The James Family - Africa Overland 2008: December 2008

The South
We spent nearly a week with our friends, Des & Terry, at Berry House sorting out stuff, contacting people we needed to see and generally planning our trip around southern England. With their help we lined up the shippers for Tom Cruiser and organised the local garage who sorted out the oil leak. Problem turned out to be a faulty oil filter even though it was a genuine Toyota part fitted in Libya!!

We spent our time dealing with emails, having our first pub lunch in a very long time, doing washing and walking the dogs. BW spent her waking moments talking to Blossom the budgie, playing with Steph’s Barbies and the 2 dogs, Sooty and Lizzie. One morning we went to see Canterbury Tales which was really interesting, did some shopping and then walked up to the King’s School playing fields to watch Steph play hockey.

We dragged ourselves away from Berry House and headed to Bognor Regis to visit Rich’s aunt Lein (dad’s sister) who is 92. She is in good shape and still lives on her own. She took us to the Walnut Tree in nearby Runtcorn for lunch. It was nice to catch up with her and for her to meet Rebecca, her great-niece.

It was late afternoon before we got away and then made our way to our friend Alex and her son Dominic who live in Farnham Royal to the west of London.
Rebecca and Dominic got on really well, even though Dom is 2 years her senior. They shared a room and, according to them, stayed awake all night “reading and chattering” only keeping quiet when they heard an adult. Yeah, right!!

With Alex we took a walk around Burnham Beeches, a mediaeval forest, which is home to the Druid’s Oak, an 800 year old pollard oak. Nice to get outdoors and do some tramping even though very chilly and muddy underfoot.

London – The Capital
The next day we left Tom Cruiser with Alex and took the train to London where we spent the next 3 nights with Reynold in his apartment right on the banks of the Thames. Wow! A million pound location, literally!

En route we took in Portobello Road Market and Books for Cooks where we had lunch. Not really BW’s cup of tea but we enjoyed it nonetheless. We then went across to Harrods for some window shopping and finally caught a bus to Wapping Wall.

Reynold came home and cooked us a great pasta meal. He had been well briefed by the girls in SA on Rebecca’s favourite food!

We had a nice evening catching up and even got to speak to Lisa on the phone. The next morning we were up early for another big day in the Big Smoke. Reyn was up even earlier than us as he caught a plane to Moscow for 3 days leaving us in charge of his house.

We walked from the apartment to Tower Hill tube station via St. Katherine’s Dock and Tower Bridge. It was a very pleasant walk taking in the sights. We had decided not to overdo the sightseeing as BW can do it herself when she is older. We wanted to take in a show in the West End and settled on “The Gruffalo”, a show based on a book Rebecca loves, which was playing at the Duchess Theatre. It was very entertaining and the audience made up predominantly of school kids loved it.

We crossed to the south bank of the river where we ate lunch in freezing cold weather before walking down, past the London Eye, towards the Houses of Parliament. The barricades were still up and some roads closed as the Queen had made her speech in Parliament that morning. We walked past Horseguards Parade to St. James’s Park where Rebecca got to feed the squirrels – a definite highlight. We saw the afternoon changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace before heading back to Reynold’s place.

The Sphinx
While we were in Egypt we had read in the Lonely Planet guide that the Sphinx’s nose which had been shot off by Napoleon’s troops was in the British Museum. This fact was the deciding factor as to which museum to visit. One is spoilt for choice in London and they are all free: So…should we do the Natural History, Science or British? We left the decision to Becca Weasel so the British Museum it was and off we went in search of the Sphinx’s nose.
Once again Lonely Planet had got it completely wrong! Part of the Sphinx’s beard, not the nose, is in the museum. Undeterred we tracked that down instead. The museum was fantastic and we spent our time looking at the suggested highlights like the Elgin Marbles, now more correctly referred to as the Parthenon Sculptures, and the Rosetta Stone.

We dragged ourselves away as we needed to meet our nephew, Stuart, outside the Covent Garden tube station. When he finally arrived we had some lunch and then walked to Regent and Oxford Streets to see the Christmas lights, shop windows and do some shopping. Regent Street is done up with blue lights in the shape of spider’s webs. Very beautiful indeed. Somehow a worldwide email must have been sent saying that blue is the colour for lights this year. It has been a feature from the first ones we saw in Florence, Italy to the ones we’ve seen here.

