London calling

It's 4:30am and I'm sitting in a flat in Brixton with a motorcycle helmet on my head which is playing Beck's latest album on a Spanish iPod. Don't ask.

Let's face it, I'll tell you anyway. Eventually.

We landed in London last night, me to my new digs and the rest to a hotel. The motorhome is safely ensconsed in Rochdale near Manchester but not without looking the worse for wear. Not sure if I mentioned previously the conversation between a tree in a caravan park in France and the motorhome. There was heated debate, an argument you could say. The motorhome lost the point. And we lost £500.

It could have been worse. We knew there was a £500 excess on the insurance, it was pointed out to us a number of times. What they didn't point out was that it applied only to damage lower than six feet on the vehicle. Que?!! Oh yes, they told us. It's standard in the UK. If damage is sustained above six feet from the ground, you have to pay the lot. The lot was £900 but they were willing to do us a 'deal' and only charge us £700. Bugger that, we said. Why do you get insurance cover with this exclusion if the vehicle is about 9 feet high? A vehicle that doesn't even begin till it's more than a foot off the ground. What's the bloody point? I think even most of the windows are higher than that. Short story was bloke getting dressing down from Arna and us walking away with what we thought we'd be up for.

I last wrote from Chemille I think. We had a hard dash up to Calais but we made it in plenty of time. Another self discovery: I don't travel on water well. When we took the ferry from Dover to Calais I was pretty queasy but I put it down to the jetlag and driving, the constant motion. Willingly standing out on deck in the cold and the rain in an effort to quell the sea in my stomach, I thanked the various shipping lines for having made the six hour ferry journey we had been thinking of too expensive.

And onto the motorways in the UK. After all the driving on the right side of the road we had gotten used to over six weeks, it actually took us more time to get used to driving on the left again, of expecting cars to merge from the right and going around roundabouts the correct way. Freaky. We arrived at Dover at around 10:30pm and drove until around 3am, stopping off to spend the night beside a park in a little village called Tottenham. In France the motorways have these free spots to stay called Aires and sometimes they have facilities like showers and places to dump your waste water etc. In the UK at the services on the motorways (petrol station, restaurant, games room complex) you can park for 2 hours for free but after that you have to pay £8 to stay in the carpark. Hence we parked on the side of the road in a village that night. I drove the next day into Edinburgh, a whopping six or seven hours behind the wheel and there were some fabulous 12% hills and narrow roads. We stopped at the border to Scotland. Lady Luck smiled when I made a wrong turn and discovered the caravan park that became our home for the next three days.

As has been my habit and I know you will not expect less from me, the facilities report is very favourable. The caravan park was situated on the grounds of a working estate with a beautiful manor house (administration building or residence, not sure) a surprisingly good restaurant in the stables building and acres of well kept grass with cattle and sheep fields beyond. The bathrooms etc were very good although the sinks were ridiculous: there were push button taps and the water pressure was so great you literally had to stand back two feet so as not to get soaked, stick just the corner of your toothbrush near the flow or certainly lose your toothpaste. They're sure not worried about wasting water in a town where, as I read on the side of a bus, it rains 312 days a year. Inexplicably, the bus advertisement imparting this shocking news followed it with the word 'brilliant'.

I will share a caravan park outrage: for the first time we encountered pitch police, important people with clipboards who inspected the camp every day at 12:30pm. Upon returning late from a day in the city we found a red tag on the awning of our motorhome with the words 'message at reception'. As Alex was expecting a fax, this was nothing unusual. Until the next morning when we discovered that we needed a permit (and to pay and extra £2 a night) to put out the awning. HUH? This awning is permanently attached to the motorhome, it rolls in and it rolls out to give shelter for maybe six feet (there's that magic distance again...). I'm still struggling to understand the policy. It sounds very petty I know but it seems common practice that you pay for a site and what you put on that side eg tables and chairs or whatever, is up to you. I leave that one to the puzzle box.

On to Edinburgh itself. The town is absolutely lovely, very hilly and cobblestoned with fabulous gothic and other architecture. Throughout August it is not just the Fringe going on; there are eight separate festivals held at the same, including the Military Tattoo at Edinburgh Castle and a writers festival. The Royal Mile, which as the name suggests is the road leading to the castle, was absolutely packed with small stages and flyer distributors for the various festivals though mainly the Fringe. There is so much on. We only caught a couple of shows.

And on to my new home. It is on Brixton Road, right across from the tube station. It is loud and colourful and busy at all hours of the day. It is on the third floor above a shoe shop and the Eurostar goes past on the railway bridge right outside my bedroom window and makes the whole house shake. It's great! Exciting and new, which novelty always is.

Steven has been wonderful in providing me with a soft landing; I have my own bedroom, his old lap top to use on the wireless broadband connection, a UK mobile phone sim card and an A-Z London book so I have a tube map and road map to get around with. Today we had a full English breakfast and then he took me around on his motorbike and we shopped in Soho (well, he shopped and I tagged along) and drove through Piccadilly Circus, an apt name for that intersection! We also stopped by Stockwell tube station and looked at the memorial for Jean Charles de Menezes, the guy who was shot and killed by the police whilst running for his train. There were the Green Left equivalents on the street outside our place today with a megaphone, rustling up signatures for a petition to force the police chief to resign.

I hope to get some of Arna's pics up over the next couple of days; she's taken some real beauties over the trip.

And so endith the motorhome adventure but not the adventures of sidgirl. Stay tuned, folks.

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