Keep-Left 2006

[Saturday 12th August 2006]
Day 1 - "Brighton to Torbay"

Woke up faaar to early, and laying on that ground there was no way either of us was going to be able to have a lay-in. So we packed up the campsite in double quick time and hit the road, we also wanted to be gone before anyone came after us with a shotgun shouting "geroff my laaand!".

We headed back down to Brighton from wherever it was that we’d ended up. A quick photo (turned out about as blurry as our 6:00AM eyesight), and then we set off to get some easy miles under our belts while the roads weren’t busy. A259 Worthing, Bognor, Chichester, Havant, Portsmouth, Fareham and then into Southampton for our first stop. It was a quick pit stop at Graeme's house to pick up the rest of our camping gear and have a quick bite. We also needed to get a photo taken for the Southampton Echo. Before too long we were back on our way. Fawley, Lymington, New Milton and Christchurch. Then into Bournemouth.

We decided to take a ferry from Bournemouth to Swanage, that way we didn’t have to deviate too far inland. Of course, we hadn’t gambled on the amount of other people waiting to catch the ferry, we had a long wait ahead of us – but the sun was shining and we were making good time already.

Back on the road. Saw lots of interesting places as we carried on along the coast, Torquay and Tor Bay seemed like a very pleasant place to stay so we started to keep our eyes open for a campsite. When we reached Brixham we turned inland and found a few campsites. We were trying to avoid anywhere too touristy (and expensive) so we settled on the third place we saw, and before too long the tent was up.

Although we had a little camping stove and BBQ we thought we'd go in search of some proper grub. After getting what turned out to be duff advice from someone who turned out to be not so local, we ended up at a pub in the next village along. Only a small place, but they served ale and food so we were happy (well nearly.. I ended up with a curry even though it wasn't at all what I ordered). A couple of pints and it was back to the campsite.

As we left the Mumbles it started to rain again, and we got a bit lost. We headed back for Swansea and then picked up the road to Llanelli, Burry Port, Kidwelly and Carmarthen. The weather varied from short bursts of heavy rain, to breaking sunshine. Lots of tourists and some nice scenery meant we struggled to make solid progress.

We stopped by Pendine Sands to check out the museum of speed but it was getting on in the afternoon and the weather was getting worse so we decided not to... besides I think the temptation to go for a blast along the beach in the Astra would have been too much to resist, and we'd have ended up stuck in the sand!

As we made our way through Tenby, Pembroke and Milford Haven the weather kept getting worse, and by the time we reached St. Davids visibility was pretty poor. On the plus side we found a campsite next to a pub. Sorted. The rest of the evening was spent drinking 'Double Dragon' and talking with a couple of chaps who were hoping to do some rock climbing, but had been prevented from doing so by the weather. As the evening progressed the Ale continued to flow and my memory begins to fade. We did manage to gain some intelligence from these two about what we can expect in Scotland, which was useful... although I don't think my attempts at a Scottish accent went down too well. Bed followed soon after.

[Wednesday 16th August 2006]
Day 5 - "St. Davids to Bangor"

Owwwww.... as the pictures will probably show, I wasn't really up for driving this morning. Fortunately Graeme can handle his beer a bit better. The days route was quite simple really, as there were good roads that stayed right on the coast. We followed the A487 through Fishguard, Aberystwyth and Machynlleth, then picked up the A493 to Dolgellau and Porthmadog - which, as luck would have it, had a crazy golf course... and a good one too. It actually had felt greens instead of concrete, and one of the holes also even had a jump! Tidy!. A quick rest stop at the Australia Inn was taken. I was told off by the bar maid for not being very polite... It wasn't intentional but I think spending 5 days solid on the road, with one other person might have been getting to us both, standards of conversation, grammar and language had slipped quite a bit!

We stayed on eh A497 to Pwllheli, then headed north to Caernarfon, we'd made good progress so we made a late decision to do a lap of Anglesey too.

Graeme had been intrigued by something he'd seen on the TV program 'Coast'. At the Menai bridge there are two statues of Lions, which are now not visible from the road. We parked up and went for a wonder. It turned out to be easier to find them than I had expected, but it was strange to see them tucked out of the way like they were. We were both happy as we were achieving one of the objectives for the trip - to see interesting stuff we hadn't seen before.

As we pushed into Anglesey the weather deteriorated quite quickly yet again, which was a bit depressing as a lot of the camping gear was still wet from the previous night.

