Travelling South towards the Peak District and Snake Pass, this is a bikers favourite road with lots of twists and turns but also a high rate of accidents too, we took it easy as it was still raining! The Peak District is beautiful, so lush and green, we stayed at a cute boutique hotel called, “Buckingham Hotel”, its owner obviously loved the movies and the stars as every room had pictures of a featured movie star in it and the elevator was completely covered with magazine covers from old movies, so much so that it was hard to see that it was an elevator, you could spend all day just following the history of the movies on the walls. It happened to be the Gilbert and Sullivan Festival on in Buxton for 5 weeks so we were so lucky to get a room that night. It came with a fantastic breakfast and after we sat in the “front room” with our coffee and read one of hundreds of new magazines that they had on display for you to borrow, and chatted with other guests about where to go and what to see in the world, it was so relaxing, what holidays are made of. As we drove away from this lovely hotel, a couple we met were waving and shouting good bye and good luck out the 2nd flr window, it was like something from a movie!!
Onto Oxford, we hooked up with Nige once again and his son Gregg and Andria, stayed the night at their place, went out for a great pub dinner and to catch up with them, thanks again guys and good luck Andrea with your rowing! Trev says the coffee was great too!!!
Next morning Nige, Trev and I rode onto “The New Forest” area , i hadn’t actually heard of this area in England, it was so lovely, full of cottages with thatched roofs and beautiful flowers, there are areas where wild horses roam, lots of them, so you have to watch the road carefully. England really does have some beautiful countryside.
We stayed in another great hotel called “The Penny Farthing” in Lyndhurst, hense the picture of me on the bike! This little town was amazing it even had a Mazaradi and Ferrari Dealership right in the middle of town, there must be some money here.
While Trev got a quick hair cut I spotted a cute coffee shop, I loved the name and combination of what they served, right up my alley , I think if I ever started a place, I would call it this!
Saying goodbye to Nige in Lyndhurst, good luck guys see you at our place in a year from now. We set off for Paris via the Chunnel (Euro Tunnel). Wow its expensive 79 euro for the trip but it was very cool, book online as it is way cheaper, you simply ride the bike right onto the train and get off the bike and wait beside it for 30 mins and then ride off, 27miles under the channel, you cant believe there is water above you, its so odd!
We rode off the train and onto Arrass, a little town in France we had actually been to before a couple of years back, only problem was that the GPS decided not to show any maps, well for anyone who knows Trev he likes the GPS to show him the way, that way he dosnt have to doubt hes on the right road, well it didn’t show him anything! Now we are travelling at 80mph on the motorway and dont have directions? The road signs were clear to Arrass so we just followed those but what had happened is that he had not uploaded the Europe maps to the Zumo GPS, he had them loaded onto his laptop and when the Zumo is attached to the laptop it showed the maps but once unplugged and put back on the bike, no maps. That was a tad stressful till we got that figured out! Alls good now though, we both love the GPS, me because i don’t have to navigate on the back of the bike which is way worse than in a car and Trev because he dosnt have to doubt his turnoffs ect. It has been so accurate and great, albeit that it takes up around the houses sometimes, just means we get to see more of the country, still it always gets us to where we want to go, so far anyway.
Our Route – Edinburgh to Kielder in Northumberland district, Newcastle UponTyne thru North York Moors and over the Humber Bridge to Grimsby, Wigan thru Snake pass and stayed the night in Buxton in the Peak District then onto Oxford and Lyndhurst in New Forest area and then over to France via Folkestone and the Euro Tunnel.
Cost of accommodations: Boutique hotels/ b&bs 65-88 pounds per night breaky included. Pint of beer 3 pound a pint, litre of gas 1.19.
Best Accomodations on route: The Buckingham Hotel in Buxton and The Penny Farthing in Lyndhurst.
General Feeling: As we mostly stayed and hung out with family its difficult to say but I think in general we found that England is going thru some economic struggles in the north anyway but in the south it didn’t feel that way, it seems that they are far more conscious of energy consumption than us and that we find odd but hey maybe we will all be getting to that soon enough anyway, washing lines are a given, no one uses dryers much unless they have too, hot water tanks are not turned on until needed, most have instant hot water systems and lights and computers etc. are turned off constantly, something we just arnt used to in Canada – yet!! Lets just say we are happy we live in Canada.
All in all we enjoyed England and visiting family and old friends and saw some new places we hadn’t been before, countryside is so pretty here but you definitely get a feeling that the culture is shifting, most pubs have moved onto “the carvery phase” buffet style lunch and dinners – yuk not our cup of tea! Lots of pubs closing down as the no smoking ban and harsher drinking and driving laws have come into effect I think its just adjusting to new rules and will level out. A lot of brits are not happy with their government and the crap that they have got the country into of late. We notice with the no borders that a lot of people from eastern Europe are taking the low paying jobs that the brits don’t want to do and are they are happy to have the work.
Paris here we come!
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