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Lulworth Cove: The Durdle Door
Posted by daveb on August 16th, 2007
Leaving the YHA Youth Hostel, we headed off towards Lulworth Cove and the Durdle Door on the Jurassic Coast of Dorset. Squiffy sheepishly agreed to shun the safe road route and instead follow the daveb hill-climb route. Great choice, I thought. True, the trodden path disappeared early on and, true, we did walk up a big hill only to descend the other side for little additional value (the road route was more-or-less flat), but–come on–get some of that fresh air in your lungs!
Question: What’s the most unexpected thing you’d expect to see at the bottom of a deserted hill that you just scaled and descended?
Answer: In our case, a charity collection lady. We got a photo to prove it. Shame, she had been stood in that spot since the crack of dawn and we were here first contributers — sometime mid-morning.
View our Durdle Door gallery.
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First night in a Youth Hostel
Posted by daveb on August 15th, 2007
Our first night in a YHA Youth Hostel was in West Lulworth, near to Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door. Some of Squiffy’s friends joked about how difficult I would find staying in a hostel, given my background of relative luxury (in fact it was only today, that I was looking back longingly at the photo of my rig).
Truth is, staying in a youth hostel in Britain is easy once you know the following:
- There are no youths in a British youth hostel. SQ and I were by far the youngest there. We reckon that the average age was 65.
- In Britain, there is a secret protocol of near-silence: Any noise whatsoever is discouraged. Before I experienced a hostel, I had visions of talking to everybody, making new friends, laughing, group drinking, cavorting, etc. In fact, people don’t even look at one another.
- In split male and female dormitories, it is encouraged, no, expected that you get completely naked within 60 seconds of entering the dorm room. This works best if you are an slightly unbalanced old man with a saggy bottom and space is limited in a room of similarly unbalanced old men with saggy bottoms.
- Breaking wind whilst in bed is expected. It works best if you reflect the sound off a wall, so that your dormmates hear only the echo and thus are not able to pinpoint the source.
- Beware the hostel kettles! They have been all but destroyed by limescale. Boil water in a pan instead.
- Do not use the loo just before bed. Instead go to bed with a full bladder and lay in wait until your roommates are moving from light to deep sleep. In a short, sharp movement, jump out of bed and throw the lightswitch to ‘on’. Mumble to yourself that you need the loo. Leave the room, but do not switch-off the lights. Return to room and shake a noisy carrier bag around for about 30 seconds. Deactivate lights and return to bed. Wait 20 minutes. Return to the start of this bullet point and repeat.
Does anyone have any youth hostel experiences or tips to share?
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Concerned call
Posted by daveb on August 14th, 2007
My wonderful sister called me recently. She was concerned that, from reading this blog, it seemed that we were having a terrible time as our posts had come across quite negative (thanks for your concern, sista). Just in case anyone else reading this blog is similarly concerned (thanks!), let’s set the record straight. On the contrary, we are having an execellent time. True, we’ve had a few miserable moments–mostly with camping in the rain–but overall our adventure is going really well so far.
In particular, my writing style is to highlight oddments that surprise and amuse me; not bad, not good — just different.
No doubt, things will get a lot tougher when we leave our familiar land, and we’ll be sure to relate our experiences to you. In the meantime, just know that we are very much enjoying our trip and that we wear a cheeky grin as we write these posts. (And, point taken, I’ll write some more positive posts to balance things out!)
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Campers on the brain
Posted by daveb on August 13th, 2007
As soon as we realised that the IoW camper van plan was going nowhere, we set off for pastures new stopping off at a pub in Christchurch for a cheap meal-deal lunch which raised our spirits. As we journeyed to our first night in a YHA, we stopped stopped off at various garages to have a look at campers; everything was soooo expensive (in the order of £6500 and upwards). We came across two vehicles which caught our interest: a bright blue VW Baywindow camper (i.e. the surfer-dude type) rusty shell with no interior and a white Land Rover Discovery 200 (available only if the mechanic’s friend, who had previosuly agreed to buy it some time ago, no longer wanted it).
One would make a great refurbishment project (although perhaps not ideal for immediate use) and the other would be wicked 4×4 fun but couldn’t be slept-in. Choices, choices.
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Photo of The Week – 10th August 2007
Posted by Squiffy on August 10th, 2007
A recent photo that I managed to capture whilst on the road in Dorset has inspired me to create a new section entitled ‘Photo of The Week’. I plan to post a new picture each Friday to give you a smile at the end of the working week. Whilst this week’s is rather amusing, other entries may be of beautiful views or favourite places, but I will try to include as many unusual sights as possible. This entry, which I snapped from the car window in Wareham, is one for the ladies – enjoy!
Comments welcome!
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The great camper van let down
Posted by daveb on August 10th, 2007
Yesterday, we decided to buy an old VW camper van in exchange for our car, Goj, plus a bit of cash. A deal had been discussed a few days earlier and we genuinely believed that we were in the decision driving seat. We gave the green light and the seller stalled. He wanted to think about it and had agreed to call us back. After leaving things cool overnight–and still without a callback–I got in touch with the seller again who, to spare you the long story, had now gone completely cold to the deal and was burping out all sorts of bright, colourful excuses as to why he could not proceed.
