Our road trip officially starts. First challenge: getting over 50kg of luggage down five flights of stairs. Luckily our landlord does much of the heavy lifting, Chris the rest, leaving me with bits and pieces. I’ll be glad not to have to race up those stairs again.
A black cab takes us to the Avis depot and we’re off. Just in time too, as we leave the carpark a fire alarm goes off and people stream out of the Marriott hotel nearby. Glad we didn’t get caught up in that!
London’s ancient buildings give way to the new, new to industrial then finally to open country and our first sighting of black faced sheep, surprisingly close to London.
It’s a four hour drive to Cornwall. I catch up on my blog and Chris is in cruise mode. We picked a good time to leave. It’s 16 degrees and raining in London. In between music, the radio broadcasts snippets of news: the UK in meltdown. Having voted to leave the EU, no one quite knows how to react now. The Prime Minister has resigned, a shadow Minister has been sacked, which prompted the resignation of half a dozen others. Scotland might choose to vote again on the matter of succession. UK’s credit rating has been reduced by one rating, shares are in free fall, as is the pound. Public debate is intense. The older generation voted overwhelmingly to exit, the younger to stay. London and Scotland to stay, Wales and country UK to exit. It’s a country divided. Interestingly, the government is not bound by the vote, it can choose to ignore it. If it does not, it will take at least two years to exit the EU. It smacks of a poor negotiation that got backed into a corner from which there was no escape without losing face. I understand the issues of unfettered immigration but surely that was the point to address, not unity with the EU. The people have voted, but I suspect with a narrow mindset – they’ve addressed a mosquito bite by removing a limb. It’s an intriguing and fascinating time. In other news, as we leave London, over a million people are expected to walk in the Pride March, many more than usual in support of the Orlando victims. What a sad world we live in.
Cornwall’s beautiful patchworked soft rolling hills soon appear. It’s a gentler pace, in this corner of Britain. Everyone seems to have a soft spot for it. Whenever mentioned, people get wistful and share their memories.
We pick up our motorhome and Chris goes about the business of getting it ready for travel whilst I unpack. It’s kind of bulging at the seams. This is our fourth trip and we’ve accumulated, it seems, a lot of stuff.
All this hard work is rewarded with dinner at Rick Stein’s wharf restaurant in Falmouth, for a soothing cocktail and his family famous fish and chips. Particularly good.
Just to round the night out, UB40 are playing on the wharf. We listen for a while but we are both tired. I would have stayed to hear them play “I got you babe” and “red red wine”. Two of my favorites, but off home it is, where we both crash. It’s been a big day.
Miss Baci Travels 