In a Van Down by the River!

Well, we've made it to England! We flew from Reykjavik to London. It was harder to get through customs than either of us thought it would be. Apparently my parents aren't the only ones that have a problem with us traveling without any plans. We spent a solid twenty minutes with the very pleasant albeit dubious border patrol guy deciding the fate of our plans. When he discovered that we arrived in London, having quit our jobs and not having any accommodations for even that night, he was a little skeptical at the ingenuousness of our plans. We assured him that we aren't up to anything nefarious or planning on stealing any jobs. We just want to travel, learn, taste and discover the world. In the end, he let us through and told us that we have six months of allowed time in the UK.  Phew. Not gonna lie, I started sweating a little. Actually, a lot. I thought the gig was up and over before it even started.

I am utterly fascinated with the UK. I've loved the idea of England, especially Victorian England for about as long as I've been able to read. Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorites and Harry Potter is pretty much most favorite story ever told (In fact, we are listening to HP 7: The Deathly Hallows on Audible as we drive through England. Yes, I know, my nerd is showing). I spent a summer in college working at a summer camp and somehow managed to get half of the staff to speak in an English accent with me. (Geez, I just realized how weird I am.) We even convinced some of the campers we were British royalty. Ahh, good times, good times. But basically, I'm living out my dreams being in England with people who have actual English accents (English by the way, not British. I stand corrected by a very nice old gentleman we met in Glastonbury). Anyway, we decided that the best way to see as much of England in a short amount of time was to rent a campervan and camp our way around the English countryside.

We got to the van rental place last week and met our extremely orange companion for the next two weeks, Arden (they name all of the vehicles). She is a Toyota Lucida that's been "tricked out" (I think the trick is on us) to convert to a "living area" (I wish i could put more emphasis on those quotations. Just picture me saying it was really sardonic air quotes.) The front of the van is a normal mini van, with the exception of the driver's column being on the right side of the vehicle. The back has half of a bench seat that you can lever around to face backwards or sideways. Then the rest of it is 2/3 of a small (read, small) mattress with storage underneath that houses kitchen items and a really tiny table you can set up. As if you were going to have afternoon tea in the van. As if (said with an Alicia Silverstone, Clueless intonation)! With the seat backwards you can pull out two metal arms and lay a piece of plywood across it and then add the last 1/3 mattress piece to velcro to the rest of the mattress. It's a very smelly, er....cozy way to tour.

Ahh, here she is. Miss Arden.

Now, Josh and I aren't strangers to camping. I mean, we both graduated from Messiah with an Adventure Education degree which has given us some pretty extensive backpacking and outdoor experience. We've done our time camping in cold weather, hot weather and everything in between. But camping in England...in a van...really not sure it was our brightest idea. It rains absolutely every single day right now and is so so so so so cold at night (and during the day too actually). I've been sleeping fully clothed in two pair of wool socks, mittens, a sweatshirt and my coat with the hood up over my winter hat. We got flooded out of one of campsites this week actually. During the night it poured and poured and the winds were so ferocious that I was certain it was going to blow our van over. The next morning Josh told me he was a little scared too. When my husband tells me he's concerned about something, then I know it's not just my imagination of how crazy something is. That next morning, we were awoken by something furiously knocking on the van window telling us we really needed to move. I grabbed my glasses and hopped out of the van and we really really needed to move.

I took this after we moved the van. But the van used to be parked by the right side of the upper left "puddle". That puddle is the river connecting to the puddle in the field. It was craziness. Like Hurricane Sandy circa 2011 craziness.

The other side of the field

Other parts of the area were flooded to as we drove to our next destination that day. This road was aptly named Watery Lane.

I am 35 years old. I'm divorced and I live in a van down by the river!! Haha, no not really. But Chris Farley's antics surely seem to fit our current situation...

