Airstream Camping 2025 - Still Here at Rondeau

Thursday dawned, still dry, still storm free, and this despite every weather forecast known to man saying we were in for a deluge. I'm not complaining of course, and I think we were very lucky to avoid a big one today after everything went misty and quiet for a while in the afternoon, which is a sure sign of an impending storm. But no, the mist lifted, the wind picked up a little and the sun continued to shine. Excellent.

It was another quiet day. Reading, tooling around on the Internet and generally recharging our own batteries. Lots of people left their sites today, and for a while it was comparatively deserted here on the South Campground, but come the witching hour of 2pm they started rolling in, all set for the long weekend. We've long known that folks like to arrive for the weekend on a Thursday, which is great if you can get the time off work I suppose. I'm still wondering how we managed to snag Site 16 for the week that included the Thursday night. When you camp here, you're supposed to put your camping "ticket" on the post at the entrance to your site, and that says when you're leaving. I've been quite surprised to see so many people here at the start of the week are booked through until after the long weekend. They either have massive fresh water and waste water tanks on their campers, or they're using the campground's facilities, because we can only practically go three nights without a top up and a top down. I'm grateful that Ontario Parks have a stay limit of two weeks, otherwise the selfish people among us would book these places solid for the summer.

We did take a couple of run-outs, though, one to get some crisps from the convenience store at the park's gate, and another to drive up to Craves Poutinerie in Blenheim, for what is known in certain parts of the UK as a "Chippy Tea". Chips (fries) and Poutine, eaten in the car while we idly watched the people watching the baseball in the park opposite. Actually I liked the idea of a chippy tea, not only because I like my chips, but because it was all so spontaneous. Of course, the not very defrosted Gumbo in the fridge also influenced our decision. We can have that tomorrow.

This being the Canada day weekend, it stirs up some mixed emotions. We're not flag wavers and never have been, despite both being naturalized citizens of this country. I like it here, and I'm happy to be a Canadian, but this nation was formed on the backs of the native people, under colonial rule which, to this day, marginalizes the indigenous nations within Canada's modern day borders. Treaties are still broken and land still stolen, so it can be tough to celebrate around the flag. But this past year, our orange friend south of the border has done a great job in uniting Canadians, including us, against his ridiculous imperialist claims over this country. Even Quebecers, not normally great believers in the nation of Canada, have slipped in behind the flag and are presenting, at the moment at least, a united front on all things Canadian. So this year, while not flying the flag, we may just have a thought or two about being Canadian and about how fortunate we are not to be the 51st State.

The day ended in an odd way for me. I was feeling a bit sleepy, so at about 8:30 I went to lie on the bed and read a while. At just past midnight I woke, feeling seriously groggy, and discovered that DW had done the same thing on the sofa. What a pair. Still, I guess that's what this trip is all about.

Packing up tomorrow, and heading out before the serious rush. Happy Canada Day!

Airstream Camping 2025 - The Camping Continues

A warm night. OK, a hot night, tempered only by the occasional rumble of the air conditioner on the roof, but I slept reasonably well. I’m going through a phase of waking ridiculously early and not being able to get back to sleep, so I was up and about outside the trailer before seven, making up some coffee and reading my book.

Despite the dire weather forecast there had been no storms, not even any rain, so I brought the awning out again, having put it away the previous evening. The Zip Dee awnings on Airstreams are great, but they are not good in windy weather and have a tendency to break their support arms, so it’s always wise to stow them if the weather looks a bit suspect. The way we’re parked, we’re in the shade in the morning, but putting the awning out makes it feel like you have an additional room in your trailer, so out it came, if only to create an atmosphere.

I did eventually make my way to the “Comfort Station” – toilet and shower block to you and I – for a shower, and that’s one of the treats of Ontario Provincial Parks. We have a shower in the Airstream, but it’s small, and it uses up both fresh water and space in the grey water waste tank, so I make use of the Park’s facilities. I’ve spoken before about the curious design of the shower stalls, made to wet anything within range, and the fact that the authorities have saved money by getting rid of the cleaning contractors in favour of letting the Park’s own employees do the task, reluctantly and not at all well. But even a slightly grimy and sand filled shower stall doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of privacy and copious amounts of hot water. I always feel better after a park shower.

I do find it odd, though, that people feel the need to drive to the Comfort Station from their sites. It must have taken me three or four minutes to walk, in the glorious sunshine, yet my camping neighbours, on the two sites to the north of us, felt the need to drive. Each to their own, I guess.

Talking of walking (I’m a poet and I didn’t know it), what is this thing with electric bicycles? People haul a pair of big electric bicycles with them on camping trips, then scoot around the park on them, and I don’t know why. Not the scooting around, but why the need for electric motors and batteries? Everyone with these bikes looks more than capable of using a regular person-powered bicycle, especially here as it’s as flat as a billiard table. I suppose they go a little faster than a regular bike, but it seems a bit pointless to me. Again, each to their own.

The day was then spent doing the square root of nothing at all. Well, not quite. I caught up on blogging, wrote a couple of notes to people, read a third of my book without falling asleep, so maybe it was a productive day. The main aim of the trip, though, is to recharge a little after the big UK trip. A holiday from the holiday. In that respect, all aims were being achieved.

