Moose on the Move!

Things have been moving fairly quickly since we got Rosie. That is what we have called the car. Why? Because she is Red and a Renault and life got Rosier when we got her... ? That will do.

Actually not everything has been moving quicker - just things outside the windows.

One of our first stops on Saturay (9th April) was at a local shopping centre, to get some of the things that we immediately knew we would need...pillows, some plastic plates, a sleeping bag for chris and a book of campsites all over the country.

Our second stop was a service station with a vaccumm with which to clean out all the bits and pieces that the previous owners had neglected to remove. We found amongst the half eaten crackers and broken crayons, a little picture book (which we didn't keep) a funnel from the top of a jerry can (which we didn't keep) and a small black umbrella (which we did keep).

Then we were off! We decided that with our new found freedom we ought to head off and see something that would otherwise have been difficult to get to. Also something that we both thought would be pretty cool to go and see - Stone Henge! Yes that mystical ring of rocks was calling us.

With me navigating and Chris doing an awesome job at the wheel we headed off. I spied in our handy driving atlas that (almost) on the way to Stone Henge there was another interesting sight and so I guided Chris in that direction. Before long we arrived at Wood Henge. Yes, WOOD HENGE. We had both pictured somthing similar to Stone Henge.

What we got looked a little more like a modern art installation. After reading the information on site we discovered that in fact it wasn't muck of a surprise that there was no wood left because it was even older than Stone Henge. In more recent times they have put short concrete markers where the wooden poles used to be. (So I guess it kind of is a piece of modern art).

From there we went to Stone Henge. It was somewhat more impressive. Actually it was awesome! We suffered all the way around the site though because of the amazingly cold wind that was blowing! This did do good things to the number of people there though. I can imagine that when the sun is warm and the breeze is only cool there are many more people oggling the stones. The audio tour was very informative, and helped to keep at least one ear warm.

That night we slept in Rosie. It was cold. There are no two ways about it. The seats were quite comfortable and our towels in the windows made good enough curtains, but our sleeping bags alone were not enough to keep us warm and we both woke up wearing quite a bit more clothing than we had gone to bed wearing.

That day (Sunday) we headed into the little town of Salisbury to visit the cathedral and have some breakfast. Not neccessarily in that order.

It is a pretty amazing Cathedral - they all seem to be. We discovered (by eaves dropping) that almost all of the stained glass panels were post medieval. Apparently some guy called Cromwell decided while he was running the country that there should be no images of Christ around so all the windows in cathedrals got smashed, statues were destroyed and so on. There are only four small pieces left way up near the top where he couldn't be bothered to finish the job, where the original windows remain. They have tried to recreate the remaining windows to match and have basically done a pretty good job. (The 'new' windows are still hundreds of yers old mind).

All photo's are here.

The other really interesting thing that we found out about the Cathedral (which has the highest spire in England) is that the foundation for the biulding is only four feet deep. Apparently the structure shouldn't be able to stand but because of the water table being high (?) it does. But they have to pull up a tile in the floor each week to check the water level and make sure that it is still ok. Cool.

The first night we arrived we dropped our bags in the room we had been allocated at the youth hostel (we were the only two in a room with fourteen beds) and went for a wander in the town centre. It seemed immediately like a cool town - and not just because we were shivering. Lots of really old buildings and little alley ways and at night it looked especially magical.

We headed back to the hostel and were looking forward to having the room to ourselves, but it was not to be. We opened the door of the dorm and were at once surprised by the startled looking face staring back at us from under the doona of the first bunk. Accompanying the wide eyes was a shock of straight but disheveled black hair and a thin face. We both said 'hi' (as is commonly acceptable in youth hostels) and received no response. After a moment more of staring at us the doona was promptly pulled back down over her face and she disappeared. But we could still hear her. As we readied ourselves for sleep we could hear her talking quietly in the bunk around the corner, she was not speaking clearly or loudly enough to make out what she was saying but she was definitely having a conversation. But with who? We decided that she had a mobile phone under the covers with her and was just speaking to a friend. Early the next morning (around 3am), she was once again having a conversation and this time she was speaking more clearly. Chris was awake at this stage and says that it went on for quite some time and she was talking to someone and laughing about something. He ended up having to get some ear-plugs out of his bag to get back to sleep. We figured at that point that there was nobody else - she was holding up both ends of the conversation on her own... We think she spent most of the following day sitting on her bunk and talking quietly to herself.