I was incredibly nervous to try driving on the opposite side of the road. It is so incredibly counter intuitive and confusing to my poor brain. It's a bit like trying to do the back of your hair in the mirror. You move your hand one way and it's not the way you think so you move the other way round and basically just look like an idiot. That's basically what it feels like trying to drive in the UK. Left-handed turns are actually right and across traffic. There are roundabouts EVERYWHERE. And it's mostly country roads that are actually quite picturesque. They all seem to be dotted with sheep and rolling green hills. So, super pretty and idyllic but very narrow and no shoulder. The speed limit is usually about 40-50 mph so people drive 60-70. The motorways (highways) are 60-70 mph so people drive 80-90. They are really very good drivers but they drive so fast. And I used to be a racecar driver. I like fast. But this. Nope. No-sir-ee. I'm a granny driver here. But I am getting used to it. I think. Ask me in two weeks. Arden isn't really helping me out, though. When the headlights are on, there's some sort of crossed wire in the tail lights that makes Miss Arden think she's in Reverse so that anytime the brakes are depressed, she beeps. Oh and she decides to turn off the windshield wipers about every 43 seconds or so. She is so helpful.

Sheep!!

Rolling countryside full of sheep... i.e. most of England

Baby sheep! They are the sproingy-est little animal on the planet. They bounce around like Tigger. It's utterly adorable.

Not the best of photos, but the whole countryside looks like this and that first picture of sheep up there

We started our touring journey at Stonehenge. It's gloriously historic and old. Like 5000+ years old. I so wish we could've walked inside what's left of the stone circle but that's not allowed anymore. There's such a mysterious aura surrounding Stonehenge. No one is exactly certain why it was built but there are plenty of theories. What they've seemed to determine though, is that it used to be a burial grounds. It seems to have been built around the soltices, specifically the Winter Solstice. They would arrive at the circle and celebrate the Winter Solstice in hopes of the farming season reappearing productively the following year. What really blows my mind is the geometry that needed to be done in order to create the circle. They did it in a perfect circle with the stones being just a few degrees off of each other, like the spokes of a wheel. And the stones they chose for each trilathon (the two vertical stones supporting the horizontal one on top) were chosen and sunk into the ground in order to be in line with each other. And one side of the hill was notably higher than the other side and they still picked stones to line up accordingly. These were really smart dudes. 5000 years ago. Totally incredible.

Replicas of the domiciles that the neolithic era people likely built and lived in

Stonehenge

Josh totally looks like batman with the hood tied up on his Icelandic rain suit. I like him so much.

From Stonehenge we went to Cheddar, the home of real Cheddar cheese. Apparently much like champagne can't really be called champagne unless it comes from Champagne, France; cheddar cheese can't really be called cheddar cheese unless it's gone through the authentic cheddaring process which today, has largely become automated with machines. In Cheddar, England lies a little cheese factory and shop that still does the process by hand. For a mere 1.95 pounds, you can watch them do it. They give you an all-day ticket that you can come and go to watch the process. The whole process, not including the maturing time, takes about seven hours so if you really want to, you can come back and watch each stage. Or, like we did, you can watch the 15-minute video of the whole process and just take a gander at wherever they are in the process when you get there. It stinks to high heaven in the touring place. But it's pretty awesome to see they do it by hand.

Making the cheese by hand

One of the maturing rooms. They also have a cave in which they age some of their cheese. Hence the term, cave-aged cheddar. Go figure.

Slicing and weighing matured cheese to sell.

From Cheddar we unintentionally went to Glastonbury. We went because it was the closest laundromat we could find and we uber-needed to do laundry. It turns out Glastonbury is really charming and fun. We found out that they were having a Medieval Fayre the following day so we actually decided to go back for it. It poured absolutely the whole time. Like buckets. My shoes took three days to dry. But it was super fun and ridiculous. Grown men in legitimate suits of armor wielding blunted weapons. Children running around with wooden crossbows and swords, nearly Katniss-ing each other. Oh and the incredibly beautiful and captivating Glastonbury ruins. There's all sorts of folklore surrounding the area regarding Arthur and the knights of the round table. They claim it's where Arthur and Guinevere met. Also, it's home to one of the world's largest pop festivals, hosting artists such as Adele and Van Morrison. It's also home to a lot of hippies, stoners and head shops. It's quite charming, really.