I say it every time we come to Rondeau, but we are so lucky to live close to such a wonderful place. It’s a spit of land jutting out into Lake Erie, has 12km of sandy beaches on one side, and a captive, shallow pond, Rondeau Bay, on the other. It’s also one of the last vestiges of natural Carolinian Forest left in North America and is home to an amazing array of flora and fauna. The bay’s turtles have done laying their eggs, but they’re still around. The snakes, though you rarely see them, are about, and the rabbits and chipmunks are legion. Indeed, so legion that I had one little cheeky chipmunk try climbing my leg as I sat reading my book. The surprise was enough, but DW has seen the event unfold and failed to mention the impending assault. As I’m sat here writing, under the awning again, the chipmunks are skittering around my feet. The little buggers.

Birds are the real draw here at Rondeau, though. As we sat out in the afternoon, we watched Grackles and Red-Winged Blackbirds bouncing around our patio mat. A blue jay sat on the fire ring not eight feet away, and the Mourning Doves and American Robins were everywhere. We saw an occasional Baltimore Oriel, and some Yellow Warblers, and high above the tree canopy, the Turkey Vultures circled on the breeze. There are many birds you can’t see but can hear, and that’s where the Merlin bird call phone app comes in, listening for birds and suggesting what type of bird it’s hearing. It all great stuff and is what makes Rondeau such a wonderful place to visit.

It was baked potato and beans for supper, plus beer and wine, and a squiz at an old movie to wind down in the evening. Our film was “Went The Day Well”, a classic British wartime movie about a failed German invasion in rural in England during the Second World War. I don’t know how I’d never seen it before, and I may have to watch it again, because I managed to fall asleep during parts of it, and that takes me all the way back to the beginning of this post, when you wake early, you end up falling asleep early. Still, who’s complaining?

We’re here until Friday, it’s a long weekend in coming up in Canada, and so far, we have had great weather, despite the forecast. Let’s hope it stays that way.

Airstream Camping 2025 - We Start Again

Our first trip of the year in Towed Haul and an auspicious start it may turn out to be.

When cleaning her out, I discovered a soft spot or two in the floor, just by the couch by the door. A gentle press with my fingers resulted in a muted rustling sound beneath the vinyl floor covering, and a definite dip. The dreaded rotten floor, caused by some unseen leak of water under the vinyl. Repairing that is a major task and I don't think we have will, or the money, to fix it. Maybe we'll call this our last season and sell the old girl on as a project for someone else. It's a bit annoying because it's all happened unseen, and therefore we've done nothing about it. Interestingly, the noise from the floor is giving off dry vibes, but maybe I'll check it again after some rain. Who knows?

Back to this trip, and it's the usual three-nighter at Site 16 at Rondeau Provincial Park. Almost as soon as we'd hauled the old girl out of storage, we legged it to the UK for a month, so my first job in returning to Canada was to clean her up, inside and out, check everything was working, and sanitize the fresh water system. To my surprise, the good people at CanAm RV had filled the fresh water tank, so after draining it, refilling it and adding a little bleach, I had quite a bit of stinky water to clear out of the internal water lines. CanAm had cleared the anti-freeze, but water in the lines, sat there for a month, needed to go. It's worth pointing out that we don't drink the water from the fresh water tank and lines, we always bring fresh in another container for that, but no one wants to shower or wash their dishes in stinky water. The bleach (3/4 cup for 45 gallons), by the way, works well, but you do have to flush it through properly.

When we loaded up and prepped for travel, the weather was being silly. Temperatures around 36-37C and blazing sunshine, plus some humidity, and I was wet through with sweat. The onboard fridge and freezer was complaining as well, struggling to keep cold. But, being the troopers that we are, we hitched up, checked the lights and brakes and hit the open road. Well, we had to inch past the badly parked cars fifty yards from our driveway first, but then we hit the open road.

Our hitch receiver on the Toadmobile is rusty, the result of thirteen Canadian winters. I fret that it will break as we're towing, and perhaps I should have had it replaced. But, it's been modified by CanAm RV and is pretty sturdy. When we hitch up we use the Airstream's jack to lift the car, and I reason that if it's going to break, it'll do it then. Today it was all good.

It was hot driving towards Lake Erie, and windy, too. The gas mileage was moderate, but you could tell that the wind was coming into play. But the Toadmobile took it all in its stride and in no time we were wheeling into the park and making our way to our personal site. It's not really our personal site of course, but it feels like it.

Setting up was another sweat-inducing chore, although the temperatures were seven or eight degrees down because we were on the lake front. Site 16 also allows us to set up in the shade, which was helpful. The forecast was for thunderstorms, and the sun was in and out of the clouds. There was a few spots of rain, then a short shower, and the occasional rumble of thunder, but that was all. The sun came out and the temperatures went back up, and everything was summery again. 

Someone came by and stopped at the site opposite and expressed amazement that it was still dry in the park. She had been caught in a storm just a couple of miles away, and yet we knew nothing about it. It's a good job that thunderstorms are so localized.

Of course when it gets hot, we have to power up the cold air in the Airstream. It's good to have, essential actually, but it's noisy. DW, though, did a fine job tuning it so that it was come on and go off at reasonable intervals, which is what we needed if we were to get any sleep.

The afternoon was hot and we did very little, apart from drive out to the convenience store just outside the park's gate and stock up with beer and nibbles. Then we went back to the store to exchange one of the boxes of cookies we'd bought for a non-dairy type. Gawd, pick up the wrong ones. 