The next morning we decided to call around to a few car yards to see if they had what we wanted. By this stage we had mostly abandoned the idea of getting a camper van and were instead trying to find a station wagon (known as an 'estate' here). Of the ten or so car dealers that we called in the Oxford area none had more than one estate in stock and none were in our price range (which was admittedly quite low).

We decided that the following day we would hire a car to go a bit further afield to look at a few things we had seen advertised in the local Auto Trader.

So that night we went to the movies to see 'Robots', if you like animations, or Robin Williams, it is worth going to have a look at!!

That night our eccentric room mate was at it again but we felt a little safer because there were a few more people in the room. Apparently she was talking for a couple of hours that night and had greeted the new residents in the room with the same stare-from-beneath-the-doona that we had received.

Wednesday morning we headed down the road to Thrifty to pick up our hire car. They didn't like the fact that we were not English and wanted to see our passports, return tickets. OK. Except that we had left our return tickets in London. So we told them that we didn't have return tickets because we are going to be here for two years. They liked that even less. Eventually the manager of the store relented and let us take the car - as long as we left our passports and credit card details with them. When I joked and asked if we would get our passports back she turned and in all seriousness said "If we get our car back." I guess they have a lot of people 'borrow' cars for longer than intended...

We drove all over the country-side that day, to Woking (pronounced woe-king), to Reading (pronounced red-ing), to Slough (pronounced slaow). This last was the setting of the series shown on ABC TV 'The Office' (very funny but painful program to watch) and it must be said that the city looked very much the part.

We had no luck what so ever that day. As we discovered later, the magazine we were using was almost a week old so all of the vans/cars that we went to see had been sold. One guy rubbed it in by proclaiming that he could have sold it ten times over by now! Great, thanks.

We decided that evening to move to the YHA just down the road. They were a little more expensive but a whole lot cleaner and they had common areas that were non-smoking (unlike the place we had been staying at previously). As we were chatting to the guy working on the front desk and telling him our woes (they always seem lessened when you tell someone else) he mentioned that there was a car for sale up the street from where he was living which was just around the corner from the hostel.

So after dinner we went for a walk, and about three blocks from where we had been staying we found Rosie. Only we didn't know for sure then. We tried calling the number on the window advertisement but there was no answer. So Chris left a message on voice-mail and we waited.

The following morning we got a call from the guy saying that we could go and have a look at the car that evening after he got home from work. Cool, so we had the whole day to do the touristy things that we hadn't been able to do because we were stressing out about cars.

We spent some time wandering through the farmers markets that was on in Glouchester Green, we went to the Museum of the History of Science and into the Sheldonian Theatre from the top of which there were awesome views of the town's spires and green fields. It was a really lovely sight.

We visited the Bodleian Library (or one of it's halls) and were delighted (Chris somewhat less so) that it had been used to creat the 'hospital' in the Harry potter movies. Actually there are a lot of settings around Oxford that were used in the Potter movies and lots of other TV shows.

We also went into the church of Saint Mary the Virgin (...as opposed to Saint Mary the ?tart?). The architecture in it was fabulous and the stained glass windows were beautiful. We had a bit of a late lunch in a small cafe and basically enjoyed the day and being tourists.

That evening we went and had a look at the car. It was a Renault Espace with seven seats. It was full of kids toys and junk. But we took it of for a test drive anyway and decided later that evening that we had found our car!!! Yay. At last. We could sleep in the back, it had room to carry our gear, we could take other people on trips, it was new(ish) and didn't have too many miles on the clock.

So, Friday morning we went and paid for the car. And then began the saga of finding and buying insurance. We had made a few calls from London already and knew it was going to be difficult. A lot of companies say that you have to be a permanent resident and that a visa isn't good enough. A lot of companies say that you have to have a British driver's licence (which seems odd because all we have to do to get one is to send in our Australian licences) and in some cases have held it for a year.

Remember I said that we had found a £2000 campervan in London that we liked? Well the only insurance quote we could get for that was (fully comprehensive) £2500. More than the car cost to buy!!! Ridiculous.

The thing with insurance and cars here though is that you have to have it. It is illegal to drive a car without it. So even though we had paid for the Renault we couldn't move it because we weren't yet insured!

Eventually we got it sorted out and found a place that would insure us with our Aussie licences, being on a visa and that didn't cost both arms and both legs (just one of each).

Then we took Rosie for a drive!! Ahh the freedom of having your own car!! We were instantly happier. Even if she is a tank to turn, the peddals are close together so you keep stepping on the accelorator when you go to break and she smells like other peoples kids and cigarettes. She is ours!