Choosing a university for Rebecca
Not wanting to pre-empt anything, we had planned to visit Des & Terry’s daughter Caroline who is reading English at Merton College, Oxford and our friend Charlotte (last seen researching chimps in Uganda) who is monkey-ing around (not really, she is a very bright and dedicated student) at King’s College, Cambridge.

They both took us for lunch in their respective colleges and then a wander around. With Caroline we saw the Bodleian Library, her college and chapel and Christ Church College where some of Harry Potter was filmed and the Cathedral. Charlotte was pressed for time so we looked at the new Corpus Christi College clock (how’s that for alliteration?) and walked with her to the Biology Department Lab where she is doing her chimp DNA research.

In between our university visits we got to meet up with more of our friends.
We spent 2 nights with Liz (our friend Anne’s sister) and her husband Ian. We got to meet the rest of the family and had a great walk around the Savill Gardens, an area of the Queen’s estate around Windsor, now part of something called the Royal Landscape. They also took us to the Rose and Crown in Thorpe Green for lunch.

Our next stop was Tring in Hertfordshire where we met our friends, Nick and Lindsay, and their 2 children, Laura and Alistair, for lunch. We were at university with Nick and I served articles with both of them! We worked out that we hadn’t seen each other for 18 years. This is quite incredible as I am only 35 now! Laura took Rebecca under her wing and they played really nicely together. We had a wonderful time reminiscing and discussing SA.
Becca weasel was very sad to leave but leave we did and off we sped to our friends, Chas & Heather, who live only 45 minutes away in Wheathampstead.
Their 2 girls were so excited that Rebecca was coming to stay that to keep the peace she had to sleep in Lauren’s room on the first night and in Shannon’s on the second. Heather had also organised for Rebecca to go to school with Lauren on Monday. She was so excited and didn’t hesitate to accept.

Chas cracked open a bottle of Veuve Cliquot when we arrived to celebrate our not-so inconsiderable achievement, even if we say so ourselves!! That was a really nice thought and it was consumed with relish.

Rebecca’s Back-to-School Day
Kaz and Heather dropped the girls off at school and when they came back we (including Chas who had taken the day off) walked to the Devil’s Dyke, part of ancient Roman fortifications, and then back home through the little village.
At lunch time we went to collect the 2 younger girls and took them home to change for their school Christmas party. Our timing couldn’t have been better! Rebecca had a great time at school and even had some work to show for it. After dropping them at the party we headed off to The Fox, a gastropub in Kinsbourne Green, for lunch. It was really busy, probably because it’s so “cheap”, Chas! Obviously the credit crunch hasn’t had a major effect on this neck of the woods yet.
Heather and Kaz then took the girls swimming as Shannon had swimming practice while Chas and I put the world to rights at home.

1st Floor – Cambridge
2nd floor – Manchester
(If you got “Painting Sudan Red” you may get this one too - Answers on the blog only please!!)
We left Chas, Heather and the girls and set off to meet Charlotte for lunch in Cambridge as already discussed above. It was then all systems go for Manchester, our final destination!
Well, not really all systems as our GPS, due to memory constraints, was missing some of the required maps. This meant that I ended up navigating using the same software on the laptop instead which did make things a bit more interesting. Luckily after driving through Africa there is not a lot that we can’t deal with.
We hit some traffic en route so it was only after 7pm on 9 December, 184 days after leaving Johannesburg that we rolled up the driveway at Kaz’s uncle Greg’s home in Sale. The whole family were there to meet us. They organised a chippy dinner with steak and kidney puddings as per Kaz’s request, Rebecca was in her element playing with her little cousins, Tom Cruiser was quietly cooling down in the driveway and me…I was quietly chuffed!

Mission Accomplished

PS
Thank you for reading this blog, I hope you found it interesting. I have definitely enjoyed compiling it as much I enjoyed the myriad of experiences we encountered on the way.

Obviously this is not the end…Tom Cruiser gets shipped home later this month, the bushcats fly home on 29 December, Rebecca starts school next year, Kaz gets stuck into tax and me…well that’s another story I suppose.

To my 2 angels who have travelled this long road with me, you have been the best travelling companions anyone could ever wish for. Thank you!

PPS Happy Christmas everyone!!