Dover England to France

the letters qre not the sq,e qs Aust!! q vert pretty pqrtly medieval town with remains of 1000 yo castle qnd stone wall surrounding the city; Beautiful churches of stone; qnd cobbled streets everyzhere;

Blog 16/7/07

Greeting from Le Mont St Michel. In next few days will spend a few days looking at chateau’s in the Loire Valley before heading south through Bordeaux to Spain to meet Gabriele Salas.

Othello (15/6/07)

We went and watched Shakespears “Othello” at the globe theatre in London. Its 3 hours long but very entertaining. We walked past St Pauls and along Fleet St to the front gate of Liz & Phils place eg Buckingham Palace. Lots of police and guards (I think they should get Harry and William to guard the palace as they are too precious to go to Iraq)

Hampton Court palace (19/6/07)

Another palace....... Henry VIII probably its most famous resident in 1500s.

Hockham Hall (20/6/07)

Charles drove us to Norfolk, where we visited Hockham Hall which till recently was owned by Linda's relatives and near where lindas grandfather and many other relatives are buried = interestingly in grounds of an Anglican church. We returned via ‘Bury St Edmund’ where we met John Trappes Lomax (Linda's 2nd cousin) and had afternoon tea and interesting discussions on the plight of the Trappes .... qnd looked qt fqmily portraits.

Cumbria Way (21 – 25/6/07)

Caught the fast (and very expensive) train to Ulverston from London to start the Cumbria Way which goes from Ulverston on the coast in the south of the Lakes District to Keswick 50 miles north. The official end is another 20-30 miles north at Carlisle but we had to collect our van and 4 full days gave us a great taste of this beautiful area. We slept in our tent for the first 3 nights then stayed in YHA’s for the last 2 nights.

Most of the locals walked from YHA to YHA with a small daypack and their dogs (every 2nd walker had at least 1 dog!!!). The other strange thing about their national parks is they have sheep everywhere, although they have been part of the system for over a 1000 years. Not just your average sheep though, these sheep are unique to the Lakes District, called herdwick sheep which are born black and turn grey or white as they get older and which also know their little patch of the fels (mountain) so they don’t need fencing. The landscape is generally treeless with beautiful stone cottages and dry stone walls.

Beatrix Potter (Peter Rabbitt) and William Wordsworth (poet) and John Ruskin (Socialist philosopher) were famous Lakes District residents.


We become grey nomads (26/6/07)

After catching the train from Keswick to Preston we collected our van from Jody (our used campervan salesman) and learnt how everything worked. We had a complimentary night at the Oaklands Caravan Park (don’t go out of your way to go here).

York (28/6/07)

Visited YorkMinster Cathedral (a very impressive gothic Cathedral). We had the full tour which included looking in the crypt and climbing the tower to look at the view.

While in York we also walked around the York Wall.


Norwich (30/6/07)

We visited Norwich castle where Lindas Ancestor Henry Kable was kept in the dungeon waiting for his cruise on the first fleet to depart. They have a wax work figure of Henry who is probably the most famous convict of the first fleet.

London Again (2/7/07)

With out tickets across the English channel booked weeks ago we only have a day and a half in London to show of our new home to Charles, Leo, Ania and Kathy, do some washing, thank our friends and continue our journey.

The English Channel (4.15am 3/7/07)

We cross the channel or “Le Manche” as the French call it at 4am when the tickets are cheapest. It gets light here at 4am so we see the white cliffs of Dover as we cross to Calais and eat kathys French breakfast. We stay at a little caravan park at Leubingham near Calais.

Calais – Le Havre (3- 9/7/07)

We make our way south following the coast. The PDA is invaluable, it is set to avoid motorways and tolls and so we travel along quiet roads through beautiful French villages. The French cater for campervans really well with many towns having an area where campervans can park for free and fill up water (2 euros) and empty toilets. We have bought the book showing where these areas are. The book is in French but we just look for “parking gratuit (free)”. Diesel is about $1.80 AUD compared to about $2.30 AUD in England. We are buying food from supermarkets and only paying occasionally for caravan parks so are living reasonably cheaply. There are millions of campervans in France, most driven by retired couples with their dog. The coast line is characterised by huge white chalk cliffs dotted with german fortifications (WW2). Where there is a break in the cliffs there is a small village. St Valery en caux and Etretat were 2 towns we thought particularly nice.

Normandy (10 – 15/7/07)

We continue along the coast. We visit the “Memorial de Caen” which like most museums and memorials around here is primarily about D-Day and the battle of Normandy.

We spent 2 nights at Arromanches where the British created the “Mulberry Harbour”, which consisted of hundreds of huge concrete lego blocks towed over from England and sunk off Arromanches to form a harbour where troops and equipment were landed. Most of these blocks are still there and it would have been very impressive.

We visit the Bayeux Tapestry which I learnt about in Yr 7 history. The tapestry depicts the William the Conquerer story which is probably the most important date in British history with many of the castles in Britain built after William the conquerer to help the Normans dominate the Saxons. The British War cemetery in Bayeux has words to the effect of “We who were conquered by William have liberated his homeland” (in latin).

Bayeux was also where our English gas bottle ran out and we had a nightmare trying to reconnect our gas. The French are Metric and the British Imperial so totally incompatible. My highschool French has proved totally inadequate and the only words we have are hello, goodbye, thankyou, yes and no. Most of the French do not speak English and it can be very frustrating.

We spent 2 nights at Le Mont St Michel which is an amazing site which has been catering to tourists or pilgrims for at least 800 years. The lower part is full of souvenir shops and restaurants while the upper part is the abbey. We had a tour of the abbey then walked through the mud to walk around part of the Mont.

We are checking our email occasionally – john.bickmore@gmail.com or linda.kable@gmail.com and have the mobile reconnected – 07766277478 (for emergencies only).