She Says - On the road again!

So all the stress of the last few days melts away, while I’m sitting in a rather comfy sleeping-mat-converted-into-chair, typing into the tiny laptop inside our tent, and Xander is cooking up Night 3’s dinner. I have to say things are going pretty well so far, but not without problems. Our final morning was a major panic. We were up past midnight on Tuesday trying to sort out some things needed before morning. Our pile of rubbish seemed to just keep growing, as did the recycling. The local recycling depot was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, but open just early enough on Wednesday for Xander to make a run with the bike of sheets, old clothes, oil from the bike, and batteries I’d been collecting for 2 years! Our very kind neighbour let us fill his rubbish bin as we’d already filled ours, and we left piles of recycling to be collected. Pushing very close to time, we’d spent all Tuesday cleaning the house, and did the last bits on Wednesday morning before the 10am final inspection, when we heaved everything outside that still needed packing on the bike! We spent the next nearly 4 hours trying to get packing to work - I should correct, Xander did this while I tried to stay out of the way! For some reason, things that had packed easily only days before no longer worked, and we suddenly found ourselves with a lot of luggage and nowhere for it to go!!! I kept myself busy throwing out rubbish and things that really weren’t necessary and clearly weren’t going to fit, as well as packing the last extra packages to send to Oz (there was a bit left over or we didn’t want to get squashed in the boxes, and a few extra things got added from the pile!). All this in rather un-British heat that had been lingering for several days (and most of the preceding 2 weeks). Eventually Xander managed to get everything on the bike well enough for us to hit the road. I have to say that I was feeling good about things by this stage though, as I’d had a little touch of fate. Our driveway was paved with small stones, and occasionally we found fossil stalactites or similar in amongst them. At one late point in the morning, I looked down and found a perfect fossil ammonite, better than any I’ve seen in the shops. I took this as a good sign of things to come, and squirreled it away in my jacket (amongst many other things that just weren’t going to make it into the luggage!) to keep along the way.

First stop was Lichfield to drop off library books (another cost saving measure!), and do some banking including picking up the very specifically ordered wad of American dollars (need lots of $1 notes for “official charges” on borders!). We finally hit the road at 2.30pm, heading for Hadrian’s Wall but needing a stop about halfway to get the new sleeping bag liners. As we were running so behind, we only went a short distance further before looking for a campground to get ourselves chilled for our first night. Heading for a city called Ripon, where I wanted to see some decorations inside the cathedral, we found a good campground, which as luck would have it was closed for the night but we caught the managers on their way out! As we pulled into the tent area, I found myself growing a giant grin as I realised this was our life for the next 2 years!!! We got ourselves set up in beautiful evening sunshine and were eating a dinner of Nepalese dhal bhat (lentils and rice) by 7pm. Only problems to note by this time were the heat and my lack of summer ventilated gloves, and the tent pannier’s position being directly in the line of the exhaust, causing it to blacken and get very hot. We enjoyed a pleasant evening, sorting through things and adding stickers to various parts of the bike. We’d bought a world map through the Horizons Unlimited forum, which we will use to plot our progress. Xander had found some alphabet stickers, and we used these to add our blog website above the map, plus our names on either side of the Aussie sticker on the front of the bike – making our mark as it were! Unfortunately, with all the work to be done the website never got finished – it’s almost there but not good enough, and as it’s nearly impossible to update on the road, we’ve given it up (plus Xander forgot to save all the information off the hard-drives onto the mini-laptop!!). So the blog is it, but as it’s the piece we intended to update, it’s no problem, it’s just unfortunate that a few things we hoped to have alongside this trip have not eventuated – website, logo, stickers with both printed to hand out to promote the trip and give to kids, trip t-shirts, other promotional things. In the end, none if it was as important as getting on the road!

Day 2 saw us waken to another beautiful day and refreshed after a good night’s sleep. Some rethinking on packing found Xander a lot happier with the luggage situation. However, our tent pannier got rather scorched later in the day, resulting in melting and cracking in one spot and a very hot tent! Luckily, little damage occurred (a bit of melted window plastic on the tent) and changing the orientation of a piece of exhaust pipe gave us a nice extension past the tent pannier. All looking good so far! We stopped in Ripon for lunch, some grocery shopping, and a visit to the cathedral, and reached a lovely campsite around 4pm, complete with greeting party of 2 happy friendly dogs and practically on Hadrian’s Wall. We’ve set up here for 3 nights so we can explore the wall, something I’ve wanted to visit since I did a school project report on it somewhere between ages 8 to 10! Getting into camp early meant we were able to snack on last night’s leftover food and walk the nearby sections of wall that are fairly intact – one reason for heading to this particular area – before enjoying a sausage and capsicum pasta dinner. Xander found some metal to wrap around the tent pannier to prevent any further damage from the exhaust, and we had another warm comfortable night’s sleep, ready to hit the wall in the morning. Unfortunately Murphy struck again, with the bike’s trip computer apparently frying (Xander seems to have fixed it now), the day started rather cloudy (lousy for nice landscape photos of the wall!) and it was raining by the time we started hiking our chosen section of wall. We got enough time to explore the very large Roman fort of Housesteads and still got to admire to beautiful countryside along the wall to Steel Rigg before we had to put our heads down and push through to the bus stop for a return trip. Getting back to camp earlier than intended, we rigged up our purpose-made bike-to-tent tarp, which has given us a very comfortable living area out of the rain. Murphy struck again with the weather clearing up barely half an hour after we got settled! We’ve had a gentle evening of hot drinks, writing, lovely stir-fry beef dinner, washing clothes and ourselves (washing my hair is easier at night rather than putting a helmet on a wet head!). Unfortunately, a group of 2 families has set up near us and is playing music and has loud kids, spoiling the serenity of our lovely spot – earplugs tonight! Just waiting now to see if the remaining clouds will give us a nice sunset before we go to bed…

So the reality of being out of work and travelling is slowly settling in. We had a very nice evening with a few friends for our leaving do, including members of the lovely Friends of Muckley Corner Common who gave me a beautiful dragonfly brooch as a leaving present. Other friends dropped in during the final week to say goodbye. A big thank you to those who have been there for us, seeing us off and for their very kind donations to the trip. Very much appreciated everyone! Now we just need to get used to packing and unpacking, taking a slow pace, and working out buying the right amount of groceries for the luggage room we have!