We did manage to stop off at Anglesey race track, which was something I'd wanted to do for literally..... hours.

It had seemed like a long day and I was looking forward to setting up camp and relaxing, so we spared no time in following the A5205 back to the mainland. It didn't take too long to find somewhere, again Graeme felt it was too touristy for his liking - too many kids running around. I was just glad to be able to relax a bit. The interesting thing is that most people in the campsites we went to basically went to bed when it got dark, thanks to Graeme's ingenious idea of bringing a little camping BBQ along to act as a campfire, we could sit around talking rubbish for hours after everyone else had retired. Had pasta and dolmio sauce, cooked over a roaring butane canister. Like crazy golf and english breakfasts, pasta & dolmio was to become a feature of the trip.

[Thursday 17th August 2006]
Day 6 - "Bangor to Silloth"

Well today the inevitable happened, we had both expected it to happen, and we had discussed what we might do if the worst happened, yep.. today we got caught speeding. Although we obviously do not condone breaking the law, being realistic - driving 4500 miles on unfamiliar roads was always likely to result in unwittingly breaking the speed limit. The morning had been pretty uneventful, and the first stop of the day was going to be a late lunch in Blackpool, we dispensed with the north coast of Wales pretty quickly and had not wanted to get caught up in Liverpool so we stuck to the relatively quick dual carriage ways in the area, and this was part of the problem. The dual carriage ways we'd been on most of the morning had been your average 60-70mph jobs. Whilst cruising to Blackpool along a loooong straight 4 lane road we got stopped by a Policeman with a bike and a speed camera. Graeme, who was driving at the time, had said literally seconds before "this is stupid, there are no speed limit signs along this road", and so was cruising at around 60-70mph. Anyway, once pulled up, we got out of the car and the policeman politely explained that the road was actually a 50mph limit... bugger. We were doing 64mph according to his radar gun... fortunately for us he wasn't booking people, his role was as part of a Police initiative to help people pay more attention to their speed.

At this stage I would like to point out that speeding is breaking the law, whether or not drivers agree with the speed limits we have is one thing, obeying the law is another. The policeman was very reasonable and was not at all as patronising as I had expected him to be, at the end of the day he is doing a job intended to save lives - which is a good thing... HOWEVER as a retrospective of the whole journey, one conclusion we both came to, is that signage throughoput the country for both speed limits AND places/directions is pathetic, we lost count of the number of times that there was no clue given to the local speed limit. The location of some speed camera's is also laughable - this is not an 'off the cuff' jab at speed camera's - we passed approximately 200 speed cameras, throughout 3 countries and 20-30 local authorities, so I feel we are quite well placed to comment, anyway, with one eye on the speedo and one eye one looking out for more cameras we pressed on to Blackpool.

Workington was the destination for the end of the day, but we'd made good time so I was keen to visit at least one lake during our short stint in the Lake District. We cut in to Lake Windemere as it was the most accessible - we took a quick photo and left (as we hadn't paid and displayed!) We also stopped off at the Sellafield Nuclear Power station, but it was after hours and there wasn't much to see (we think we were also being followed by a security van). We continued on up the coast. A lack of campsites at Workington convinced us to push on further and we'd reached Silloth on the Solway Firth before we found anywhere worth camping. Unfortunately it started raining so we opted to construct the second tent as a shield for the food and for the fire (and for the beer)

[Friday 18th August 2006]
Day 7 - "Silloth to Greenock"

Woke up. It was Raining, only a bit, but it was raining. The problem with packing up whilst it's raining is everything is wet, and it gets put in the car wet. Now we'd been on the road a week the car was already beginning to smell a little 'strange' (a kind of manly-sweaty-redbully-damp-ashy-muddy-mouldyfruit-smokey-and yes farty! kind of smell!!), and this extra damp really wasn't helping at all.

Not many places worth stopping at today. The constant rain was a drag, and their wasn't much to see... Springfield, Gretna Green, Dumfries, stayed on the coast until Luce bay beach, then headed up to Stranraer, we then got a little lost - but we're pretty sure we went up to Kirkholm. Anyway, we found ourselves back in Stranraer - so it was back on the A77 north. Ayr, Troon and finally Greenock. That was it for the day... and guess what - it was still raining.

