It didn’t seem to matter what time we rose, wherever we were we seemed to hit the dining room at rush hour. Oldfields House was no exception. We had to check out before 10 but we were up and at breakfast by 8am to ensure we had oodles of time for our journey across England and Wales.
Even the breakfast room at Oldfields House was quite grand, complete with table linens and service. You could help yourself to the continental buffet but your English breakfast (or scrambled eggs on salmon or four other choices from the menu) and coffee, tea or hot chocolate was ordered at the table and brought to you there. When in Rome (or a Roman influenced town like Bath)… we had the English breakfast, accompanied by tea (for me) and hot chocolate for Dan, which was good but not as good as I probably expected from the surroundings. Dan, who was going to do the first stint of driving, went back to the room for a nap while I finished my breakfast.
Once we got on the road we didn’t really get off, heading northward through the Midlands and the North West Industrial part of England, our only pit stop on this leg was at a servo to grab petrol and a couple of drinks. Once we left Bath and got to the main roads, our entire journey today would be on highways which meant apart from looking out from idiots on the road it was a more straightforward drive. No bluestone walls precariously placed around a tight corner. We got a bit better view of Bath than we had the previous evening, especially as we drove up the hill into the countryside behind it. The old stone cottages and manor houses rose up the hillside in their glory surrounding cobblestoned streets and looking down upon the baths that give the town its name – a spa town for centuries, Bath is clearly a focus of the tourist trail for international visitors and Brits alike. It was a pity we didn’t have as much time here as originally planned before the mad dash to Dublin for NYE eventuated. It turned out to be a grey rainy day in Bath, which I’m sure wasn’t the best way to see it. Of course it goes on the list for the driving holiday. The countryside around Bath is just as you’d expect for this part of England – lush and green with perfectly formed and trimmed hedgerows buffeting the winds between the paddocks.
As we drove further north, the landscape became more woolly – the hedgerows more unkempt and unevenness in the grasslands. As we reached the industrial northeast, the buildings had changed too – more robust and functional to protect their inhabitants from colder winters. And dirtier. In the towns and villages, there was no mistaking the fact that this was England’s industrial heartland – the home of coal mining in the 19th and 20th centuries with hardened inhabitants resilient against whatever was thrown at them for the better part of a century. As we drove through Birmingham and skirted just south of Manchester, we could really see their roots.
Not long after that we veered west into Wales and the countryside changed again – the further east we went the hillier it got. A lot of the way we were travelling along the edge of the sea and the escarpment was close to the coast line. There were a lot of cliff s and more than once we saw caravan parks in the middle of nowhere and bushwalkers making their way up and down the hillsides. And yes – for most of our journey it was still raining. The sun had just started to peek its way through the clouds about halfway across Wales. We hadn’t really stopped since breakfast, except for petrol and we were getting a bit hungry – we had planned to pull off the highway when we saw somewhere interesting to eat – we hadn’t. We now spied a sign for Little Chef – the UK roadside diner chain that Heston Blumenthal had breathed new life into. With no other options, we decided to give it a go. It was a bit like the old school truck stops in Australia. I half expected it to have a truckie’s lounge. The bathrooms were tired and old and the restaurant had seen better days but the waitstaff were friendly and just like you’d expect in a truckstop called you luv a lot. The menu too was a mix of British staples and American fast food favorites. I had my hotel room service staple – a club sandwich. Not everyone does a fantastic club sandwich but it’s hard to royally screw it up. This one was a pretty good example actually and came with way more chips than I could possibly consume. Dan was equally happy with his burger.
Despite being completely comfortable with Dan doing all the driving, I also wanted to give it a go. Firstly, to have a drive of the hire car, a 2011 Ford Focus, as Dan had been saying it was actually surprisingly stable and with quite a bit of guts (keep in mind that both our cars are now 18 years old – and mine is a 1.3l Ford Festiva – the cars bomb disposal experts use for demolition practice. Secondly, I just wanted to be able to say I had. (Girls – Beastie Boys – despite its complete misogynist mantra, I still love this song. It reminds me of all the fun I had in my late teens and early 20s living in the cheapest group house in my home town, full of people every night. It also reminds me of how much people can change. The Beastie Boys started out writing songs about sex and drugs and morphed into one of the world’s biggest acts, supporting important causes and writing a love letter to their home town after 911.)
I hadn’t really closely looked at the map before we left but Holyhead, where the ferry terminal is, was actually on an island at the edge of Wales. I was wondering how we would get across – I presumed a bridge but it was actually a tunnel – they love the tunnels under bodies of water here. After we crossed under the tunnel, the landscape started to flatten out and it got extremely windy. We arrived at Holyhead before 4pm with plenty of time for the 6pm ferry crossing. After circling the town a couple of times looking for the Hire car office that wasn’t where the GPS said it was and which didn’t appear to be in the vicinity of the ferry terminal like it was supposed to be. Eventually, after finding a service station (the GPS guide to those was also out of date) we decided to just pull in to the ferry terminal and discovered some car parking spaces for Hertz. We got everything out of the car (it was still raining), packed up the GPS and hightailed it into the ferry terminal. The Hertz renta car window was closed but we just deposited the keys in the drop box. It was then that we noticed the ferry terminal was eerily quiet…
Christmas themed activities – 24 War museums and model shops – 3 Design experiences – 2.5