Barn Swallow

Tree Swallow

As the evening set in we enjoyed some of DW's homemade vegan stew (which is really very good), before setting off on a short walk to have a look at Rondeau Bay. The little park store was closed up for the night, but the Barn Swallows that live there were busy, as were the Purple Martins and the Tree Swallows. We watched a pair of Tree Swallows feeding their young in a nesting box that had been installed by the park rangers. At first we stood too close, which made the male fly around us in wide circles, and the female sit and wait. We took just a few steps further back and then the feeding commenced, with the female flying off to get insects, and the male sat atop the nesting box, on guard. There were a ton of other birds around as well, as our Merlin bird call app registered around ten other species of birds, just from their calls. This is why we love coming to Rondeau.

It's not yet school summer holiday time yet, so the campground is occupied most by old geezers like us. It was very quiet last night, and I think many had turned in for the night by 10pm. We campers are pure rock and roll. How we will sleep with the "air" on I don't know, but hopefully it will seem like background noise. Still no thunderstorms, but I put the awning away, just in case.

Blighty 2025 - Some British Reflections

Almost a month in the UK, and while family dominated, we did get around a bit. Here are a few observations on the trip.

England is a busy place. We arrived on the Friday that the school's half-term holiday started, and the M25, London's orbital motorway, was jammed solid at noon. Fortunately my local knowledge allowed us to take the scenic route to our accommodation in Oxfordshire. I was then forcibly reacquainted with the narrowness of the roads, the ones with no shoulder, but with hedges, trees and assorted greenery growing right up to the road's edge. Add the readjustment required to drive a stick-shift car again after a long lay off, and it was a challenging trip. A tip for would be visitors to the UK from Canada; make sure you get a small rental car. You'll find out why soon enough.

We were staying in the central England area known as the Cotswolds. Pretty, charming and very, very monied. The clear choice of cars for the people now living there is the Range Rover or the Land Rover. Wealthy Londoners out in the country, imagining that they really do need a four-wheel-drive monster just because they have to drive past fields on the asphalted roads. Goodness how those Chelsea tractors came unstuck on the single-track roads that link some of the villages. There is an almost constant traffic jam in the pretty town of Burford, and it's not an exaggeration to to say that 25% of the cars in the line ups were of the Rover SUV type. Numpties.

Never, ever, visit Bourton-on-the-Water on a bank holiday.

English grocery stores are a trial. They're small but have twice as many people in them as those at home. The people shopping in them all know what they want and rush around, and that makes browsing in an unfamiliar shop all the more difficult. Most of the big stores operate loyalty cards, and offer lower prices to the holders of such cards. Sadly, people not resident in the UK can't have a card, so we were reduced to asking other people at the checkout if we could borrow theirs. It's all to the good because they get the points, while we get the discount, but it's still a pain having to ask. We half cracked it by getting my nephew's girlfriend to send us a screenshot of her card, but she only had the Sainsbury's Nectar Card and not the Tesco Clubcard - see, only half cracked it.

Parking anywhere other than big grocery stores and it costs an arm and leg to leave your car in a parking lot. £8 here, £7.50 there, it all mounts up. I reckon we paid out hundreds of GBP. To add insult to injury, I was accused of not paying at Charlbury Station, although my credit card says otherwise. The fine is £100, but I'm not paying it. I did have to pay the car rental company an admin charge of £40 for handling the paperwork, as agreed in the contract, but I'll try to get that back from the parking people as well. I haven't heard from the same parking company about overstaying on a paid parking ticket at Didcot Parkway train station. I'm not sure, but I may have underpaid, possibly because I misunderstood the instructions on the machine. If they get me for that then I'll pay. At least nearly all of the paid parking was done with a contactless card this time; nowhere forced a phone app on me.

I may have picked a speeding fine, too. Speed limits are strictly policed in the UK, and as I was coming out of Stow-on-the-Wold doing perhaps 35mph in the 30mph zone, when I noticed I was driving straight at a camera van. I slowed quickly and may not have triggered the camera at all, but you never know. I'd been particularly careful about not speeding, so if I do get a fine then I'll be royally pissed.

When you pay for gas in the UK, you nearly always have to go into the little shop, there being no "pay at the pump" option. The UK is no slouch when it comes to retail technology, it was years ahead of Canada with Chip and Pin, and contactless, but this gas pump thing was a mystery. Or was it? The little shops are actually convenience stores that sell everything from coffee, to newspapers, to bread, to lightbulbs. If you pay at the pump then you don't go into the shop and you don't get tempted by that discount bag of Wine Gums. Going into the shop to pay is clearly a ruse to get you to spend more money. Don't fall for it!

Talking of gas, when people in Canada say they are the most highly taxed nation in the world, they're wrong. Additional UK taxes make gas there about 70% more expensive than in Canada. Another reason to get a small rental car.

In the UK, people don't generally tip wait staff. Most Point of Sale terminals don't include a tipping facility, and most servers look quite surprised when you do offer them a tip. While a goodly proportion of establishments take only card payments these days, if you wish to tip, have a bit of cash handy. British wait staff, while surprised, will always be happy to accept any reward for good service. Some places will make a mandatory service charge for large parties, but they're rare.