We stumbled across what looked like a campsite - but deserted. Seemed a little strange. But hey, who were we to complain. As it was still raining we decided to erect the second tent again, just for the campfire. Whilst we were busy constructing base camp we discovered that a scout group was also going to be camping here for the night. We popped into the local town, bought some ale for ourselves (and a tipple for the scout leaders!) and some food from the worlds most useless take-away. The rain was heavier now, so we ate in the car and then headed back to the campsite.

We started the fire up, but it was struggling to take hold, to make matters worse we'd wedged ourselves in the second tent with the fire, the tent was filling up with smoke, and we were rapidly discovering what it's like to be a cigarette or an ashtray. To make matters even worse, it's amazing how quick 22 scouts can knock up a massive roaring fire between them. Our's got going in the end, and we decided to show a little British ingenuity. We'd elected not to put the ground sheet in the second tent (for fear of it catching fire!) so we unpacked it and hastily strung it up in the trees above us. Seemed to do the Job - sorted. Graeme then spent 2 hours dangling parts of himself over the fire in an effort to get dry, which I found most amusing, until the next morning when he was toasty and dry, and all my stuff was still wet. Bugger.

[Saturday 19th August 2006]
Day 8 - "Greenock to the Isle of Skye"

Today was probably the day that I'd worried about the most. I had not got any real clue how much the Scottish highlands would slow us down. We'd started the day early, and had a bit of a wait for the Dunoon ferry, time that would have been better spent in bed! The ferry crossing gave some stunning views, views of mountains that start from the bottom of icy cold black lochs, and disappeared into the endless grey cloud at the top. Then it dawned on me - holy cr*pola - that's where we're going to be driving for the next few days... I don't believe in god - but today I started praying for the car not to break down.

I was plesantly suprised, though the roads were taxing for the most part, with quite a lot of stop/go action in the passing places - but compared to England and Wales there was virtually no traffic. This enabled us to get the collective foot down and enjoy the spectacular scenery, whilst also enjoying the nice weather. Oban was the biggest stop today. A nice place - and Jacqui at Argos took the award for "Best looking woman of Keep-left 2006" from Clara at Halfords in Wales, who had held the title for only a couple of days. Whilst in Oban we bought some essential DIY camping supplies which came in very useful later on.

Late in the day we reached Mallaig - we had decided to cut across to the Isle of Skye, it helped us stay close to the coast without losing too much time. Alas the ferry was fully booked up. Which was a shame as Graeme had made some cracking time behind the wheel in the afteroon to get us here for this crossing. We booked our place on the last ferry of the day which wasn't due for about an hour, found a pub and had a quick pint. We also took a drive around Mallaig, basically to look for a Nissan Bluebird that Matt had decided he was going to try and buy! It had a massive wing and Shelby stripes. Nice. The ferry came, after a pleasant and deposited us on Skye.

We quickly realised we were going to have to get back to nature and find a field to camp in. This quick blast up the eastern side of Skye gave Matt his first look at heaven - more of that later. We identified a patch of land with an amazing view that would be suitable for us to camp on. Overlooked by a small new-looking house. We thought it best to go and ask the owner of this house if it was appropriate for us to camp on this small piece of land. "Ooch yes... but yee'll noo be worrried aboot the midges??", Midges? we've driven over 2000 miles!!! We can handle midges - or so we thought. Once we had disturbed the grass where these midges lived that was it. It was like 'Zulu'. We were the British soldiers, and the insects were going to make us pay. Actually it was more like a cross between Zulu, Alien, Predator and Jaws. It was totally insane. I hate insects at the best of times - but there were literally thousands crawling all over us, and they bit too! I got the second tent up quickly, Graeme was still putting up the main tent - and the extra DIY bits we'd bought at Oban enabled us to build a 'porch' between the two tents. Sweet.

I'd seen a shop at the port where the ferry had dropped us off. They were bound to sell insect repellent, most shops had since we'd been in Scotland. I took the keys and headed back along "the road" in search of something to get rid of these evil canibalistic midges. "The road"... oh my god... brand new, as wide as a motorway, virginal black tarmac, clean white freshly painted lines, huge run off areas either side, no corner was tighter than 45°, but there were lots of them. The glass-smooth tarmac betrayed no clue as to the speed of the car through the lack of tyre roar. There was no other traffic at all, and I was in a hurry. All I can say here is that I stuck to the speed limits and enjoyed the view - those who know me, know how much I will actually have enjoyed this road - I have dreamt about it since. This truly is my favourite road - anywhere - bar none.

