Wednesday, August 13, 2003 (Leigh-on-Sea – Essex/England)
History comes to life more than it ever did at
school. Finally, some LPG but at a price. A family visit. Back to the cupboard
under the stairs. And there she is, the very reason why we are
travelling.
Day 154. Today we ticked off another castle,
this time Kenilworth castle. We are now starting to become very familiar with
the layout of ancient castles as well as a feel for English history. Ironic
since history was one of my most loathed subjects at school – along with
geography!
After Kenilworth, we
stopped in to visit Auntie Tiny, Uncle Harold and Joan. Even though I’ve
not seen them for well over ten years, they haven’t aged a day in my eyes.
We stayed at Joan’s house overnight after enjoying one of Aunty
Tiny’s fabulous home cooked
meals.
When we bought the campervan,
the LPG tank was full but we’ve been using the on-board gas for a couple
of weeks now and we’re not entirely sure how much is left and there is no
gauge to give us any indication. It looked like the gas from the cooker was
starting to turn slightly red at the ends of the flame and we’re not sure
if this is an indication of dropping pressure. Not all filling stations sell LPG
in England but there are enough around and so we tried several times,
unsuccessfully, to fill up. The problem is that we do not have the right
fitting. If we were in Holland, this would not be a problem as there is always a
nozzle adapter on hand but not so here in the UK. After trying several filling
stations, it was starting to look like we would not be able to top up at all but
fortunately we were ultimately able to find an LPG conversion company in
Coventry that sold the nozzle adapters. At a whopping £25 it was not cheap
but necessary nevertheless. I fitted the nozzle and topped up the tank. I
managed to squeeze just fifteen extra litres into the sixty-litre tank so
obviously the now full tank should see us quite a way into the
future.
Having bid our farewells to
our family members in Coventry, we set off again to our final historic location
before turning back South towards Leigh-on-Sea. Warwick castle is one of the
largest and most intact castles in England and certainly the most visited. We
spend the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon wandering around the
castle grounds in the company of several hundred other tourists. Although it was
one of the most impressive castles we’ve visited, the hoards of tourists
made for a very commercial atmosphere and we enjoyed it less as a
result.
Back home, then, to our
cupboard under the stairs at No. 96. We stopped off on the way there to visit
Richard just briefly but we were ultimately glad to be ‘home’ at
Jacqueline’s house. We really and truly don’t have a home right now
and Jacqueline’s house is the closest thing at the moment. One of the
reasons for turning back home so soon during our UK sojourn was that Ree-Ree
from Australia was visiting with Shalina in tow. I haven’t seen Ree-Ree
(Marie) for over fifteen years even though she has visited the UK several times
in recent years. We always seem to just miss her whenever she visits and we were
determined to catch her this
time.
After the euphoria of seeing
Ree-Ree and Shalina (for the very first time) died down, we unpacked several
packages that had recently arrived from Zimbabwe. I’m not sure which gave
me the most thrills, seeing Ree-Ree and Shalina or unpacking the packages. With
the exception of a couple of items that didn’t survive the three-month
journey through the surface postal system, everything arrived in good order.
Seeing everything unpacked in the middle of Jacqueline’s living room floor
brought home the realisation of just how much stuff we’d purchased whilst
in Africa. We will need a pretty big house to display everything and we’ve
only made it part was around the world so
far.
We spent the next week at
Jacqueline’s enjoying Ree-Ree’s company and spending some quality
time with various siblings, Nephews and Nieces. Since I’m writing this a
full week after the event (playing catch-up with my daily journal entries) I
can’t remember everything we did but suffice it to say that we crammed a
lot into a very hectic few days and are once again glad to be on the road
again.
Posted: Wed - August 13, 2003 at 01:11 PM