Sorry there are no photos with this entry yet, internet access is difficult at the moment but we will try to get them up here soon.

I will make this entry somewhat shorted than the last few have been - I am sorry my friends there was just so much that happened in the first week!

OnSaturday the 26th April Chris and I headed into London city to meet up with some friends of ours from Darwin - Jess and Jeff - who have also just recently arived here for a couple of years. They had quite a rough start to their experience but after a couple of weeks (by the time we arrived) they were gettig properly settled in to a new apartment and jobs. It was great to catch up and share the Cornish Pasty experience!

Easter Monday started off wonderfully - until breakfast when Chris' tooth fell apart on a piece of bacon (I can hear the vegetarians saying 'so there'). Literally a quarter of one of his molars came off and unfortunately was swallowed before Chris realised! As there was nothing to be done right away we decided to carry on with our plans.

It was a beautiful day so Chris, Leia and I headed to Battersea Park on the River Thames for a picnic and a gruelling round of Trivial Pursuit - Leia cleaned up (especially on the sport questions).

That afternoon we headed to the emergency dental clinic, where we waited for for three and a half hours for the dental practitioner to pop some temporary filling into Chris' mouth, tell him to get it sorted out properly soon, and to only eat mushy stuff. Poor Chris. Unfortunately it looks like it is going to be quite a major activity to fix and will probably take several visits to the dentist to solve. The thing is though that here you can't just go to any dentist, you have to be registered with a dentist in your area and seeing as we don't have an area and arn't planning to be in Leia's area much longer we will need to leave it for now and get it sorted in the next week or so.

Leia left early on Tuesday morning for a week in Germany with a friend. We spent most of the next week looking for cars on the internet, in the Auto Trader and going to see various vehicles in various spots around London. We had very little luck finding something which suited what we both wanted, what we needed and our taste and budget. It was a tense week, we were both getting frustrated and a little short with each other. There were however several advertisements that we saw which made us chuckle. For example: the little ford that was "very reliable, a good runner. Needs a jump start", the wonderful citroen which had "CD player, airbags, remote central locking and a toe bar". TOE? Foot finger? Then there was the one which sounded great all over but had "smokes heavily, still runs" added on casually at the end of the ad. There was the one which was fabulous but "pulls to the right when braking over 30mph" and so on and so on.

We did find one old (1992) Citroen campervan that was quite good, but by the time we had decided that it was what we wanted and then started looking into insurance it got sold to someone else. Bugger. Insurance here is very difficult to get if you are here on a visa like us - but we knew we deffinitely wanted to get one so....

We ended a miserable and tense week with a £5 comedy night. The host was a funny guy (useful if you want to be in the stand-up scene) who made mention of Chris' fabulous 70's Footballer haircut. There were some top acts on that night!

On Monday 4th April we decided we had to leave London - even if we didn't yet have a car. So we packed up our stuff, tidied Leia's flat and jumped on a late evening train to Oxford. Why Oxford? Just because.

I'm sure the scenery outside was lovely but we couldn't see any of it - because it was dark. It was about an hour long trip through several towns including Slough. (If you ever watched the English series on ABC at home called "The Office", Slough was the delightful town used as the setting.)

We arrived and were immediately surprised by the number of bicycles chained up by the train station! Literally hundreds! That's how you can tell this is a student based city. Or maybe they are just more environmentally friendly here. Or they can't afford the car insurance either! Anyway - we made it to our hostel and ....the rest of Oxford will come in the next (episode/issue/chaper) entry.

Little Old London

We arrived in London via Heathrow Airport at about ten thirty in the morning. It is an enormous airport and difficult to navigate. It is so busy in fact that when we pulled up our plane was not allocated a gate, we just pulled up on the tarmac and had to walk down some stairs to awaiting buses which would drive us to the airport proper. Except that they didn’t have enough buses at the ready… so the two of us, who had been sitting near the back of the plane, had to stop half way to the front doors and wait for the back-up buses to arrive. It was the last thing either of us felt like doing at that point… after a long flight, standing within sniffing distance of the outside but not able to get there!! Arghhh.

We did make it out eventually and cleared immigration and customs without too many hassles and made our way down to the city trains. So began our adventures with the London public transport system. Being exhausted from the overnight flight and the time difference we were very pleased to see that the train was almost empty as we boarded. With much relief we plonked our packs down on a seat, plonked ourselves down beside them and commenced zoning out. As we travelled closer to the city more people got on but we weren’t paying much attention until the middle aged woman next to me turned around and informed us that we were both very rude for having our packs on the seats when they were intended for people. Well. She was right, we shouldn’t have had them there, but it wasn’t an intentional insult, and nobody had asked us if they could sit down. We stood with our packs for the remainder of the trip and consoled ourselves partly with the fact that not all our seats were immediately filled when we stood up…but mostly by the fact that she had really ugly shoes.

