England road trip
This time, I traveled to England with my father in the camper van I built with him this year. It was great to see everything again. I hope to not make a very lengthy blog post out of this and just give a summary of some pictures and places we have been to.
After some smaller or bigger circumstances, we reached the ferry in Calais, France and took over to Dover.
First of all - the ferries tell you to be there quite a lot of time ahead. This is required when going from Calais to Dover - while they seemded to be less strict about this when going from Dover back to Calais.
Our journey then started at 11:00 in Dover. We went straight to London, as we had a date with old friends a few days later in King’s Lynn and we wanted to stay some days in London before.
London
We arrived in London at 13:00 where we parked the van on the street near Falconwood and got into the city by train. Ate at Pizza Express, walked around London. Visited many sightseeing places, Westminster Abby, the National History Museum and so on. In the evening we visited the Jazz Bar 606, which had good jazz music with it and really is worth a visit.
We had quite a lot of things to do with a lot of events, although most of it went without a lot of planning.
We spent the next day - 20th of August - in London as well. In the morning, we went through the business district near the Tower Bridge, which was a very nice feeling to just walk along the busy routes while everyone went to work.
We went to see the Tower of London, but only from the outside, as I went there as a kid and did not feel like visiting Crown Jewls. They likely did not change a lot anyway.
More interesting was the visit of City Garden (skyscraper). It is free to take the lift up and you really have a nice few.
We then went by the London Monument and St. Paul’s Cathedral. Listened to the clock sound of Big Ben, and looked at the Westminster Abbey and House of Lords.
The National Gallery was crowded, so we did not enter - in the hindsight quite good, as we still had a lot to see. Instead, we got into St. Martin Church and went on to the Hyde Park. In the Serpentine Gallery, in the middle of the park, there was a excibition of the art of Judy Chicago. This was really interesting and worth it.
We then went along to the Science Museum, which was not well organized. As it was free, we took a look inside for an hour.
In the evening we went back to our car and got to a more quiet parking place at a TESCO near Ely to rest shortly. We had a date with old friends in King’s Lynn Orb and Sceptre, which had good beer as well. The pub also allowed us to stay on their parking place throughout the night, so we used the roof tent of the van there, which we did not use in London so that we do not look that much like a camper.
King’s Lynn
The next day, we visited King’s Lynn. I lived there for a few months during school, so that it really was a nice visit. Some places were still the same as in memories, while the brain also loses quite a lot of it.
We went to get some food in Prezzo.
In the evening, the King’s Lynn Town Band did practice. Fortunately, they did lend me a trombone, so that I could play with them. It was really nice. I love how music is just the same throughoug every place. Especially the British town bands are basically the origin of brass bands. A type of music I also like a lot.
Next day, we visited the company my father used to work for and visited some other places we used to go.
We have also been to a fish & chips store which had really good chips/fries. More often than not, the small local stores are much better than larger food companies.
Ely
Went to Ely. The church there is really nice. But to visit it from the inside one has to pay 14 pounds. While not too much into church stuff, we went to the evening prayer for free, which was also a very interesting experience.
Cambridge
We then went to Cambridge to stay there. We found a quiet place in the near of Blues Bar Hank’s. As it is free to stay there after 8pm, we were not charged for parking and had another nice Jazz evening in the Blues Bar. They had an improvisation session where anyone can bring the instrument - though only really good people played there. This is something I did know exists, though I have seen this in Germany a few times as well since then. Seems that this is more a scene thing.
The next day (23rd), we took the car outside Cambridge after 8am and got into the city by bus. We looked at a lot of old buildings and churches. Cambridge also has many Colleges, some of which you can walk through, like the King’s College. Does not look to fancy, but it looks like a very nice community together studying there.
For a little entertainment, we went to LockHouse, which is an Escape Room in Cambridge. A few minutes over the estimated time, we made it. It was the first escape room for my father, so I am really glad, that we did this together.
We somehow got to a restaurant with live music to eat.
And while all of this is not enough, also went clubbing in the Vinyl club in Cambridge. Quite a fun experience.
Sea
Having seen and done a lot in Cambridge as well, we went to the sea to chill out. Unfortunately, it was raining a lot.
We found that “Wetherspoons” is quite a good and inexpensive food option for English breakfast or drinks. And also provides shelter as the weather was not good anymore.
In Mersea, which is technically an island, we stayed the night and spent the next day with good (or at least say better) weather at the beach.
That day I experienced that I had been the victim of a credit card fraud, which has been explained a little further here.
After staying another day travelling around england, we did take things a little slower and chilled. There was a summer bank holiday on Monday throughout England, where many bars had local events for drinking and music. This was yet another gem. Going into a British bar, where a Blues Brothers Cover band performs. It just was very stereotypical there.
Fun Facts
When driving around being used to metric units, I wondered how my TomTom navigation system did tell to go 65km/h when the sign said 40mph while 40*1.6 is 64km/h. Wouldn’t you be overspeeding listening to the navigation system?
Turns out that you need to overspeed quite much to get a fee, as the (inofficial) tolerance of the speed cameras is quite high: They add 10% + 2mph on top. Thats 6mph for 40mph. Nearly 10km/h tolerance.
In the car itself, the mph setting did not have an obvious setting like Locale -> Units.
Therefore, the traffic sign detection of the speed limit did correctly interpret the 50 on the road as a 50km/h limit.
It took a while to find that the setting to show the fuel consumption in miles per gallon did also have the effect of setting all other metric units to miles and correctly interprete the traffic signage.
Weird interdependency, but fair.
Back to weird regulations, it is allowed to drink and drive there with 0.8 promille. I thought that the German limits of 0.5 promille are already relatively high, but yes.
Finally I had a really nice trip. I like being around with the small van as it has the perfect size and is still a car and not a bus, which has many benefits.