South England

It was a stormy and thundery night when we left the dock from Calais to England. The heat wave had finally broken and a strong northerly wind was blowing from the sea. But it was good to see the rain even though we had to cross the channel while it hammered and blustered around us. But lucky for us we don't live in the medieval times as our crossing was in a warm and stable boat where not a single spray of water touched us.
And the morning dawned clear and sunny in Dover where we enjoyed for the first time in ages a nippy breeze as we walked down the boulevard in Folkston.

Looking over to Dover from Folkston

By the afternoon we were in Canterbury enjoying the English architecture and history, not to mention all the signs and notice boards that we could all read in English, the cute little charity shops, english books for the literature starved girls (we found a complete set of C.S Lewis' Narnia and 9 books by our favourite author Michael Morpurgo at the op shop!), and of course the wonderful accents! It also felt a bit funny to be able to listen in to people's conversations on the street, which feels like a novelty! (Don't worry - I'm not going around eaves dropping all the time!)

Looking over the canal in Canterbury

And the food is pretty cheap here! I was thinking that it would be expensive after France and Holland, but no, and yay! - There are many familiar foods on the shelves too, like wheetbix, salt and vinegar chips and good baked beans. I also just found for only 1 pound a big jar of Branston Pickle. I'm sure you can celebrate with me Mum!

But sadly, the one thing we really need here they don't have. And that is freedom camping spots. It has been a bit stressful finding places to park up as there are no places we can legally park for free. Most of the time we drive till it's dark and find a lay-by where there are trucks, though once we were told off by a policeman that we couldn't park where we had. But he was nice about it and told us of another lay-by close by. Sometimes we've found nature reserves that are off the road which has been a bit quieter for sleeping. I am glad that we didn't visit England first as this would have caused more stress at the beginning of our trip than it is now. Finding water and dumping stations have been tricky too, so we aren't quite as clean as we'd all like to be! But oh well. The other parts of England are making up for that. 

A London scene

We spent a wonderful day on Sunday seeing the sights of London. We got up early and parked in a small town in greater London and then took the underground train to the city center. With it being a Sunday we made it in time to see a church service (Matins) in Westminster Cathedral which was so much better than going in as a tourist as paying 20 pounds to do so! What a treat! We then walked to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard, and found ourselves in such a humongous throng of tourists waiting for something. We started waiting too, and luckily within just five minutes we saw not the charging of the guard, but a parade instead of the guards being lead by horses and all playing an English march on their instruments while marching down the road away from the palace. I felt strangely proud of somewhat belonging there, and so excited at being in a place I've read so much about. 

Phoebe in the big crowds waiting at Buckingham Palace. Sorry that I don't have a picture of the guards. 

We marched on ourselves, through Green Park and to Trafalgar Square, to the national museum, (we saw some Monet, Da Vinci, Picasso, Matisse and many other famous paintings), and on through to Soho, Piccadilly Circus, and Coventry gardens. Then we took the tube to St Pauls where we rested our feet through another treat, as we were just in time to see a famous organist giving a concert on the world class organ inside. It wasn't the nicest music I had ever heard on an organ... but he was an incredible musician and St Pauls was majestic and filled us with awe.

We walked to the tube after the concert which took us to the Tower of London and to London Bridge. It was a packed day of sight-seeing and we got back to the camper for dinner at about 9:30, tired but all pleased with a good day.

London Bridge

Westminster Abbey

Parliament building 

From inside the Abbey

We saw so many buskers that day, and many using this trick. Not sure how they did it but he was suspended in the air, and he could move his feet and do a full sumersault in the air!

That night we drove to Oxford where we spent the next day soaking up the atmosphere in the ancient university city. That evening we met up with some lads we knew from our hometown in Motueka, who were also in Oxford. It was so lovely to see some friendly and familiar faces and to not be so aware of our accents! Josh took the two guys for a evening paddle on the Oxford river which he enjoyed as it's way better taking out people for a nice bit of paddling if they don't whine, which they didn't even when they got a bit wet.

We saw three of these little cuties in the city, munching away on walnuts from the trees.
This one was quite friendly.

Like father, like daughter - reading the maps on the train.

P.S Look at this great sign I found in Belgium on the way to Calais!
Have never seen my name on a sign before!