Day 30: Thursday 17 April - Progress on Smarty & Mabel and Southsea, by Ken

A phone call to Mike at Smart Car Specialists provided the good news that Smarty’s boot had been fixed – a faulty switch, and the service and the check of the Smart Tow system had been completed. She was currently away getting an MoT and Mike would let me know when she was ready for collection.

My next phone call was to Chris at Elite Motorhomes to check on progress on the delivery of Mabel to Banbury and see when we might be able to collect her. It was clear Chris had done nothing since we met him on Tuesday when he was going to arrange transport and get back to us with a date for collection. He called me back after speaking to “Transport” and said Mabel would be in Banbury Tuesday or Wednesday next week. He then asked whether delivery to us in early May would be OK. It wasn’t and he was going to see what he could do. Regarding the safe, I mentioned to Chris that the safes they had on display in their showroom were too small for our needs and we needed something similar in size to that installed in Myrtle. When I asked him where that was, he said it was in our old motorhome – no wonder it wasn’t worth getting a locksmith in! Chris then suggested we found a replacement safe which they would pay for – providing it wasn’t too expensive!

Mike phoned shortly after my unsatisfactory conversation with Chris to say Smarty was good to go. It was an easy 90 mile return trip to Guildford and I was back in Southsea in time for lunch. In Guildford I had mentioned to Mike I was uncertain whether to ship Smarty back to New Zealand. He was in no doubt saying she was one of the best and fastest Smart cars they had worked on. The contrast between the courtesy car and Smarty was even more marked with just me in the cars. Smarty is significantly quicker and much better equipped, it’s becoming a bit of a no brainer whether she goes to NZ.

After lunch Jane, Adam, Safiya and I went to a local park for a kickabout with a football and then to the beach for Safiya to have an ice cream. I started a game of who could hit a stick standing vertically in shingle not far away with a pebble. Adam managed it twice!

Adam prepared chili con carne for dinner for which we were joined by his friends Nick and Jo and their children George and Eloise together with Darryl and Honor. Nick and Darryl are Adam’s train buddies – they travel to London together to work. Nick arrived ahead of Jo and told us about the hard work he had put in during the day to improving the driveway of their house he they had bought recently. When Jo arrived she immediately launched into Nick for making a mess of the garden – “turned it into a helicopter landing pad”, she said. Similarly Darryl was getting it in the neck from Honor over the way he was packing up their home! Darryl and Honor were about to set off on a 16 month round the world trip with their three children whose ages span the range 4 to 10. A much greater challenge than ours we thought. Darryl, Honor and children are planning to reach NZ about the time we get back and we gave them our contact details.

We shared stories about the United States with Darryl and Honor. Darryl had made himself unpopular with the rest of his family in San Francisco when they walked across the Golden Gate bridge on the basis they could take a ferry back to the city from Sausalito. And so they could, but they found getting to Sausalito required walking another three miles! A tour bus driver at the bridge offered to take them to San Francisco for an exorbitant sum, so there was nothing for it but to walk back over the bridge. That did nothing for Darryl's popularity, particularly with the children, and it waned still further when walking back Honor saw a woman jump from the bridge. That required them to call the police, go through the woman's bag for her details and deal with the ensuing police presence.

Day 29: Wednesday 16 April - London, Guildford, Fareham and Southsea, by Ken

We had a lot of ground to cover today

My confidence that we could get a bag with our clothes for four days into Smarty’s boot in spite of the boot door refusing to open (that confidence wasn’t shared by Jane) waned somewhat when my first attempt failed miserably. While the seat backs don’t fold forwards in a Smart car I thought sliding the seats fully forward would enable me to wriggle the bag between the seats and door frame. I was wrong! Smarty is a cabriolet so the second attempt involved opening the roof and trying to drop the bag into the boot through the roof. That didn’t work either! Success came on the third attempt when I removed the member that spans over the top of the driver’s door (that and lowering the windows is what we do to turn Smarty into a fully open top).

How To Load A Smart Car When You Can't open The Boot

We were on the road just after 08:00. First thing on the list was to return Sue’s VW Golf to London. We set off in convoy with Jane following in Smarty. SatNav predicted we would arrive in Chiswick about 10:00. When we joined the M42 traffic was at a standstill and it was obvious that it was going to take more than two hours to get to London. The first five or six miles were driven at a crawl, but things picked up once we joined the M40. 

M42 At A Standstill (Vehicles Use The Hard Shoulder During Peak Hours)

The agreed plan was for me to drive at 60-65 mph and Jane would follow. That didn’t seem to work as there were times when Jane was nowhere in sight in spite of me planning overtaking manouvers to give her space to pull out into the middle lane. At a comfort stop near Oxford Jane complained about my overtaking saying she kept losing me because she was unsure which car was Sue’s. A fair enough comment as there are lots of grey Golfs around.

Setting off again SatNav was showing our arrival time as close to 10:30. The second part of the trip went much better with Jane predicting when I needed to overtake and pulling out giving me room ahead to do likewise. A further stop to fill Sue’s car with diesel meant it was 10:45 by the time we reached Sue and Richard’s house in Chiswick. With no time to stop for a cup of tea we had a quick chat with Sue on her doorstep, mainly about Phil’s performance in The Producers, before hitting the road again.