[Sunday 20th August 2006]
Day 9 - "Skye to John o'Groats"

Raining, yet again. The Remote costal roads were still (fortunatley) mostly empty. We headed up the A890/A896/A832 until we reached Gairloch. This seemed to be a pretty good place to stop for breakfast. A nice greasy portion of fried egg, bacon, sausage, fried bread and black pudding was in order.. with a side order of toast laden with the cafe's home made marmalade - which was really tasty, what wasn't so good was the black pudding. Which badly disagreed with Matt - who spent the next two hours with his head on the dashboard, holding his stomach - going "eeearggeggh". A couple of Alka-Selzers and 2 or 3 cans of Red Bull later, and he was fine.

We pressed on through the gloom until we reached the top of Scotland. Graeme had decided he'd like to see some seals whilst we were in Scotland, so upon seeing wild-life spotters at the side of the road, we stopped, not sure where, as it turned out the wild-life spotters were Scandinavian and it was a real short conversation. We headed down to the beach anyway, and although there were no seals, there was a half buried brand new lorry tyre in the sand - which was almost as good.

We stuck to the coast, kept a decent average speed and made few stops. In the fog and cloud, there wasn't much to see anyway. We did stop at Dunnett head (the most northerly point on the mainland). Graeme took some Wildlife pictures whilst dangling off a cliff, and I looked around for a rock to go with the one I'd got from Lizard point.

We made John O'Groats in excellent time, so we went round to Ducansby head to see some seals, which we'd be reliably informed where there in their masses, after a short 2 mile walk across the edge of no-where we found a bay where indeed there were about 10 seals bobbing up and down in the shallows. Despite our best "seal-calls" they weren't really interested in us, so we headed back to John O'Groats and found a campsite to pitch up in. Then we found a pub to pitch up in.

[Monday 21st August 2006]
Day 10 - "John o'Groats to St. Andrews"

Woke up.. suprise suprise - it was raining. Only lightly, but yet again we would have to pack up a car full of damp equipment. And the car was REALLY beginning to smell quite bad now. The A9 was a road that I was relatively familiar with - I had driven it once before, but I remembered that it was a fast road. So we spared no time in crunching some major mileage. One stop for fuel and Red Bull, and we had destroyed a major chunk of the days driving. Unmarked police cars roam the area, so we did have to take it a bit easy even when there was a long stip of road with excellent visibility and no traffic. The weather had brightened up a lot too which was nice, and it lifted the spirits too. We passed through Alness which has some interesting views across Cromarty Firth which is home to a number of gas/oil rigs - not entirely sure why they are there, but it's an interesting view none the less.

I was tiring quickly, and so decided to hand over the wheel to Graeme, which gave me plenty of time to consume another couple of cans of Red Bull. We continued to obliterate the mileage and hit the St. Andrews area mid afternoon. We tried to get into the famous Golf course, but neither of us could be bothered to climb over the wall!.

After driving around for a bit we hadn't managed to find a suitable campsite so we headed in-land. We got a bit lost but stumbled across a small area of wooded land just off a back road. This was 'proper' camping. I was worried that we shouldn't have been there as it did look like it was part of somebodies 'estate' so I quickly set about camouflaging my tent. We got the fire going, which was useful to ward off the spiders and other woodland creatures. We downed a couple of beers and marvelled the distance we'd achieved today. Greame had a late night photography session, trying to capture the view of the stars. Matt was completetly shattered and retired to bed (to hide from the spiders!)

[Tuesday 22nd August 2006]
Day 11 - "St. Andrews to Whitby"

Bizarre nights sleep. Both of us seemed to have heard strange noises in the night, but we both heard different things! It had rained a little during the night. We had a couple of things that we both wanted to do while we where in the area. Graeme particularly wanted to visit the Flakirk wheel - an amazing engineering project designed to aid canal boats go up and down a big hill (basically!!), and Matt wanted to go to Knockhill Race Track - the home of Scottish motorsport. We also wanted to see a bit of Edinburgh too.

Knockhill was first on the agenda, but it took a little while to find, there wasn't much going on so we had a quick look around and then got a shift on towards Falkirk. Things went a little bit pear shaped from here on. Matt's navigating (although spot on) contradicted local road signs. We had learned not to trust road signs very much on this trip... but the conflicting infomation lead to a few wrong turns. It was late morning before we arrived at the Falkirk wheel. A simple idea whereby a rotating carriage 'swaps' two sections of canal, one from an aquaduct at the top of the hill, and one from the canal network below. It's quite an impressive sight, although it moves so silently it almost too easy to miss. We also had brunch here - not as fancy as it sounds, just a burger and chips (and a £1.00 can of IRN-BRU !) We spent a little while looking around, then hit the road. We'd left it too late to look round Edinburgh so we scythed straight through the middle of it. We'd made excellent time the day before and had decided to try and get a day ahead of schedule.