The plan was to stay with our good friend Leia Sanders from home but, being a Friday, she was at work when we arrived. So we headed for Hyde Park in the city centre to wait the few hours until she finished. Many people had told us that England is a miserably rainy, cold, grey sort of a place. We have proof that it isn’t. Hyde Park that afternoon was beautiful. The grass was green, the sky was blue and the sun was shining. In short, it was the perfect place to snooze for a couple of hours, using our packs as back rests.

Photoson our photo pages.

We met Leia a couple of hours later in a slightly less delightful place, namely the food court at Victoria Station. It is amazing how alike food courts around the world look. We splurged and bought a small fries from KFC to share for a snack (the exchange rate is not good at the moment).

Leia lives in an area of London called Thornton Heath, it is about a half hour train ride from Victoria Station in a southerly direction. She had just moved into an apartment on her own, it is a one bedroom affair on the ground floor of what was once a fairly typical English city house. There are now either 4 or 5 flats in the one building. Leia’s is very nice. The kitchen is simple but looks like it was all installed not long ago and the landlord put in a washing machine when Leia asked. One thing that we were both a bit surprised (and also delighted) at, is the way that Leia pays for her electricity usage in the flat. She has a ‘vending machine’, a little box on the wall by the front door that takes £1 coins and deals out 3 units per pound. Very neat. What happens if you don’t put coins in? The electricity just cuts out.

Leia had dinner plans with a friend already that night, so the two of us walked her back up to the train station and then went in search of dinner type food. The kebab shop looked too good to pass, so we didn’t. There is a very culturally and ethnically mixed population in Thornton Heath and it was interesting watching people come in and order in one accent, have their order confirmed in another accent and then pay with pounds. The kebabs were great. We retired fairly early that night into Leia’s bed which she had insisted we take, we were very grateful as we slipped off to sleep, emitting only occasional kebab flavoured burps.

Before we left Perth we went to Thomas Cook to open an account here. We had to give them most of $4000 for the required opening deposit of £1500. OK. My sister, Inge, who is renting our house in Kardinya, had been faithfully gathering our letters and had sent a selection of the important ones over. Among them were a collection of letters from the bank and our first account statement. According to the paperwork, our £1500 had been deposited into the account, withdrawn from the account, deposited, withdrawn, deposited again and withdrawn once more and our grand total at the end of the statement was a whopping 6 pence!!! What??? And where was our money???

Needless-to-say this bank account was now our very top priority! The following day, Saturday, the three of us headed back into London town. It was another lovely sunny day and it felt like it had to be a great day. We took all the required paperwork from home to open our new UK bank account, and after waiting quite some time we finally got to speak to someone. She looked confused, took our papers and went out the back to try and sort it out. She came back and told us that our cards were ready, she wasn’t sure why the money had gone in and out but that there was $1492.06 cleared in our account. Big smile. Ok, good, but why is there £8 still missing? She said because it was Saturday there wasn’t a lot she could do but to leave it with her and she would find out. Hmmmm….

We spent the rest of the day wandering around the city, going to Leicester Square, Covent Garden, Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Circus… it is a little like being on a Monopoly Board. It was a nice day.

That evening, back in Thornton Heath, we decided to have our first real English pub experience. Chris and I had noticed that between the train station and Leia’s place there was a small pub called ‘Bar 68’. We had stuck our heads in previously and decided that it looked ok, so the arrangement was made to drop in for a quiet beer with Leia. When we arrived the door was locked but one of three guys at the bar jumped up and unlocked it for us. It was smokier inside than it had looked and as we tried to decide what to drink the three of us were all trying not to start coughing. I decided to duck off to the toilet for a bit of fresh air. On my way back to the toilet I saw some interesting informational pamphlets on the wall, I started to get suspicious. As I sat down with Leia at our little table (Chris was still paying for the beers) Leia leaned in and said “I think this is a gay bar”, my suspicions were confirmed. All of a sudden it became very obvious – the rainbow triangle on the door was not there to look pretty, the ‘All gay men need to know about condoms’ pamphlets, the signed photo of KD Lang, the photos of men dancing closely in hot pants and the trolley full of gay magazines all gave it away. We told Chris when he joined us at the table and the three of us sat there and contemplated the significance of our first pub experience being a gay bar. We finished our beers and left giggling at our good fortune.


