On Monday we spent the night in a tent at a camp site called Quiet Waters. On Tuesday we were in London, so slept in beds again, but last night we tented in a place that was anything but quiet. To say that having Niagara Falls nearby would have been peaceful by comparison would be an understatement. The camp site was fine, (though we were almost as far away from the toilet block as it was possible to be), but it was within the flight path of some local airport, and jets went over with great regularity. That would have been okay, but the M25 was just up the road as well, and there was a constant noise with no obvious cessation. It was there when we went to sleep, and there when we woke. We had to drive on it briefly this morning, and there were trucks by the thousand.
The name of the place we stayed at last night has gone from my mind at the moment, but it was in the very north of London - and rabbits seemed to be allowed to run wild. Though not in the camping area, thank goodness. The woman who ran the place gave us a brochure for the Camping and Caravanning Association (I think that’s the order it goes in) and after looking through it we thought it would be worth joining. It gave us a much wider range of camp sites, and as members we’d get in considerably cheaper. In fact, when we did sign up, the woman gave us back the five pounds we’d paid as non-members, and then gave us a discount on the price as well!
I forgot to mention that we had lunch yesterday with another old friend whom we hadn’t seen since I was last here: an Irish Catholic nun who was on the course at Stephenson Hall where Celia and I met. This sister now lives with three others in a large house in Mottingham which shouldn’t have been too long a trip from where we were staying on Tuesday night, but in fact it took twice as long as we’d planned, due to the usual London traffic. She has had gum cancer in the last year, and has had a terrible time with it, not to mention operations not working as well as they should. While we were there she got yet another call from the consultant, telling her when she could go back to another go at the problem, one that she hopes will bring the whole thing to an end.
Today has been a long haul from that London camping site to one in a place called Corley, which is just out of Coventry. We weren’t supposed to be anywhere near Coventry, but something went wrong with our calculations.
Our intention for today had been to visit a little town in Worcester called Crowle. Once we’d been there we would go onto a camp site near Worcester city itself. However, we first got sidetracked by discovering Waddesdon Manor in the village of Waddesdon. Waddesdon Manor? Doesn’t sound anything special. Well, that’s what we might have thought until we discovered it was actually built only around 150 years ago by one of the Rothschilds, who wanted it as a place to have dinner parties and such during the week. So he built it along the lines of a French Chateau, on an enormous scale, with huge gardens and parks, and then began collecting umpteen wondrous articles from around the world. It has paintings by every painter you could name, especially Gainsborough; it has wonderful porcelain by the mile; it has statues and bric-a-brac, and endless decoration. It’s quite overwhelming, and there’s no way I could do it justice. In fact, we’d have had to stay there all day to even take in half of it. As it was we were a little hurried, and Waddesdon didn’t get its due.
After this Celia wanted to see if we could pick up a slightly larger tent - the one we’ve borrowed requires us to wander around on our knees, and since that isn’t quite our normal mode of movement, it’s a little difficult. It’s been adequate and kept us dry and reasonably warm, but Celia being Celia wanted to ‘explore the possibility’ of larger accommodation. That was where the day went slightly out of kilter. We looked up on the Net to find a camping place that sold tents, and decided on somewhere near Stratford upon Avon. However it happened, I don’t know, but our Sat Nav took us off up past where we thought we ought to be going, and next thing we knew we saw a sign: Welcome to Coventry. We didn’t actually believe it until some time later when we checked it with someone in a shop!
Anyway, the first place we looked for proved extremely difficult to find, and several wrong starts and wrong turns made us a little fretful. Quite fretful, in fact. Eventually we found the place only to discover that caravans were their big thing and tents were not. In fact, the bloke in there was so offhand and casual about us as customers, and kept saying to his offsider (I don’t know anything about tents) that I said to the woman who finally did offer some help: is he always like this?
She redirected us to a much better and bigger place - a huge place, in fact - where they not only knew how to treat customers but had everything you could wish for. And now I’m typing this in a tent that is stand-uppable in. Which is good.
But the day wasn’t finished. Since it was late we decided to find somewhere near Coventry to stay in our new tent. The first on the list was so difficult to find that I spent a quarter of an hour in a pub with the publican and his two barmaids trying to figure out where the heck it was. We eventually found it and apart from being almost non-sign-posted, there was little sign of any amenities, any life, anyone else staying there - anything except a bunch of rough looking caravans that had seen better days. I refused to give it any more time in the day, and we headed for another one, that is vastly superior. Where it took us three-quarters of an hour to put up the new tent. We’ll improve, no doubt!
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