Graffiti in Glastonbury. These guys look like a really familiar cartoon to us. Neither of us can place where we know it from, though. Anyone know?

Lots of tents set up for the Fayre

Minstrels with period instruments. There's a drummer you can just make out in the corner and a piper you can't see

A battle re-enactment of two historically important people I can't remember the names of anymore 

Totally pouring but still knocking around in suits of armor.

A terrible picture of a fraction of the Glastonbury Abbey ruins

A brief reprieve from the rain

From Glastonbury we headed up the country to Bath where the ancient Romans and later the Victorian-era English used to travel for different ailments ranging from skin problems to paralysis. They talk about it in Pride and Prejudice which is mostly why I wanted to go...The baths themselves are situated just below street level and are a natural hot spring that bubble up. The Romans thought it was a gift from the gods and dedicated it as such. There is soooo much history to this place though.I had no idea. I'll let you look it up though instead of boring you to tears repeating everything we learned in our four-hour tour of the place. Four hours. Ugh. It was fascinating though.

The healing waters 

The ancient Romans used to send messages to the Gods, specifically Minerva, written on little pieces of metal, rolled up and tossed into the waters. Usually the messages were pleas to incur the wrath of God on people who wronged them. As in, 'Nancy stole my cloak. You should probably kill her or at least seriously maim her.' 

We've always associated antiqued white columns with ancient roman ruins but it turns out the Romans actually loved color. This finial has been preserved from ancient Roman times and is an example of the bold colors Romans actually employed when creating their structures.

From Bath, we settled in at Derbyshire. As in what Mr. Darcy owns more than half of in P&P (I told you I was a nerd). We went to visit the two houses that were used to film both the BBC and the Kiera Knightly 2005 version of Pemberley from P&P. The Kiera Knightly one uses the Chatworth House. We were able to take a tour complete with audio guide through the house. It's absolutely enormous. I can't even imagine the staff it would've taken in the Victorian era to maintain. Strike that; I can't imagine what it takes today! Here are a few of the views: 

This is just the entrance. 

The Kiera Knightly Elizabeth Bennet looks out at this view in the movie

This marble gal is also in the movie

This room is definitely in the movie too. It's Lizzie's first awe-inspired view on her tour of Pemberley.

The ridiculously extensive grounds had a topiary maze to go through. Josh is like, stupid good at it. I just wandered around, turned around when i got to a dead end and tried something else. Josh did it. Like with a strategy and stuff. Mensa material, that one.

The outside of Chatsworth/Pemberley. Rather disrupted my pretending to be Lizzie B. with the inclusion of 21st century scaffolding on the outside...

Then it was a visit to Lyme Park, the BBC version of Pemberley. But the house was closed :( The gardens were open and I was able to duck into a tour that went underneath the house to where the servants lived and how they traveled from the servant/working quarters to the main part of the house without being seen. But in real life with the family that actually lived there. Not Mr. Darcy's family. Because he's not real. So they say... 

Pemberley. I mean, Lyme Park. Colin Firth dove into the lake for the famous lake scene in BBC P&P.

It's so pretty!

I backed into the space in the parking lot and ran the tail pipe into the grass bank. I didn't even feel the resistance when I was reversing. The ground was just so soft because of that whole raining all the time thing. It took  me ten minutes of digging with a leatherman tool and sticks to get the clump of dirt out. Major facepalm moment.

And now we're about two hours shy of Scotland and we've stopped into a hotel for a brief moment of warming up and laundry. But the laundry service is stupid expensive. Like eight dollars to wash one shirt. Three bucks for a pair of socks...Nope. So meet our washing machine. It's a dry back with a bumpy washboard of sorts on the inside. You put a few articles in the back, pour in some soap and water and squish, roll, agitate for three minutes. Pour out the dirty water, fill it back up and rinse. Repeat that then wring them out and hang to dry. Good times.

Mildly better than shower laundry?

We've got a week left with Arden to see Scotland and deliver her back to London. We'll see where she takes us!

Oh, and P.S. here's a link to Josh's blog. He's chronicling his rather existential journey of purpose.