Thu, 05 Sep 2002

author Tim	location Carlisle, England
posted 08:54 BST 06/09/2002	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/North and Central England ( all photos )

It's a new car!!!!! ( No photos )
(Continued from North England)
The first half of this day was spent fighting with insurance agencies over here attempting to organise insurance for Percy. Not as simple as it might sound, we ended up with the AA (equivalent of NRMA) finding us one for a reasonable sum. This is interesting, as when we talked to them earlier that day, they estimated almost three times as much.
In the afternoon we headed back into Carlisle, and went into Ottakars. This is basically a big chain bookshop with a coffee shop inside - very similar to Dymocks. I believe Meaghan was working in one in Milton Keynes. Being the cheap Aussie that I am, I spotted a book on a special for 99p - over here books are more like £9, so I was quite happy with that. The other day I also picked up a "How to Solve Cryptic Crosswords" book - an art I've never quite had time to understand.
The big news comes in the form of the National Australia Bank actually getting something reasonably organised for a change - the money for the car found its way across into Peter's UK bank account, allowing us to write a cheque for Percy!
The result of this is that he's now all ours, parked out the side of Peter's place. We spent the rest of the day playing with all the high-tech buttons, discovering no end of creature comforts. The only problem is that it will be hard to let go of him and purchase a thirty year old combi instead when we go to Europe!
Of course, we just had to test him out a little (you should have seen the smile on Liz's face when she was driving and the turbo kicked in for the first time!), so we went for a spin across to Silloth - a town on the estuary which eventually becomes the sea. We drove down the coast a little, where we could easily see across to Scotland before it got quite dark.
Some random back streets made for quite entertaining driving, especially in a new car at 60mph when the roads aren't quite wide enough for two cars!

(customised)