[Wednesday 23rd August 2006]
Day 12 - "Whitby to Long Sutton"

I think we stumbled into a time warp today - back to the time during the war when all the road signs were taken down. The constant lack of useful navigational aids was becoming tedious. We thought about only driving at night, at least that way we could have used the stars!

We didn't have a lot in mind to do today, the weather was still rubbish so it was just a case of push on as far as we could.

We did make a bit of a diversion inland in the morning visit the village where I (Matt) lived between the age of 0 and 5. Which was quie bizarre as I hadn't been there in 22 years. My old primary school hadn't changed a bit! We headed into Beverley (the town where I was born) to find somewhere to have breakfast. We found a little cafe down a side street, and had one of the best breakfasts so far - maybe it's just because I was born there, but that, to me, was how a fried breakfast should taste. We also had a look round the shops as Graeme had been wearing the same trousers for most of the trip and needed to buy some new ones before the smell caused him to pass out!

Back on the road and the weather was still poor. We crossed the Humber Bridge and then headed for Grimsby. We stayed close to the coast, passing through Cleethorpes and Mablethorpe. Skegness was the next town on, we decided to stop and see if there was anything worth doing, but it was still lashing it down, so even a couple of laps on the go-kart track were out of the question. We'd also stopped at a little model car museum in the middle of no where which was quite interesting.

We pressed on and skirted 'the wash' until we reached Long Sutton. The weather was poor and we liked the idea of camping somewhere with washing facilities and a pub. So we cut short the driving late in the afternoon in search of a campsite. Which we found - and as luck would have it, there was a local pub not too far down the road. We had some food there and then consumed a lot of beer. We rounded off the night boring the bar-man senseless with tails of our journey so far. Closing time came and we staggered back to the campsite. I fell asleep before I had even finished getting into my tent... but at least it was a good nights sleep!

[Thursday 24th August 2006]
Day 13 - "Long Sutton to South Woodham Ferrers"

Yet more bad weather. We called in at a real ale shop to stock up on the essentials. We stayed pretty close to the coast on the A149 through Hunstanton, Cromer, Great Yarmouth, then followed the A12 down round ipswich, and picked up the A14. Manningtree Street Station was the next stop. I remembered my dad had recommended it as a good station that featured a bar with 5 real ale hand-pumps. Had to be worth a look. Turned out it wasn't that good (too many main stream ales), but we had a bit of food and a pint there anyway. We headed down towards Colchester and the A12, which we followed as far as Witham. It was getting on for late afternoon so we decided to find somewhere to camp. We meandered in the direction of South Woodham Ferrers, and must have circled the same 10 miles about 5 times. The only places we could find where caravan parks that wouldn't accept tents. In the end we managed to get into a big holiday village type place. I say we managed to, actually somebody lent us their swipe pass to get through the security gate. Thanks anonymous lady!. We did the decent thing and found someone in charge so we could actually pay for a pitch. We set up camp, got the fire going, and admired the stunning sunset.

Another day in which we had seen and done very little. Had it not been lashing it down we would have spent alot more time looking round the Norfolk coast. But there was also a sense that we had nearly finished, and much as neither of us particularly wanted it to end - we both just wanted to press on, and do as many miles as possile.

[Friday 25th August 2006]
Day 14 - "South Woodham Ferrers to Eastbourne"

At last, some blue sky! We took our time getting sorted in the morning, but the first proper sunshine in days made the morning's driving sooo much more fun than it recentley had been - even crossing the Dartford bridge. We'd had quick round of Crazy Golf at Southend, so the next real stop was probably going to be the town/village of 'Sandwich'. We did have a quick look around Margate, but mostly we just got lost there.

We entered Sandwich with one single aim. To go to a sandwich shop in Sandwich, and buy a sandwich. This turned out to be alot harder than it sounded - mostly because the only sandwhich shop we could find was shut. However the variety of amusing signs, such as 'Sandwich Police' and 'Historic Sandwich' were more than enough to keep us amused, we just went for a quick pint instead.