Needless to say, we were really disappointed and felt somewhat cheated by the seller for building our hopes up and then knocking them down. :-(
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The great camper van decision
Posted by daveb on August 9th, 2007
For a couple of days we had been mulling over the idea of buying a small camper van to provide an option between staying in a dismal wet tent and the cost/bother of sorting out B&B accommodation. We had previously discussed a part-exchange deal with a seller on the Isle of Wight which seemed pretty keen. At lunchtime in the New Forest, we decided to forfeit the planned afternoon bike-ride and instead focus on researching what to look for when buying a camper, prices, etc. Happy that we were doing The Right Thing, we placed a call to the seller who agreed to give us a call back a bit later on with his decision. We retired to the pool area of the B&B/hotel and bit our nails awaiting his return phone call. It never came.
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New Forest
Posted by daveb on August 8th, 2007
Our plan was pure: Drive into the heart of the New Forest. In the morning, walk around the ancient town of Bucklers Hard and in the afternoon hire a couple of push-bikes and cycle an easy route though the New Forest — an easy track because, *blush*, I can’t actually ride a bike!
The reality was somewhat different. The apparently quaint Bucklers Hard village had now been converted into a commercial outfit and entrance would have cost us £12 just to get into the site to walk down the road. Our responses to the requested tariff ranged from surprise and mild disappointment (Squiffy) to silent outrage (daveb). We’re not much into history or museums when the sun is shining so our non-entry to the land wasn’t too sad. However, there was a canoe hut on the other side of the wall and we rather fancied a paddle up and down the river. The ticket-office cashier saw our predicament and allowed us into the site for a few minutes to see if the canoe people were about (which, incidentally, they were not). Of course, this meant that we had a quick chance to snoop around the site along the way. We’ve included some sneaky snaps for you to make up your own mind on whether £6 (each) is a fair price. I guess you can’t put a price on heritage but, I for one, am pleased that I can put that money towards something else.
Furthermore, our bottoms never actually graced the awkward seats of bicycles as we instead focussed our efforts on upgrading our mode of transport (you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out more).
View our New Forest gallery (warning: our gallery does not do this area justice at all!)
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Christchurch: Reliving my childhood
Posted by Squiffy on August 7th, 2007
When I was a little girl my parents had a holiday home in Christchurch, Dorset and we would spend weekends and sometimes longer there each year. I’ve only been there once or twice since they sold the house many years ago, and as we were in the area I wanted to pay the quaint town a visit to remember happy childhood days and see if things had changed. As I recalled to Dave the things that we used to do as a family, I realised a lot of our time (or at least as I remember it) was spent feeding the local wildlife, from squirrels in the Priory grounds to swans on the quay. Sadly, we didn’t see any squirrels, but we did manage to feed some of our lunch to the quacking swans and ducks. We walked around the recently established Monday market and I had to refrain Dave whilst he browsed the £1 tat stall, reminding him of all the junk we’ve just got rid of at home. I did, however, encourage him to buy a homemade apple and raspberry pie for our pudding.
No encouragement was needed when I suggested that we hire a little motor boat for an hour to pootle from the quay up the river. After some price negotiation we stumbled clumsily into the boat and Dave took the helm, taking us past all the rather posh riverside houses with their own private boat moorings. <link>This is the house</link> that I would like to own one day.
View our Christchurch photo gallery for more pics of the houses and our boat trip.
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The cost of living?
Posted by daveb on August 6th, 2007
I’ve had a bit of a mental crisis recently about the cost of travelling Britain as we appear to be haemorrhaging money everywhere we go. Of course, I knew that Britain would be one of the more costly countries to tour — I just hadn’t realised just how costly.
I used to live and work in London. Here, I thought nothing of spending six pounds for lunch and ten pounds for the main course of an evening meal. I really believed that these were just “London prices” — they are not. Forgive me if I come across as arrogant here: Unlike when I was a humble student, for the last eight years I have seldom checked my bank account balance at the cashpoint before withdrawing twenty quid for food/beer/cigarettes/whatever. Save one or two times when I hit an unauthorised overdraft, I’ve always had the confidence that there were enough coins in the piggy bank to meet my needs. Now I don’t have an income, the game has changed. I’m having to be much more aware of what’s in my wallet. I’ve been running a cash-book from day one of this trip for two reasons. Firstly, out of interest for myself and others (I’ll publish my findings once I’ve got some more data). Secondly, and more importantly, because I really need to re-learn how to budget effectively.
So far, I have this to tell you: When all expenditure comes out of your wallet, and not direct-debited out of your bank account, you really notice how expensive things actually are.
In fact, on the tourist routes–which are tourist routes for good reason–prices are often more expensive than London. This, I had not expected.
Worse still, the things that I had paid by direct debit also have started to seem expensive now they have been moved to a pay-as-you-go model. Examples include accommodation (thus far ranging between £22-40 per night for us both), food-out and food-in (£2-12 per person, per meal), laundry with drying (£6 for one load — and, no, we couldn’t dry out clothes anywhere as it was raining again!).
Worst of all though: I went to a pub the other night to upload some blog entries through their Wifi internet and bought a bottle of beer. £3.10. That’s more than my local in London!
No doubt, we’ve got a lot to learn to become a bit more budget travel-savvy. We would definitely welcome some budget traveller’s tips in the comments section!
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