 

We continued along the tow path for about half an hour, not arriving at any particular waypoint to exactly identify the extent of our route, however later checking out a map, I reckoned we were just short of New Bradwell before we turned back.

As we passed the terrier’s owner, we remarked on the smashed window in the adjacent boat and asked if this had been an act of vandalism. “No”, he replied, the boat belonged to his mate who was sitting beside him enjoying a pre-lunch beer, and was the result of a relationship fracas. He continued, remarking that romance was alas always doomed, never to last and more likely to end in such a manner.

I responded, “Not so, because we, my husband and I, were today celebrating twenty three years of romance.”

In typical last-word fashion, he responded that murderers only got fifteen years!

Despite the gloom from such doubters, Chris and I enjoyed a fabulous midday dinner at the canal-side pub booked into earlier, served by an attentive waiter wearing shorts too tight for genital health, but no doubt he had chosen to dress like this to offer his credentials to his fellows rather than worry about discomfort or long term vascular well-being. This is in fact no different to heterosexual women who allow their ample breasts to spill from their too tight bodices and their bellies to ooze over the waist bands of pants; there is little subtlety to any of this fashion.

But aside from this visual excitement, the food was superb, and we could only recommend the pub restaurant to anyone passing this way, especially if they have a wallet full of virgin British pounds, “virgin” because they have recently been converted from Antipodean dollars. And keeping with this “tight” mentality, it is interesting to consider that when my parents shouted themselves a narrow-boat holiday in this part of the world about thirty years ago, they spoke of the marvellous pub lunches available, for just a few dollars. I know they would be very surprised to learn what we shelled out today, but then, the standard of cuisine is more in line with city restaurants these days, and the little country pubs now rely on the restaurant trade to meet their rent. Times have changed indeed.

So we are now back “home” parked up in front of the television; the washing all dried, folded and stowed away, Chris dozing in front of the French Open which has become his must-view over the past week, and thinking of our move north west tomorrow. We could easily have spent another week here in Milton Keynes and not had any down days, and had we bicycles on board, probably a week more. Today we agreed that Milton Keynes would be an excellent place to live, because what it lacks in “olde worlde” character, it offers in location, location, location and traffic free travel. In England that makes it very valuable in more ways than monetary!