After arriving home from our Peterborough and York trip it was time to get ready for Christmas. The cottage was duly decorated and I tried my hardest to get organised with gift buying. I can plan a holiday down to the finest detail more than 12 months in advance but when it comes to Christmas I’m afraid I’m very much ‘just in time’ much to the frustration of my daughter who has everybody’s gifts sorted by the latest end of September!
With Christmas festivities and family gatherings all done we had another motorhome trip planned for over New Year, this time we were off to Henley on Thames, London and Cambridge. We collected Mo from storage on the 29th December, with no delays this time due to weather, and prepared to set off on a dry sunny morning towards Henley. The majority of our gear is left in the motorhome so all we need to pack each time is food and clothes making it a quicker getaway. There are still always some last minute questions though – did we take the towels back after washing? how much coffee was there left in the jar? do we need to restock the toilet rolls? Steve always reminds me that we are not travelling to the moon and everywhere will have shops should we need anything vital, so panic over we go with what we’ve got.
Pitched up at Henley Four Oaks CAMC site we stayed put for the remainder of the day, the following day was dry but cloudy and we walked the 25 minutes into the town. The shops are interesting and plentiful to browse around and the walk along the river has lovely views.
The following day we moved on to Abbey Wood CAMC ready to explore London for the next few days. The site is a wooded area set on a hillside that you would never knew existed amongst the residential streets. It feels quite rural and has bright green parakeets chirping away in the trees. It was New Years Eve, we were not close enough to see the fireworks at the Eye but the pops and bangs started in the vicinity of the site from around 6pm all through to way past midnight so we saw plenty from the comfort of our motorhome and watched the London Eye display on our TV.
The Elizabeth Line is within 15 minutes walk from the site and is an easy ride into the City and then on to the sights so we used this on New Years Day and visited the Churchill War Rooms. It was raining all day so we arrived very wet and soggy but had plenty of time to dry out during the 3 hours we spent exploring the maze of underground tunnels, war rooms and exhibitions. The streets of London were very busy with people and the big clean up was clearly underway from the night before with barriers and road closures being taken down.
The following day it was blue sky and sunshine so we headed back into the City and visited the Piccadilly show room of Lotus to view the 99T F1 car driven by Ayrton Senna to win at Monaco and Detroit in 1987. Senna is a hero of Steve’s so quite alot of time was spent here! From there we wandered through the streets spotting famous landmarks, through St James Park, past Big Ben and to our next venue at County Hall where we had booked to see the Agatha Christie play ‘Witness for the Prosecution’ It was set in the original County Court building and was an excellent venue to stage such a good play.
January 3rd was blue sky and sunshine again so a perfect day to visit Greenwich. After taking the Elizabeth Line we then swopped to the DLR and had a birds eye view rattling along through the spectacular Canary Wharf, through a tunnel under the Thames and emerging in the lovely neighbourhood of Greenwich Village. The shops, houses and chilled vibe felt like a world away from central London as we strolled through the parks and browsed the many independent shop windows. We visited Queen’s House a 16th century mansion which now houses the Maritime art collection aswell as the Tulip Staircase, the first self supporting spiral staircase in Britain. A walk up the hill to the Royal Observatory gave amazing views looking back over the historic Old Royal Naval College and beyond to the impressive skyline of Canary Wharf. The National Maritime Museum is also very interesting to look around but the exhibitions are so vast you need a good few hours to see it all so we barely touched on all there was to see there. A wander on down towards the Thames took us past a traditional pie and mash shop and as it was around lunchtime it worked out ideally to pay it a visit! Deciding which pie to have was quite a dilemma, with single or double mash? with liquor or gravy? I opted for the liquor as it wasn’t likely I’d get the chance to try it anywhere else and was surprised it was a parsley flavour. I never knew that! Steve played it safe with gravy. The whole experience and the traditional shop/restaurant which has been open since 1890 was one we are so glad we stumbled upon. Onwards to the Cutty Sark, built in 1869 it was one of the fastest tea clippers of its time and in its seafaring career made 8 return journeys bringing tea to London from China. It is sited in dry dock on the shore of the Thames and now exists as a museum where you can visit its decks and learn about its history.
Back at the site we were checking the weather forecast and hearing on the news that snow and ice was forecast over the weekend. We were due to travel to Cambridge on the Sunday and although the likelihood of it reaching us in London was quite low we decided it was best to move on a day earlier than planned and miss any potential snowfall or black ice on the roads.
Cambridge Cherry Hinton CAMC is situated in an old quarry and the pitches are laid out in several dead end roadways with some being down slopes, so with more snow and ice potentially on the way we opted to choose a pitch out on top on the level. Except for a brief respite of an hour in which we walked to the local shops it rained almost constantly in daylight hours for our first two days so we watched alot of TV, ate alot of food and played alot of card games!
At last a dry sunny but cold day so we caught the bus into Cambridge. The bus stop is a 10 minute walk back on the main road and whisks you into the city in about 25 minutes. We strolled around getting our bearings, stopped off at Cafe Nero for a hot chocolate and then walked along ‘The Backs’ where the River Cam winds its way behind the Colleges. It was a stunning day giving glimpses of perfectly manicured College lawns, breathtaking architecture and time-honoured traditions. We stumbled upon the Wren Library in Trinity College designed by Christopher Wren in 1676, housing medieval manuscripts, letters of Isaac Newton, Shakespeare’s first folios and A. A. Milne’s original drawings for Winnie the Pooh. Out of all the jaw dropping items there the only ones you couldn’t photograph were the Pooh ones as Disney have the copyright!
And so ended our New Year Adventures. Another trip under our belts, more CAMC sites visited, more leisure time spent in Mo and more amazing memories made.
We shall look forward to re-visiting all these places again as time allows but in the meantime there’s still a whole world out there yet to see.
Catch up with us next time as we finish our wintertime at home and head back to site to open up for the season…..
2gocaravanning 