Deal, Dover, Folkestone, Hythe, Rye, Hastings. Traffic was get thicker and progress was slowing. But that was definately it. From now until the finish line it was just going to be about doing the miles. That said, we had decided to stop short of Brighton, at Eastbourne. This gave us a full day tomorrow, but we felt it was the right thing to do... especially as we remembered how hard it was to find a campsite round Brighton!

Again, most of the camping places marked on our map were just caravan parks, so again we headed inland to find somewhere more appropriate. In the end we found a good little campsite, that rip us off completely for having two tents! but we didn't care that much (well, I didn't care that much - Graeme paid!) This was the last night camping, we celebrated that fact in what had become the custom - and sank a few bottles of Ale. Excellent. I also celebrated by splashing out and having two packets of Super Noodles, with spicey Pepperami mixed in.

[Friday 25th August 2006]
Day 15 - "Eastbourne to Brighton, to the reform club, and finally home"

Last day!! All-out-foot-down-fest. We made Brighton in no time in the morning. Stopped off at a cafe, and had breakfast. We'd only seen Brighton by night before, and there weren't nearly as many police around during the day time!

It was hard to believe that it was two weeks since we'd last driven on theses roads. On one hand it only seemed like yesterday, but then when we thought about all the stuff we'd done since then, it seemed like months.

A quick blast up the motorway put us in London. Masses of traffic, hundreds of speeed cameras, crazy pedestrians, no useful road signs, psychotic bus drivers and endless road works - NO PROBLEM - we'd just driven FOUR THOUSAND MILES and we weren't about to take any crap now!. We navigated our way back to the reform club with (relative) ease. And had our picture taken outside - spookily enough by another passer by who turned out to be a member (again! - as had been the chap we'd met here before). We shook hands, gave ourselves a pat on the back, saddled up, and got out of there as fast as we could. If it hadn't have been for the concrete block of traffic infront of us we would have wheel-spun all the way home at top speed (minus one pit stop as Matt had needed the loo since we left Brighton!)

Less than 100 miles from home...

Less than 50 miles from home...

Back on the A361, local roads...

Back into the Village... back to Matt's house.

That's it - best part of 4500 miles, £430 on diesel, 50-odd cans of Red Bull, 30-odd bottle of Real Ale, 1,000,000's of Midges, 2 broken camping chairs, 580 pictures, 1 police caution, 4 hours cleaning the car, 5 crazy golf courses, 2 race tracks, 1 packet of Alka Selzers, 1 air freshner, no accidents and no speeding fines ---- a £2500 holiday that was probably one of the best experiences of our lives.

Tidy.

We headed out to North Berwick, then cut down to the A1. We continued to head south until I saw a sign for Holy Island. The plan was to get some Lindesfarne Meade for consumption in the evening. The road to Holy Island cuts out from the mainland across a causeway that floods when the tide rises, alas the tide was (probably) too high for us to cross safely. So we took a quick picture then hit the road again.

We headed out to Bamburgh Castle and followed the B roads down the coast until we reached Newcastle. We had no interest in getting tied up in traffic here so we jumped on the A19 and rode it all the way to Hartlepool, where we peeled off onto the A174 towads Whitby.

Camping on the North York Moors was something we DEFINATELY didn't want to do (werewolves and all that). So we circled around until we managed to find a campsite. Eventually we did. It was run by a totally sound bloke whose dinner we interupted, but we got a pitch, set the fire up and cracked into the latest hoard of ale that we'd picked up at Morrisons on one of our frequent fuel stops. Sorted.

We'd seen a lot this morning, but we both realised that we were now well on the way back down south. That and the consistently poor weather meant the we were both keen to press on without too many stops tomorrow.

After a couple of hours circling central London, and absorbing the Friday night atmosphere, we finally get our bearings and are on our way.

Traffic wasn't too bad and we seemed to make steady progress out of London, and were soon on a virtually empty M23. Cruising at a steady motorway speed we made Brighton (the Start/Finish Line) by about 22:20. We drove around a bit enjoying the "lively" Friday night Brighton atmosphere. It then dawned on us that we had a choice: 1) Go and find somewhere to camp and get a good nights sleep, or 2) Find somewhere relatively quiet and get a quick pint in before last orders... not really a choice there then. We found one place that looked pretty quiet, "that'll do" we thought, only to be stopped by the bouncer and informed that it was a gay-bar, and he didn't much like the look of us! fair enough! so elsewhere then... After a quick pint of Adnams Broadside in "the Cricketer" it was down to business - we needed to find somewhere to camp. After 2 hours of driving around, we found a suitable field north of Brighton in which we pitched our tent - on the lumpiest piece of ground you could imagine. After half a day at work, a few hours on the road and a pint - sleep wasn't far away.