This may be a well worn bit of advice, but in British pubs, whether you stand at the bar or sit at a table, you have to order your drinks at the bar and take them to wherever you're sitting or standing. No one will come to your table to take your order. Things are changing a bit, and there's a bit of crossover between restaurants and pubs. If you're in any doubt, order at the bar. People still like to queue in the UK, that is stand in line and wait for their turn. If you're at the bar, don't jump the queue, even if there isn't an obvious queue. There are only a few things worse than jumping a queue in Britain; no, scratch that, there is NOTHING worse than jumping a queue.

Public transport is pretty good in the UK, with trains and buses being fast, frequent and generally affordable. Big cities like London are bringing all their transport providers under a single authority and controlling prices and services, which makes for excellent fares. The UK's trains are good across the country, even with the alarming rise of cancelled trains, often with no notice. The fares are labyrinthine, but if you research and you travel outside of the morning and evening rush, then it's all quite reasonable. We were paying £19 for a day return from Didcot to London, which for an hour's trip on fast train is pretty good. If you're young or old, you can get special discount cards, as well. Kids under 5 travel free on trains, and in London kids under 12 travel free on all buses, trains and underground, which we took advantage of extensively.

There are a lot of cars in the UK, and on certain days and at certain times it can seem like they're all out on the roads at the same time. It takes very little to gum up the road system, and it can be something as simple as a some traffic lights not phased properly, as we found out in Weymouth on a Friday afternoon. It's a fairly small seaside town, but it was gridlocked, all because there were three sets of traffic lights quite close together, but their phasing was out of wack.

I was reminded once again that the drivers in England are usually a very cooperative bunch. They'll let you out onto a busy road, yield when they don't have to, and generally don't behave like entitled dicks. Because speed limits are enforced, you don't get tailgaters, not often anyway, trying to push slower cars onwards, and you don't hear too much grumbling when people are running at below the speed limit. Not everyone plays the game, of course, but driving in England, even with the heavier traffic, can be a far more pleasant experience than driving in Ontario.

...and that was it, that was Blighty 2025. I'm sure there's a lot more that I could write, but this post is far too long already. It must surely be time to revert to the Airstream Annals.

Blighty 2025 - The Manchester Apartment

We had a good holiday in England, and the only thing of note that caused us any angst was the Manchester apartment. 

Booked through Booking.Com, the photos of the place were good, and while we knew it would be small, and warm with windows floor to ceiling, we weren't quite prepared for the cheapness of the place, and by that I mean poor maintenance, poor housekeeping, and a general lack of  any kind of quality.

We arrived early, parked up and had a walk down to the nearby Burger King. The apartments were modern and supplied with two parking space each, but the grounds around the blocks were, to say the least, unkempt. As we walked down Goodiers Drive, we saw garbage littered everywhere, and used cans of Nitrous Oxide in the hedges. Clearly that was the favourite of the local addicts. Certainly the apartment owners are not responsible for the mess on the street, but it didn't look good for the five nights we were staying.

The Burger King had a big set of black railings around it, a security gate and all sorts of security signage. Inside it was cards only, kiosk ordering only, and the counter had a screen like you'd see in a bank (not quite as flash, but you get the idea). Again, this didn't bode well.

The guy who checked us into the apartment was as nice as could be, helpful and obliging, as he should have been. It was only after he left that we realised that this was a place set up for a profit, and we were the cash cows. There was only the most basic things in the kitchen, only four of anything and only one power outlet for both the toaster and the kettle. The couple of sachets of coffee was a mean "welcome pack".

It was hot, too, and there was a floor-standing fan blowing the hot air around. Accessing the windows wasn't easy with the venetian blinds in place, most of which were only partly functional, and just plain broken in places. 

The bed in the second bedroom was poor positioned and allowed only about six inches between its end and the wall, meaning you had to edge past it to get to the window, or clamber over the bed. The bed itself wasn't top quality, and the sheets were all too small so wouldn't tuck in around the mattress. The pillows were, well, barely pillows.

Everywhere was dusty, too. The floor, the skirting boards, the window sills. There was a fair bit of mould around the bath and shower screen, and the bathroom sink absolutely stank of mould. It was nose stinging.

As if to cement our unfavourable view of the place, around 10pm we had to listen to a man outside being lavishly and very loudly sick. Well, it was Friday night.

We were upset that after our fantastic Cotswold adventure, we were in a drug abuse area of Salford, in a less than ideal apartment. We contacted the guy who had checked us in about getting another fan to help cool the place, but were met with a big fat no. We debated at length about getting somewhere else, and spent quite a while looking on the Internet, but there was nothing that we could practically do. We were even prepared to take a financial hit, but time was against us. We went to bed and hoped it would look better in the morning.

It was a hot night, even with the windows open, and we were certainly pleased that we'd brought some little (light and flat) fans with us, as these worked to keep the air moving. It didn't help that one of the two windows in our bedroom had a broken lock and wouldn't open.

Things did look a little better in the morning, and the smell in the bathroom was dissipating a little as we used the sink. The car was still outside, still in one piece, which I have to say I doubted it would be, given the area.

Fortunately, we didn't have to spend too much time in the apartment as we had lots of excursions planned. It was so hot in there, even with the windows open, that it would have been very comfortable to stay in for any length of time.

To be fair, it was a reasonable two bedroomed apartment, but for us it simply wasn't quite what we were expecting. I'm sure there were plenty of people in Manchester who would have been grateful for any roof over their heads, and it does seem a bit churlish to moan so much. It was also at the cheaper end of the scale, so perhaps our expectations were a little high. But I couldn't shake the feeling that this was one of many apartments owned by our host, and that it was all about expending as little as possible in order to make the maximum profit, and be damned the cursed guests. 

