14th June 2005 - Stonehenge and Salisbury

We drove off to Stonehenge (eastwards) for a gander. I'd been told that it wasn't worth paying to see, and that's quite right. At £5-something for an adult, it seemed a little dear for what you could, in fact, see for free. Turn away from the car park and you see the Stones as clearly as if you were in the compound. Only a wire fence came between us and the Stones and a fleeting idea of climbing the fence came and went. It wouldn't have been worth the hassle. I stuck my camera in between the fence and took a shot that should hopefully look like I was inside polystyrene - you couldn't disagree. The payers got a free audio-phone tour thing, although they seemed to be looking at us. I get the feeling that it went something like:
"...and if you turn to your right, you will see the stingy people who didn't pay..."

Stonehenge, as seen from either side of the fence.

And so towards Salisbury, a nice and very cultured town of which we strolled around. To me it seemed like it should have been a small and quiet town, but in fact was quite large with a number of streets criss-crossing each other. The local market was open but unlike Christchurch, was selling some interesting items along with tat - homemade jam and chocolates, ornaments, local fruit and veg, and some. The entire thing was aimed towards the locals, and that's what was good about it - there was much less tat being sold too. Salisbury Cathedral and Ellwood Bookshop were the main points of interest during the day in Salisbury. The cathedral was quite magnificent both outside and inside. They were currently refurbishing the building and have apparently already spent some £14m since 1986. It will take another decade or so for the work to be completed.

Outisde Salisbury Cathedral

Inside Salisbury Cathedral

Ellwood bookshop is currently run by the guy who gave Nav a lift from some place to his old bookshop. As we went in, it didn't seem that the owner remembered Nav and Nav never made any mention of the occurrence either. Nav bought a couple of books which I'm sure he'll talk about. Apparently, we are supposed to be rating (second-hand) bookshops during this trip, but I'll let Nav do that.

Ellwood Bookshop, Salisbury.

Nav: Ellwood books once cast a ray of light into an otherwise very dull Southampton existence. Not only on my first visit to this bookshop, did he actually drive me to the shop, he also served me coffee! We also had a nice chat about Oxfam versus other charity shop books, the cutural vacuum that is Southampton, and TS Eliot (he's a devoted fan). I left feeling that perhaps Southampton wasn't so bad after all, and that I should definately visit this bookshop more often...

Unfortunately it wasn't to be, shortly after he left and Southampton was again lacking one of its few highlights. So on our trip round England I resolved to go and visit his new shop in Salisbury.

It's as lovely as ever, and still boasting "more poetry than Waterstones". I picked up some more T.S.Eliot including the first part of the four quartets, which hopefully I can read in East Coker on our way through Somerset. I'm not sure if he remembered me, I was beardless last time we met, but we had a little chat about Southampton and Eliot. If your ever in Salisbury, drop by Winchester Street and take a look, say hello from the beard man of Southampton.

--- Nav

Originally, we planned to stop off at Nav's home, but that was only if our GPS device had turned up. It hadn't, so we made the trip down to Weymouth for the night's rest. We had a few choices for campsites and happened upon one that was absolutely hideous and downright awful. It was like a Butlins but in trailers, children of all ages and sizes running around, screaming. It was basically a holiday camp for the little sods and we hated it. We walked up to see the tenting site, and found a nice picturesque view of a crane and a load of workers. Dogs on leases barking at us, and more horribleness. See the photos and be disgusted....

Campsite from Hell.

We quickly left and continued up the road, turning into a traffic jam - it was rush hour and sitting in the car in the heat wasn't fun. We passed another site, although at a quick glance it didn't look nice. We finally found another, quite far from Weymouth town centre, but it was great - it was a proper farm and with that it was tranquil.

West Fleet Farm, during day-time but someone turned the light off.


-- steven

13th June 2005 - Christchurch and Bournemouth

Christchurch is a nice little town - never seems busy, yet not empty. There's always the right amount of people walking around the town. We decided to head towards the Priory Church with the assumption that we would find the Priory area that H.V. Morton dined on tea and lobster at 4:30pm. We found nothing of the sorts except for the local market selling the usual tat. Disappointingly, there also seemed to be a lack of any quaint tea-shops that I was hoping for.

