26 April ’05, Tuesday. Campground at Nottingham
Tuesday morning we were up and at the ferry terminal by 6:30am to catch our “fast ferry” for the crossing to Great Britain. This fast ferry was a huge catamaran that they say is the largest and fastest catamaran in the world. As far a size, it loaded on about 10-12 large truck and trailer combo’s plus a lot of cars, caravans, campers, and busses filled with school kids on a break of some kind. There were 2 movie theatres, and at least 5 restaurants and more on board as well. The crossing took about 3 hours compared to the slow ferries that take 9 hours to cross the same route. Anyway, we left Hoek van Holland and arrived at Harwich England. As we were going through the passport check, they made sure that we remembered that we would be driving on the opposite side of the road from then on… I was hoping that I could follow someone for the first few miles, but that was hopeful thinking, as “Bumble Bee” just couldn’t keep up. Well, put the headlights on, think of what you were doing constantly, and hope you don’t mess up…just go for it… After leaving Harwich, we traveled on for about 30 minutes and we pulled into our first town in England…Colchester. This turns out to be the “first town to be recorded in England”. The first thing we noticed was parking was almost non-existent, and the streets were really narrow, so add this onto driving on the wrong side, we had a challenge in front of us. Now after finding a parking lot and a place we could park in, we had to find the ATM to get some “Pounds”. Of course the ATM doesn’t put out coins, so I had to find a store to buy some little token so I could get change and then run back to the van and hope that I beat the “meter maid” there. Got all that taken care of, now seeing as how we were famished and had some money in our pocket, we went looking for something to eat. As it was, we came across “Computerchinno”, which was a small restaurant and internet café all in one. After having our lunch, catching up on the web page, and email, we headed up the road to find our next campground.
Tomorrow…heading north toward York…
Tuesday morning we were up and at the ferry terminal by 6:30am to catch our “fast ferry” for the crossing to Great Britain. This fast ferry was a huge catamaran that they say is the largest and fastest catamaran in the world. As far a size, it loaded on about 10-12 large truck and trailer combo’s plus a lot of cars, caravans, campers, and busses filled with school kids on a break of some kind. There were 2 movie theatres, and at least 5 restaurants and more on board as well. The crossing took about 3 hours compared to the slow ferries that take 9 hours to cross the same route. Anyway, we left Hoek van Holland and arrived at Harwich England. As we were going through the passport check, they made sure that we remembered that we would be driving on the opposite side of the road from then on… I was hoping that I could follow someone for the first few miles, but that was hopeful thinking, as “Bumble Bee” just couldn’t keep up. Well, put the headlights on, think of what you were doing constantly, and hope you don’t mess up…just go for it… After leaving Harwich, we traveled on for about 30 minutes and we pulled into our first town in England…Colchester. This turns out to be the “first town to be recorded in England”. The first thing we noticed was parking was almost non-existent, and the streets were really narrow, so add this onto driving on the wrong side, we had a challenge in front of us. Now after finding a parking lot and a place we could park in, we had to find the ATM to get some “Pounds”. Of course the ATM doesn’t put out coins, so I had to find a store to buy some little token so I could get change and then run back to the van and hope that I beat the “meter maid” there. Got all that taken care of, now seeing as how we were famished and had some money in our pocket, we went looking for something to eat. As it was, we came across “Computerchinno”, which was a small restaurant and internet café all in one. After having our lunch, catching up on the web page, and email, we headed up the road to find our next campground.
Tomorrow…heading north toward York…