Still, lesson learned, be wary of apartments in city apartment blocks.

Blighty 2025 - Flying Home

Flight day dawned. All the bags had been repacked and reweighed, and all of them, thankfully, came in under the 23Kg limit. I eschewed breakfast on the grounds that I didn't need to spend another £20 on food when I'd done nothing but eat over the past month, and we moved seamlessly to getting the bags downstairs and loaded into the rental car again.

It's only a couple of minutes drive from the Hyatt Place to Terminal five, but I still manged to be in the wrong lane, and subsequently on the wrong road when trying to get back to the car hire drop off point. I managed to correct things without going too far out of our way, but still struggled with the complicated instructions on how to get to the drop-of point. Essentially it was a case of driving almost all the way around the T5 Sofitel Hotel before finding the entrance. They have a kind all 360 degree scanner you drive through when you leave, and again when you return. I guess it compares dents and scratches and the like without having someone come out and check. To the best of my knowledge, I hadn't added to the car's patina, so that was all good. Apart from dropping the key back in to the office, we didn't have to do anything other than unload the car - onto three trolleys - make our way back through the Sofitel and head into the departures hall of Terminal 5.

Dumping the bags was the first order of the day, so we did a self-service bag drop and boarding pass collection, which was all we needed to do having checked in online the night before. DW and I sat and relaxed before going through security, while Emma and Charlie went for a ride on the T5 Pod system for twenty minutes.

Going through security was relatively painless, for us at least. Emma had her bag opened and manually checked thanks to her carrying a big, resin, Lilliput Village church in her carry on baggage. Time had slipped away quickly, so we decided to head straight out to the gate, which was about as far away as you get from where we had arrived airside. You can walk it, and we have done that in the past, but this take we took the "transit", a little underground train that doesn't run often enough to make it a comfortable trip because it's always so crowded. Heathrow seems to specialize in not realising how many people move through their place; I remembered with horror the wholly inadequate lifts in Terminal 2, lifts that had no viable alternative, and were always bursting at the seams. The world's busiest airport really needs to do better, I think.

Our transport for the flight home waiting at the gate, and with the power of the Internet at hand, I interrogated it and found out that our aircraft was a 2025 Boeing 787 Dreamliner. It has come back to London from Barbados the previous day, and Toronto was its only flight this warm afternoon. How informative.

In our World Traveller Plus cabin, I was surprised to see the seat configuration was 2-3-2 and not 2-4-2 as it had been on the Airbus on the way over. Indeed, the seats were bigger, better padded and altogether an improvement over the outward leg. The Dreamliner also has fancy LED windows that lighten or darken at the push of button and, more pertinently for the crew, could be controlled as one from the flight deck, so no messing about with getting people to lift the window blinds for take off. 

We were sitting over the wing so were treated to a lot of wind and engine noise, and the sight of the Boeing's wing lifting and wobbling. It's a good job I understand the principals of flight or I might be a bit worried. The last time I flew on a 787, I remember it being quieter, but I'd trade the noise for the better seats any day. Flights are as flights are, pretty boring. The food was better this time, and I did enjoy a short while with Charlie on my lap watching Paw Patrol, which is so much better without the sound.

Then we were banking out over Lake Erie for a rare northward landing at Toronto Pearson Airport, getting a great view of the Islands and the CN Tower, which was all the better as it had been cloudy since we passed over Ireland. The airport wasn't much fun, though. Terminal 3 was packed, the customs kiosks were playing up and it took an age for two of our bags to show up in the arrivals hall, thanks to a technical fault in the conveyor system. The magic of Park and Ride was working well, though, as a Valet Parking bus was waiting at the curb, and as I'd already notified them through their phone app that we'd landed, the car was sat in the lot waiting for us. I do like Park and Fly, and it did take the edge off the fact that it had taken us two hours to clear the airport. 

Opening up the back of car to load our many bags, it was quite comforting to see that our Canadian (made in Ontario) Honda CRV had quite a bit more luggage space than our Skoda hire car, so the game of baggage Jenga wasn't quite so difficult. Mind you, two bags "self-unloaded" when we opened the tailgate at the On Route in Cambridge.

We arrived home tired, of course, and out of sorts given that it was 3am according to our body clocks. Still, we'd completed quite the epic journey. A month, give or take a day, and no major dramas (bar the Manchester accommodation), and we did most of the things we'd set out to do. Now, as we Brits are wont to say "we need a holiday to get over the holiday". Next week, people, next week.

Blighty 2025 - Homeward Bound Part One

Leaving a holiday rental is always traumatic. Tidying up, packing, and trying not to forget anything, and all before 10am. We had too many bags, and a couple of them were overweight, so packing and repacking was the order of the day, then doing a kind of puzzle, working out the best way to get the bags into the car while leaving room for passengers. Oh Lordy, holidays!

When I lived in the UK, I never liked driving along the M6 between Birmingham and Manchester. It's always been busy, and always seemed to carry a seriously high density of lorries. In the intervening years, things have not improved, and this despite the previous three lanes each way being expanded to four by utilising what had been the hard shoulder. Well, it used to be three lanes of slow moving traffic, now it's four lanes of slow moving traffic, giving life to the maxim that traffic will always expand to fill the existing road space.