Sunday we headed into the city (getting good mileage on our travel passes) to meet up with a couple of Chris’ colleagues from Motorola at home, Toran and Liam. They had been working just outside London for a couple of weeks and had the day off to come in and check out the city. We met them by Big Ben, from across the road when we first spotted them it looked as though the two guys were taking it in turn to propose to each other. They were down on bended knee and all. However when we asked Toran about it a minute later he told us that they both just wanted to have a photo of themselves in front of BB while he rang out 12 mid-day. The height of BB in relation to the height of photographer and subject meant that to get both faces in the shot the photographer was required to kneel. Not so exciting….

We wandered from there up the road in search of lunch and found ourselves a cosy little English pub. Not specifically for gay people this time… and got ourselves some good English fare. Chris and I were madly trying not to convert the price of our modest meals into Aussie dollars (my £3.50 bowl of wedges came to almost $10 – eeep!).

We left the boys there, with vague plans to possibly meet up again later, and walked up to Trafalgar Square, down through Saint James’ Park (it was gorgeous with the daffodils all in bloom) where we sat for a few moments on deck-chairs set out for public use. All of a sudden we were standing in front of Buckingham Palace. It was prettier this time than I remember it. My impression last time was of a big concrete block, it is still a big concrete block ( I don’t think that will ever change) but it seemed nicer this time. Despite searching the windows closely we didn’t see the Queen (she probably has better things to do – like painting her toenails) or any royals. We did see some of the guards marching around and swapping over posts. Yes they were wearing big fluffy hats.

We walked down to the River Thames where we saw the London Eye – a huge Ferris wheel that was built fairly recently and although it doesn’t fit with all the other old buildings in the city it is quite exciting. We walked along the north bank of the river to Cleopatra’s Obelisk which bears the scars of the first bombing raid on London in WWII.

Later we met Chris’ colleagues in an area of London called Earl’s Court for a few drinks and a bit of dinner. We ended up getting a little lost on the underground on the way home – some of the lines are not as straight forward as they seem, especially if you’re a little tired.

Monday morning we slept in a little, Leia included because she is now on school holidays – yay! Then Chris and I went back into the city to buy me a new mobile phone. The one I had at home had been progressively dying and the month that it wasn’t plugged in while we were travelling just pushed it over the edge. Poor little thing.

That evening the three of us decided to try out another local delicacy – Wimpy Burger. Yes, you read that right – Wimpy. It is a burger chain over here so we bravely headed up to give it a go (just so that we could report back to you, of course!). We went in and ordered take away from the man behind the counter who set to work making the burgers fresh. We walked them home and sat down to give it a go. Honestly – it was all a bit, well, wimpy. I guess you can believe what’s written on the signs!

Most of the rest of the week was reasonably quiet – we started looking at the internet for vans/cars, we hunted around for an adapter, a thumb drive and a case for ‘fat cat’ (Chris’ hard drive containing all his music files) – except for Wednesday.
The day after we arrived, Leia got a call on her mobile which was for me. It was the guy from the shipping company about our unaccompanied luggage. It had arrived the same day we did BUT we couldn’t pick it up until it had cleared Customs BUT customs are only open on Wednesdays (between 9 and 3), so they would have to hold onto our bags until then BUT because that is longer than the first two days they were going to have to charge us storage for the remaining three days. How is that fair???

This should have been a fair indication for how the whole day was going to go… We knew it was going to take us a while to get out there on public transport but we had no idea. It was seven hours from the time we left to the time we got home again with our bags. AArrrgghhhh….. The bus was tricky, the lines were long, we had to walk 20 minutes to customs, wait in line there, walk back, wait some more and then bus/train it home. The whole process was painful, with the added stress of knowing that if we didn’t get to Customs in time then we would have to leave our bags there for another whole week and pay £6.5 (about $15) a day storage….

Thursday night we went our for dinner with Leia and a group of her friends (almost all of whom are originally from Perth!) to the Covent Garden area. It was a really nice evening with some really nice people.

Friday afternoon, all feeling tired, we went to see the movie ‘Hitch’ at a local cinema, it was just like cinema’s at home. With yummy popcorn.

So all in all it was a good start to our time in the UK. We had started discussing what kind of a vehicle to buy, I thought a Mazda Bongo sounded too funny not to get, but Chris wasn’t convinced. We will get it sorted soon.