We discovered the church in a state of partial restoration - much of the outside walls had been cleaned, and in comparison with some old stone, it was quite impressive. It stood out more, was eye-catching and made you realise just how long it's been standing there for. Churches do not inspire anything within me personally, but the architecture is something that is to be respected. I suppose that Nav will have better things to say about Christchurch's Priory Church.

Christchurch Priory Church.

Soon, we made our way up to a demolished stone lookout, although it does not look out very far nowadays what with the surrounding tall buildings. Off back into town, we decided that it be best to move on. Although not originally on the route, Bournemouth beckoned as it was so close and to miss it would have been silly. Hence a quick nip to the Fisherman Walk region of Bournemouth beach was made. Nav decided that a monument be made as a tribute to H.V. Morton. Then we trundled back to the car.

The ruined lookout (Priory Church in background).

The Swiftsure - place where they built ships and such like.

Nav's monument - see the shells and stones decorating the mound! See them!!

The trip up to Salisbury was fine, I'm sure we probably escaped death a couple of times, but it was okay. We camped at 'Stonehenge Touring Park' or some-such name, about 8 miles West of Stonehenge. I didn't bother to tell the owner about our trip - no-one cares really.


-- steven

12th June 2005 - Beaulieu (New Forest)

We sorted out everything that we needed to pack and put them into the car. Seemed like a tight fit at first, but after some major amount of reshuffling and what-not, managed to get it all in.

Cmaping gear and plus some other stuff around the room.

And then, around 2pm, we set off for the first stop on our trip; Beaulieu in the New Forest. The campsite that we stayed in was not at Beaulieu (as this destination was not on the original plan) but was in fact in Lyndhurst - some distance away from the destination town. It didn't take long to get to the campsite and we found it to be quite spacious. A few ponies roamed free around the site. According to the man at reception, we had arrived at the "nicest part of the New Forest". We dumped the car down in a clear spot and having found out that it would only take one to one-and-half hours to walk to Beaulieu (and more specifically, Beaulieu Abbey ruins), we set off through New Forest heading southwards.

H.V. Morton says in his book (In Search of England) that he got lost in New Forest, but that was probably because he didn't have a clue which way to go. We had a map with the footpaths labelled and where the towns lay, so we couldn't get lost. After four hours, at around 6pm, we finally managed to find the Beaulieu Abbey ruins. Yes, we got lost on the way, and on the way back to the campsite it turned out we should have taken the right path instead of the left. We had walked in a large loop before rejoining the path that we would have trod upon had we taken that right-turn. We did see signs of life (i.e. people walking) so we thought that the town was nearby, alas it turned out to be a car-park.

...at which 'someone' threw away the sign about the gift aid. They felt bad after knowing what it meant.

The Abbey itself seemed to be tucked away before 'closed gates' in that it looked to have been turned into some sort of tourist attraction, what with the museum and cafeteria and gift shop. In fact, the surrounding area was made to hold exhibitions (a Mini event had just finished). Through all this, we found the Abbey.

What remains of the Abbey.

King Henry VIII had ordered for it to be taken down and this is all that was left. The main entrance archway stands alone but does not give the impression that it was once part of a towering (three-(high)story) building. On it's own, it seems like an entrance way to a garden, as beyond it lie trees and grass with a pathway leading towards a cross. Hidden behind the walls is the abbey's Cloister, a nice square garden where it was once used for growing herbs and such like for medicinal purposes.

What it looked like back in the day.

We never ventured into Beaulieu town as it was getting late and it was a Sunday, hence there would be nothing interesting to see. Knowing that it would take at least 2hrs to return to camp (now knowing the proper directions to take), and that we had not set up camp, we felt that it would a good time to go. Making it back by 9-something pm, we had enough 'day' light to put the ten up which didn't turn out too badly. Some food and much needed rest were had.

Hmm, best be careful then...


-- steven

11th June 2005 - T-minus 24 hours + planned route for 1st week

We finally decided upon the camping kit that we needed to purchase, and that we did, along with a load of canned food and utensils that we proceeded to buy that evening.