This Wednesday morning was no exception to the way it had always been, wall to wall lorries and speeds well below the posted limit. Essentially, the road runs at capacity most of the time and any little glitch just causes chaos. This morning's little bit of fun was a lorry with a big static caravan on it's bed. The caravan was quite wide, so there was escort vehicle behind it, and in my innocence I imagined that because it was a wide load, it might well stay in the driving lane, that is the left lane, while it made progress. Not so this wagon. It picked up speed quite quickly, and started to pass people on the left, those people who were unwise enough not to drive faster than the lorry with the caravan. You might say that people should always drive in the left lane, and I would agree, but sometimes when you're passing people who are in the left lane, your lane slows, and then you have crazy lorry drivers whizzing up on your left with a wide load and getting perilously close to you. That was bad enough, but then the wide load driver decides the left lane's too slow, and one by one he moves out to the third from the left, and only stays there because he's not allowed in the right lane. So, he's doing sixty-five miles and hour, with a wide load, and squeezing faster vehicles as they try to go past him, legitimately, in the right lane. It only takes one driver doing sixty-six, or a nervous person in the right lane, to slow up that right lane and cause the brake lights to go for miles back, in a chain reaction. Meanwhile, our wide load lorry driver is still thrashing down the road, quite oblivious to the mayhem behind him. Because such bone-headed driving can only be done by a man.

Indeed, all the way to Birmingham, lorries occupied all three left-side lanes, this forcing anyone who needed to pass to the one passing lane remaining, on the right. I think there is a genuine case for lorries to be limited to the two left lanes only, but they don't always adhere to the rule saying they can't use the right lane, so I don't know how far that would get us.

It was a blessed relief, then, to pull onto the M6 Toll, and suddenly see the lorries, and a good deal of the other traffic, simply evaporate. To use that road is £10 well spent in my view.

Once through the construction work on the M42 to the east of Birmingham, and then on to the M40, it all became much more civilised. Sure it was busy, but I was able to drive in the left lane for some of the time, thanks to fewer lorries, which was quite the novelty.

As we approached London, the lady in the navigation system dutifully guided us down through Hayes, rather than directly to the airport, and our hotel for the night. I had it in my head that petrol was expensive around the airport, so set our destination to a Tesco filling station. As it happened, we stumbled upon a Sainsbury's first, so filled up there. I'm not sure how the rented car's fuel gauge worked because after I'd filled up the night before, it showed a range of exactly 500 miles. When I stopped to fill up again, some 200 miles later, it was showing a range of 475 miles. To add to the confusion, the car would only take £36 worth of petrol. A quick calculation made that around 75 miles to the Imperial gallon. While I'm happy to agree that 55-60 miles to the gallon was achievable, I think 75 miles to the gallon was quite the stretch. Anyway, it was still a good return, whatever the actual figure. We'd driven just short of 3,000 miles since picking the car up, and this was only the fourth time I'd put any fuel in. Now why can't North American cars be so economical?

The next stop was the Hyatt Place Hotel, just on Heathrow's northern perimeter. We had booked a couple of rooms for the night so that we could chill out and prepare for an early-ish flight out the following day. Maybe it was an abundance of caution, but we didn't want to be caught in dreadful traffic coming down from Manchester on the same day as we had to get a flight; my stress would have known no bounds. We also elected to keep the car for an extra day so that we could load all our stuff in it and drive it over to T5 rather than trying to get it all on a bus or in a taxi, and that's where the Hyatt Place came up trumps with its sexy underground car park. While the £17 overnight charge may seem steep, compared with some of the fees we'd paid over the past month, it wasn't bad at all.

The rooms in the hotel were small, but probably no smaller than in most London hotels. They were clean and well appointed, and both had a view over the airport and its northern runway, which was nice (although I think we'd paid a premium for an airport facing room). The scary thing was that the room was so well soundproofed, you could see the aircraft taking off 200 metres away, but couldn't hear them! I think the road noise outside also helped because later in the evening when the traffic had calmed down, you could just hear a low rumble as the jets took off. It was like someone had turned the sound off. Needless to say, I slept well.

Wednesday, tomorrow, was to be flying day - hold on to your hats!

Blighty 2025 - Birthday

Today was Charlie's fifth birthday, so we stayed local and did the things he wanted to do, one of which was another ride on the Metrolink/Bee Network Trams.

Having carefully studied the tram map with a view to divining the best route to the Little Aladdin Cafe in Manchester's High Street, I was a wee bit bamboozled to find that the Eccles services into the city were being rerouted to take account of some engineering work around Piccadilly Station. So, having prepared for a change of Tram at Cornbrook in order to get to Shudehill, it turned out that the Eccles tram was going to Shudehill anyway and didn't require us to get off at Cornbrook. Cue confusion in my brain. As the disembodied voice in the tram kept telling us that it was a tram for Victoria via Market Street, it was hard to argue.

We walked to Anchorage station on the edge of Salford Quays to pick up the tram, and it took us through what might be called the "Canal District". The bigger and perhaps more well known Manchester Ship Canal has spawned the big dock area that's now known as Salford Quays, but the older and perhaps more significant canal we crossed and followed was the 1761 Bridgewater Canal, the first commercially viable canal in England. It was built to take coal from The Duke of Bridgewater's mines in Worsley, into Manchester, and it was later extended to Runcorn, The Bridgewater Canal was then effectively superseded by the Manchester Ship Canal, a canal that allowed ocean going vessels inland and into Salford and Manchester without having to unload into smaller boats in Liverpool before using the Bridgewater Canal.

