Thu, 10 Jul 2003

author Tim	location Wassenaar, Netherlands
posted 22:48 CEST 11/07/03	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/Across England ( all photos )

Drive to Harwich ( No photos )
Awaking feeling much better than the night before at the ungodly hour of 4:15 am (body clock going very strange), we tried as best we could to be quiet as we packed our things.
After all their help I hope we didn't wake them up, but the throaty gutsy roar of Rosie in the morning probably didn't help matters much.
On to the totally empty roads, we again tackled the problem of getting in/out of Romford, failed, tried again, got fuel, and were on the way to Harwich.
This rather pleasant drive took about an hour and a half, leaving us plenty of time to enjoy a cup of tea and a thrown together breakfast in the car park of the ferry terminal.
As the gate eventually opened we drove through only to be pulled aside by an elderly lady. On reflection this wasn't too suprising since we were by far the cheapest looking vehicle beside all the monolithic motorhomes with screaming kids. Worried at first, we ended up having a great old chat with the woman who was quite impressed that we had thrown all our jobs away and were seeing the world. Not sure what she was intending to do (full search of the van? of us?), but as we drove away she said to her friend "Not even going to bother with that one". Strange. Maybe we're just nice people. And nice people don't smuggle drugs or weapons of mass destruction.
We drove onto the ferry, which was rather huge, locked up the van, and wandered upstairs to enjoy the eight-hour journey to Hoek van Holland, The Netherlands.

author Tim	location Wassenaar, Netherlands
posted 22:36 CEST 11/07/03	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/Across England ( all photos )

Tidying Up in London ( 2 photos )
We hadn't planned on getting back into London, but that is just what we did on this day.
After a hearty breakfast, we got packed some more things into our suitcases we have left at Les and Pearl's, noting that we pretty much have a full suitcase ready to send home to Oz. Deciding to leave it for the moment, we walked down to get a bus to Romford mainline station.
From there, we got straight onto a train to Liverpool Street. Odd, as I'd spent a reflective fifteen minutes just staring around the place last time I was there, thinking it would be my last for quite some time.
Finding the well-hidden post office there, we put a few things into the post to various parts of the world, before Liz wandered over to NatWest, her bank, to attempt to close her account. By the time that the first queue had put us into a different queue only to have her name taken for an interview (remember we just wanted to close a bank account), I decided that I would head off to complete one of our other tasks.
The main one was a trip to Russell Square to visit Carlo, who lives in our old place at Cricklewood to collect our mail. This task completed, I said a goodbye to Carlo, hoping to meet up with him somewhere around Europe when the get into travels sometime around September.
Back on the train, it was a last stop at The Gun, the local hangout for the Capita (my London work) people, to say a farewell final to Trevor and Danny.
Several hours later, we found our way back to Romford, located the correct bus and were completely suprised to find another fantastic meal awaiting us. Our original plan was to drive there and then up to Harwich for the next morning's ferry, but I had a sudden migrane and a need to be confined to bed.
As I did this, Liz went online and chatted to Sebastian in Germany, trying to work out plans for the weekend. Partly due to what he and Jessi wanted to do, we chose not to go to the Berlin Love Parade as origninally intended, and instead spend a few days looking around The Netherlands.

author Tim	location Wassenaar, Netherlands
posted 21:13 CEST 11/07/03	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/Across England ( all photos )

Kindly Les and Pearl ( No photos )
(Continued from Ireland 2)
Back into the strangely sunny England, Liz had a sleep in the van and I was considering the same, but remembered not to as I was driving. The strange hours have wreaked havoc with our body clock. It's these late night ferries we get to save money. All part of the fun.
After a coffee stop somewhere along the M4, we got stuck in really heavy traffic around the M25, then getting lost with the hopeless signposting that exists around Romford and Hornchurch making us a few hours later than intially guessed to arrive at Les and Pearl's place in Essex.
How fantastic these people are. There's not much we wanted more than a huge baked dinner, and there it was. Wonderful stuff, followed with a great dessert as well. Thanks in public for a job well done!
A bit of chat then bed for us, tired once again.

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