[Sunday 13th August 2006]
Day 2 - "Torbay to Lands End"

Another early start. We'd found ourselves' reasonably far inland by the time we'd found somewhere to camp so the first port of call was the ferry into Dartmouth, an interesting little barge that was towed around by a tug boat. We headed along the A379 which has some major elevation changes, we got down to Torcross, an interesting beach with an almost "causeway" like road running along the sea front. We stopped to go down to the beach and we noticed people camping on the beach - "we should have done that" we thought. Then we headed on to Kingsbridge and stayed on the A379 until we reached Plymouth. First things first - breakfast. We stopped off at a little cafe called "Hash Browns" and had an excellent full english breakfast - this was to become a feature of the trip. We hopped on the ferry to Torpoint (managed not to pay - the chap never asked!).

We hugged the coast all the way the to Looe and Polperro until we reached Bodinnick then we caught another ferry to Fowey, only a short crossing but some excellent views from the water - including a foreign navy frigate - seemed to be lost. From Fowey we stayed on the A390 to Truro in an effort to make up some of the time lost waiting for ferries. From there we headed for Penryn then cut all the way across country to Lizard Point (the most southerly part of the UK mainland). Upon reaching lizard point we clambered around on the rocks for a bit... basically trying to get as far out as possible (without falling in the sea). Checked out some rock-pools, and looked around for any washed up treasure... none to be found though.

It was then a quick dash to Lands End. We had decided we wanted to camp there anyway, although we could have made it further that day. We visited the Lands End tourist bit and had our picture taken, then headed off to find a campsite with a pub next to it. Not 2 miles up the road we found the perfect place. The campsite was a bit touristy but it had it's own bowling alley (!) so that occupied us for a bit (Just for the record: Matt 164, Graeme 96). Then on to the pub - "The First and Last Pub". Beer, food and darts.. marvellous. After several pints of "Sharpes First and Last" the 501 on the dartboard was getting a bit too difficult to add up, last orders came and went so we headed back to the campsite. Day 2 done - we were still on schedule.

[Monday 14th August 2006]
Day 3 - "Lands End to Weston Super Mare"

A poor nights sleep, followed by a late(ish) 8:00 start. St. Ives was the first stop, as we thought it would be nice to stop off at the Tate art gallery for breakfast, but they hadn't opened by the time we got there. We wondered around St. Ive's for a bit trying to find a place to get breakfast. Proper greasy english breakfasts were definitely going to become regular, however the 'tea-room to greasy-spoon' ratio in St. Ives is about 30:1, so it took a while to find somewhere - but we did.

A quick blatt along the coast, briefly using the A30 at Redruth, got us to Newquay fairly early. We pressed on, following the coast closely until we reached Padstow. We stopped at Trenance... which was interesting because our atlas had two places called Trenance within 15 miles of each other - a little confusing when you are not paying attention to where you've been.. anyway... we stopped at Trenance for a quick round of crazy golf, like full english breakfasts - crazy golf was to become a feature of the trip. Unfortunately - this was a 'hit & hope' affair with concrete greens that had more pits and holes than Beirut high street, I think we got round in about 83 shots.

Back on the road, we headed back to the coast and picked it up at Tintagel Head. The next village along the coast was Boscastle - scene of major flooding that claimed many lives alomst exactly 2 years earlier in 2004. The damage caused was still evident, although it was good to see the place getting back on it's feet with plenty of tourists visiting whilst we were there.

Saw some really nice scenery, and went up (& down) some mentally steep hills. Although, we got a little lost trying to get to the 'giant golf balls' and huge satellite dishes north of Bude.

	Little Chef
	Graeme bumps into Popeye
	SUNNY WALES
	The Mumbles Crazy Golf
	Neither of us could figure out what kind of shot that was

	Not a great place to camp!
	Brighton EARLY in the morning (too early for us or the camera to focus!)
	Waiting.......
	The first ferry ride

	SUNNY WALES pt. 2
	Campsite +
	Pub =
	A good night

	Just about to set off
	The Start Line: The Reform Club


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