But I digress. Both canals are long past their commercial peaks. The smaller Bridgewater Canal is a popular waterway for leisure boaters now, and the larger Ship Canal, and it's docks, have become a waterside development area similar to London's Docklands. There is, though, still much development work to be done because in between all the new, high-rise buildings, there are still a lot of dilapidated and abandoned buildings, many that have succumbed to vandalism and graffiti. The shiny, modern trams wind their way through this mix of old and new and give a curious view of a city that's definitely "on the up", but not fully there yet. I wonder if I came back in twenty years time what the place would like?

Central Manchester is also a mix of old and new; big, modern buildings with smaller, red brick Victorian buildings standing between them. Some of the older buildings are looking bad, but some have been refurbished and certainly add to the eclectic townscape. The new buildings, though, are on a much bigger scale and do make the older ones look quite out of place, or vice versa.

The central core of the city, on this Tuesday afternoon, was packed with people. Again, I thought of Toronto and the comparatively empty streets, although it is fair to say that the people in Toronto tend to be in their cars rather than on foot, so maybe that's difference?

The Little Aladdin Cafe was certainly little, so little in fact that the kitchen was in the basement and accessed by a tiny ladder. I didn't partake of much, but the vegans did, and loved it. Afterwards, we braved the Arndale Centre again, which was much better without the car. It was very busy, though, which seemed a bit odd given that it was a Tuesday afternoon, and before the schools kicked out for the day.

The birthday supper was back at Salford Quays' own Bella Italia, where the young woman who took our order without writing anything down, forgot my starter. Her initial reaction was that I hadn't ordered one, but I'm not senile yet and I knew for sure that I had ordered one. The mains were about to be served, so I said no to them rustling one up, but to make amends she gave us a discount on the bill. I'd have preferred my starter, and if your restaurant isn't using a mobile ordering system, it's best that the wait staff write the friggin' orders down. I wasn't in the mood to be trifled with, and the murderous look on my face so worried the server that she dealt with Emma rather than me. Indeed, in order to give a good tip when I said there shouldn't be one, Emma snuck up and paid at the till rather than at the table. I never knew I was so intimidating.

That evening was to be our last in Manchester, so it was packing and cleaning up time when we arrived back at the apartment. The morrow would bring an relatively early start, and an unavoidable run down the M6. Such is life.

Blighty 2025 - The Longest Day

I'm not sure of the actual time we set off for York, but if it wasn't 9am, it wasn't much past. A timed entry ticket to the National Railway Museum (NRM) meant that we had to build in a lot of wiggle room in the scheduled 90 minute drive along the M62. It's Monday, not in the school holidays, so I'm sure that the good people at the NRM wouldn't hold us to the time, but as we had a long day ahead of us, we thought it wise to get going promptly. 

There's a network of motorways around Manchester, and another around Leeds, linked by the east-west M62 across the Pennines. They're all running at capacity during the day, so any change in the flow causes mayhem, and while we were only delayed by about 20 minutes on this run, it just went to show the importance of wiggle room when working to time limits. Road works at various points along the way had us crawling, and stopped, in places. I genuinely don't know how people with schedules manage, especially in the Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds corridor.

Once past Leeds it was reasonably plain sailing, but in York itself, we were caught in three or four sets of temporary traffic lights, although we had at least been warned about them by the NRM who sent quite a detailed e-mail about getting there. Ultimately, though, we arrived on time and the wiggle room allowance had done its job.

The National Railway Museum is exactly as it says, the UK's main railway museum. As such, it has the same status as some of the key museums in London and is part-funded by the Government so that entry to the place is free for anyone, which is just excellent. The timed tickets are, of course, just to regulate the flow of visitors, and as it can get seriously busy during school holidays, there's method in their madness.

I won't write out too much about the museum, but if you get a chance, consult their website here.

One of the main reasons to visit was to see the fabled "Mallard", the LNER Steam Locomotive that still holds the world speed record for a steam powered railway engine, at 126 miles per hour. The loco is a streamlined Gresley A4, and is the object of adoration by railway buffs the world over.  Her steaming days are over, but there she was in the main hall, standing tall in her blue livery, and getting Charlie very excited. Of course there is so much more at the museum than the Mallard, and we spent a good few hours trundling around and taking things in. If you're ever in the UK, and York specifically, the NRM should be on your To Do List.

Of course the NRM does want your money. There are paid special exhibitions, extensive gift shops, quite pricey eating places and naturally, the constant clamour for donations. That said, you'd have to have a heart of stone not to contribute something when you visit, even if it's only buying a cup of tea.

From the NRM, we set our course east, not west, and made our way through the East Yorkshire Wolds towards Flamborough Head. Flamborough is a headland on Yorkshire's North Sea coast, a little way north of the Humber. We were going in the hope of seeing some of those cute little seabirds, the Puffins, who come to Flamborough's cliffs and waters in the summer. There are many seabirds that congregate there, and hoards of Grey Seals, and of course there's the famous Flamborough Head Lighthouse, which was what was really exercising Charlie.

