Our flight to heathrow was overnight and we managed only a little sleep. We ended up being about the last people from our flight through customs but that was okay because we still had to wait on our bags. We had a long walk to the tube but could take a trolley most of the way. The firstcash machine I tried didn’t like my travelcard which increased the stress but the second one worked and it has been fine ever since. We were able to purchase an oyster card (public transport pass for London) each from the machine. It is a royal wedding commemorative one apparently they have huge excess of them. Followed Gunam’s instructions and arrived at his house about 8.30am about 3 hours after landing. It was a pretty nice sunny day in London, spent the morning with Gunam then he went to work and we got organised to go shopping and pick up our introductory pack from 1st Contact.
We went to Tottenham Court Road which has a dazzling array of electronics shops. Including Micro Anvika which has 3 shops of that street, one of which we ended up getting our Netbook (which I’m writing on) from, a Toshiba NB520, one of the models I had investigated in NZ. It is good for sound compared to most netbooks, in fact I’m playing music now while typing in our tent. Also went along Oxford street and visited a show called John Lewis that Gunam had recommended where we saw the camera I would end up getting, a Panasonic lumix TZ8. Crashed at about 7pm, which meant I woke very early, a trend which has continued, I’m just getting in schedule now.
Our second day in London involved a lot of walking, we visited places like Trafalgar Square, NZ House, Buckingham Palace (where something special was happening we still don’t know what, see my photos via the blog), London eye, big ben, parliament, Westminster abbey. All this on the way to our HSBC bank appointment near London Bridge at 3pm. The appointment went well and got an account sorted took 1.5hrs. Then went and picked up the netbook they had to get the right colour in overnight. Alseep very early again. Much of the third morning was spent setting up the netbook. In the afternoon we visited Regents Park, had all you can eat Pizza Hut for lunch, this was highly recommended by Amy. In the evening we took the tube out to Stratford to see my friend Matty and Amy. We had a great time comparing notes on travel strategies and general catch up. So much so that we left after 11pm and it was a bit of a rush to make sure we didn’t miss the tube. Despite it being a straight line to the station we managed to go the wrong way and had to consult the A to Z which got us back on track.
Midnight packing and 4 hours sleep was followed by a 2 ¾ train journey to Exeter in Devon. A very pretty city. We walked up the hill into town to the Cathedral and we found where the free walking tours go from. The adjacent hotel was very good and held our bags free on charge for about 2 hours while we did the Exeter Old and New tour. After this we went to the bus station to get the bus to Bude and had a long wait as we were 25mins early and the bus was 45mins late. We had to hike about25 mins to our camp called cerenety which was a little hard to find. It was very small with only 2 others there when we arrived and 4 others when we left. However it had an excellent view of Bude and it was a pleasant canal side walk into town for 25 mins but we were a bit sick of it by the time we left. Again check the flickr stream on the blog for pictures of the view.
While in Bude we visited Stratton to see the civil war re-enactment, you can see a video I put together on my youtube account again my checking through the blog http://dalenickyoe.blogspot.com/ .
After 2 nights in Bude we bused to Port Issac which is where DOC MARTIN is filmed. Lots of people around like us except without the house like packs. We were all there to see the DOC Martin place. The locals didn’t really ham it up though, if you didn’t know before you could visit and leave without realising what it was.
Then bussing from Port Issac to Newquay was a mission it took ages. First buses only leave Port Issac on a Sunday once every three hours so big wait there. Then when we reached Wadebridge the driver explained the next bus to Newquay was about 1.5hrs away, in fact it was about to arrive to do another route, so since it was cold and we had a day pass we decided to take it out to Bodmin and back to Wadebridge before it set off for Newquay which is only about 15 miles away. Now we had been warned but this 15 miles took about 1.5hrs because this bus went to about every backwater and dead end in the area. So must have travelled 40 miles to go 15. So having spent almost all day on buses and the rest hauling our packs up and down dale we finally arrived at Pentire Hotel around 6.15pm, quick freshen up and down for dinner. Stayed 2 nights at the Pentire and we did the Newquay Zoo and checked out the town.
It’s late now so to be continued tomorrow.
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