During the day, we set the task of cleaning up Nav's car and getting it ready for packing tomorrow (Sunday). One of the items we purchased was a power inverter (which changes the cigarette lighter into a 3-pin plug socket). I had bought one a while back, but I think that we managed to burn it out (smoke emanated from the device) - this new one is much better. Part of the plan was to somehow incorporated the invertors in Nav's car, which ended up in us (or really, Nav himself) partly destroying his car and taking parts out.

This is a Rover 414 and is our trusty steed.

Us breaking the car before we set off.

We blew a number of fuses but finally managed to get it sorted. We now had a 150W-rated 3-pin power supply in the car, running off the car battery. Let's hope we don't drain it down to nothing and be left stranded...

The 'pro' method of connecting an inverter to a car's lighter leads.

Food shopping was the next priority, we us buying a load of canned food, vegetables, utensils and a coolbox. Round England with a Coolbox – sounds good to me. Nav wanted a cucumber, but there weren't any left - I did, however, see an Asda worker walking around with one, which I suspect she was doing to taunt us.

We made the decision that we would leave Winchester, Romsey and Southampton for the return visit to Hampshire, as getting out of the local area was deemed a must. The final night of sleeping in solid shelter was drawing upon us.

The planned route can be found at (copy and paste):
planned route for week 1

-- steven

10th June 2005 - Window shopping and Ben Folds

Early start to the day (around 10am), Nava and I set off to Southampton town to see what we can find on the itinery. After much looking and deliberation, we buy nothing although we did manage to get a Blacks Jura tent held on reserve. We told the guy (name was Steven) what we were up to and he seemed genuinely interested and helped muchly in our deciding of what we would ultimately purchase.

Set off back to Nav's place, had lunch and went to meet up with Suk. Had tea with Suk, Ian and Kieran (which I'm sure ended up with us talking about poo, or some topic in and un-PC fashion - always happens...). Afterwards, it was a trip to see Polly (who was cheerful as ever) and found out that she was also going to see Ben Folds play at the Southampton Guildhall on Friday night (herself, JJ and Lucy). Polly didn't know Ben Folds looked like an old-man with curly mullet-style hair and big glasses, so I think she was a little disappointed by not having a good-looking guy play for her. Better luck next time Polly.

So, Ben Folds. He was absolutely awesome, brilliant and played it cool. He and his band managed to mess up the very first song, with his bass player laughing to himself about something. Ben follows suit and that was it – the crowd loved it though, because Ben just doesn't take it too seriously – he has fun with it all. Turns out that they had just seen the new Usher video and thought it was rubbish. Anyway, I could go on about the gig, getting us to sing the trumpet section for Army, playing Philosophy with Mirsilou(sp?), playing The Luckiest specifically for a couple who were getting married soon, and encoring with a hyper-speed version of One Angry Drawf and the signature ending of chucking the piano stool at the piano keys. Hearing his live music recording is one thing, but actually seeing him hammer out the tunes was amazing - I've never seen anyone move so fast. I was a little annoyed to not take my digicam because an email said that Folds management doesn't want photos taken, but others took photos. Ah well, towards the end, it didn't matter - I was there. My first Ben Folds live experience, an artist that I would definitely go see again.
[picture to come]

Polly, Lucy and JJ - did any of you happen to take any photos? If so, could you post them to me to my Hotmail address, please? mr_steve100@hotmail.com. Thanks.


-- steven

9th June 2005 - So the journey begins...

Well, this is the start for my journey - a trip from Uxbridge Underground station to Waterloo, and then onto Southampton Central. Oh, and pictures are to come once I get a chance to sort out the uploading and linking of pictures - so just simple posts for now.

Nava (my partner in this fiendish crime of travelling around England without a fridge) meets up with me at the University of Southampton at around 4:30pm. We head back to his place, have a cup of tea and think about our escape plan. We sort out what this H.V. Morton does on his trip (figuring out that he takes over six months to complete his journey), list out the sites and sounds that he does (turns out it's practically all 'cathedral this, cathedral that'), list out an itinery, have tuna-homous(sp?) and onion sandwich (I highly recommend), and then off to bed.


-- steven