It's a lovely drive from York, and the road goes through Stamford Bridge (The Battle of... for the history types), and the delightfully named Wetwang. We did take a short detour into the resort town of Bridlington, but I will gloss over that and go straight to Flamborough.

The weather was gorgeous. It was windy of course, but warm and dry, and made for a great walk down to the cliff edge to look for Puffins. Sadly, I have to report, that no Puffins were seen. We did see thousands of other birds, and hundreds of Grey Seals, out lounging on the low-tide exposed rocks. It's a spectacular place anyway, Puffins or not, and the views up and down the Yorkshire coast were stunning in the sunshine. DW spoke to a woman who was sporting a camera with a long lens, as many people were on the clifftop, and she suggested that we get ourselves along to Bempton Cliffs, about five miles north, where the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has set up a visitor centre and a couple of viewing platforms on the clifftop, where Puffins may, or may not, be seen. A plan was made, but not before what turned out to be a fruitless search for a very late lunch for Emma and Charlie.

It's an interesting fact that a lot of fish and chip shops in Yorkshire still cook their chips in beef dripping, which is fine for clogging your arteries, but a non-starter for vegans. The cafe at Flamborough was one of the guilty places, as was the place on the outskirts of Bridlington that had been recommended, and that was after trying to find a pub that served food on a Monday afternoon in rural East Yorkshire. Having failed to find an appropriate lunch, we made for Bempton Cliffs anyway. The visitor centre there was closed, it was gone 5pm by then, and although the car park was supposed to be closed, it was full of cars, so in we went. There's a whole lot more to Bempton Cliffs than just the viewing platforms, most of which we didn't have time to discover. The RSPB are doing a great job in creating a bird-friendly environment on their land, including the provision of what seemed like millions of bugs swarming up from the wild grass there. 

The views across the cliffs there were amazing, and the viewing platforms allowed a really close up view of the thousands of seabirds nesting on the cliffs. The sights, sounds, and smells, were most impressive. Alas there were no Puffins, at least none that we could see. Nearly every person there who was out enjoying the warm evening had a camera with a long lens on it; I felt naked without one. DW engaged another twitcher about the Puffins, and she said that sightings of the colourful bird were rarer these days, quite probably due to global warming pushing their main food source, small eels, away from the Yorkshire coast. Skomer Island is Puffin paradise (I think I already knew that), but as Skomer is in West Wales, over 300 miles away, that was not a viable option for this trip.

The final part of the long day was a drive back into York for a bite to eat at the Fat Hippo restaurant in York. It was a push to get there in a reasonable time, but the evenings are long right now, the solstice is but a few days away, so we drove in lovely sunshine back the way we came, and pitched up in central York in good time to make the table booking that DW had set up online. Google pointed us to something called Q-Park Shambles, a parking garage not too far from where we needed to be, so we made our way there. It turned to be a really smart multi-storey car park in a new block just inside the City walls. There was a huge steel gate across the entrance, but it folded back obediently as we approached and I drove in to collect a ticket (yes, the machine was working). The garage itself was light years from the dingy mess that was the parking garage at Manchester's Arndale Centre. The ceiling wasn't too low, it was white-painted and well lit, and the spaces allowed room to actually get out of your car. There was a pee-free lift to the ground floor and a lobby that was only accessible to people holding a ticket. DW said it was going to cost us an arm and a leg, but I said I didn't care because it was the best multi-story I'd ever come across in the UK.

We walked through York's mediaeval streets to the restaurant, taking in the famous Shambles, and Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma Gate, on the way, and settled in for a reasonable meal that the vegans among us could partake of. I'm not sure that the Fat Hippo will be on our list of re-visits, but it did get us into York. I suggested that after the meal, we walk over to the Minster, given the gorgeous warm evening, and that's what we did. I was actually reliving a visit I'd made with my family in 1968, when we were heading to North Yorkshire to see my dad's brother. We'd pulled into York for my dad to call ahead, and driven pretty much up to the front door of the Minster, on a very similar evening, albeit almost sixty years earlier.

York Minster is a mostly mediaeval cathedral that is absolutely enormous. It has an immense feeling of bulk, especially when you stand at the twin-towered front of it, and it dominates the city from wherever you are. York has a long a varied history, going back to the Romans, but this mediaeval centrepiece underpins the entire place. It was just wonderful to sit there and admire the building. We were actually were waiting for the big bell to sound the 9pm hour, but it stops ringing at 8pm, so that was a bust.

Then it was back to the Q-Park, through the ticket only admission, up in the pee-free lift, pay (cheaper than the Arndale!), and out though the barrier and the fancy folding gates, and we were out onto the road again and heading for Manchester as the light faded. The traffic as far as Leeds was really quiet, but the M1 was closed for repair work at Rothwell, so we had to take a short diversion route, although it didn't delay us much. The M62 was peppered with more roadworks, and far too busy for 10:30 at night in my opinion, which of course accounts for nothing. As we crested Windy Hill, the highest point of the motorway, indeed the highest point of any motorway in England at a little over 1,200 feet, the sky was still quite light, even at that late hour, and served to remind us just how far north we are compared with our home in Ontario.

We rolled back into Salford at a little gone 11pm after a round trip of at least 250 miles. We'd gone about as far east as you can go in these here parts, and visited one of the best museums, in one of the best cities, in England. It was quite the day, and our last big excursion of this trip. Tomorrow is is a special birthday for the youngest of our party, so it'll be a quiet day. I hope!