Our next destination was Guildford where Smarty was booked in with Smart Car Specialists for a service, a check of the Smart Tow system and an MoT. It was slow going through West London and across Hammersmith Bridge. It wasn’t until we reached the A3 south of Kingston Upon Thames that we were able to reach anything like a respectable speed.

Mike at Smart Car Specialists was ready for us when we arrived. He made a note to look into the boot door problem and a stutter as the automatic gearbox changed up from first to second. He backed up to Smarty a red Smart courtesy car which we were borrowing while Smarty was being worked on. Getting the bag out of the boot was even more difficult than getting it in with gravity on its side. It took both Jane and me to ease the bag up and out through the roof.

Our Loan Car

It was obvious immediately that the courtesy car was nowhere near as good as Smarty. It was much slower and nowhere near as well equipped – no air conditioning, electric windows and much more were absent. Nevertheless, we made good progress along the A3 heading for Fareham where we had arranged to meet my cousin Karen at 13:00. Unfortunately, with all the delays Satnav was predicting a 13:15 arrival time. Our route took us through the Hindhead tunnel which at 1,830 metres in length is the longest non-esturial road tunnel in the UK and takes the road beneath the Devil's Punch Bowl, a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The horizontal alignment of the tunnel is a series of curves which I assume is designed to maintain driver alertness.

A traffic jam in Fareham meant it was more like 13:30 by the time we got to Karen and her husband Nog’s house. Karen had been diagnosed with throat cancer and secondary lung cancer last October. It was a real pleasure to see her looking much as I remembered her from my visit two years ago. In spite of just finishing chemo last week she looked well and was very positive about her future.

We headed off straight away to the Fisherman’s Rest pub in Titchfield, just outside Fareham, that sits in the shadow of Titchfield Abbey. The abbey was founded in 1222 but was dissolved in the16th century by Henry VIII who gave the property to a favoured politician. The buidings were occupied as a mansion until 1781 when a decision was made to abandon it.

There is nothing quite like lunch in an English pub and my steak and ale pie and Jane’s pork belly were excellent, as was the two pints of Abbot’s ale that accompanied my meal. We spent a very pleasant afternoon sitting in the sun in the garden of Karen and Nog’s house. We took a look at their boat and then had tea and cake – how very English, although Nog thought my choice of black tea rather odd.

Ken, Karen and Nog

The last leg of our journey took us a short distance along the coast to Southsea to catch up with Adam and Safiya. Adam made us a very tasty meal of chicken and pasta after which it was time to swap news from NZ and the UK.

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Day 28: Tuesday 15 April - Banbury and Bicester, by Ken

John’s 42^nd birthday today.

After breakfast Jane and I set off in Smarty to Middleton Cheney, just outside Banbury, to visit Elite Motorhomes to get an update on Mabel. It was one of the few occasions we have driven Smarty on a motorway as usually she is only used for local excursions from wherever the motorhome used to be based. She went surprisingly well cruising comfortably, albeit with a lot of wind noise from her soft top, at 70 mph down the M40 motorway.

At Elite we met Chris Maynard with whom we had been dealing over Mabel’s purchase. Chris showed us over an Autotrail Mohawk he had on display. It is very similar to Mabel except for a different seating arrangement in the lounge area and had a smaller garage (lower roof). Jane and I agreed we had made the right call in not going for a bed over the cab – it made the living area feel much more spacious and would avoid all those bangs on the head I suffered climbing into and out of Myrtle’s cab. The key difference we noticed is the sofas in the living area are significantly shorter than Myrtle’s, but there is a larger bench area in the kitchen. The seating is perfectly adequate for four and the bigger kitchen working area is a bonus. Also, unlike Myrtle the shower is separate from the toilet and hand basin with these facilities located on opposite sides of the vehicle adjacent to the rear sleeping area.

We learnt from Chris that they had sold Myrtle.

Chris phoned Autotrail to enquire about progress on Mabel to be told she was finished. At that very moment Sue Maynard came in waving Autotrail’s invoice that had just been faxed through. Next step was for Elite to pay the invoice and arrange for her to be transported to Banbury and that won’t happen until after the Easter break. However, it looked as though we should be able to collect her towards the end of the week.

Sue Maynard said it was their fault the safe in Myrtle was locked and they couldn’t unlock it, so they would replace it for us. 

Chris had a vague recollection he had passed my enquiry regarding fitting storage units in Mabel’s garage on to Jules, but talking to her we found she hadn’t followed that up. Paul Maynard (it seems very much to be a family business) then got involved and we decided we would sort out storage when we came back to collect Mabel. With Paul and Jules we also looked at the safes on display in Elite’s shop but these were too small for our needs. Jules was going to look into larger safes for us.

Following another look round the Mohawk on display we set a course for Bicester, a little further down the M40 where Jane was keen to visit Bicester Village – a collection of 132 designer outlet stores including Cath Kidston, Stella McCartney, Hugo Boss, Gucci, etc. etc. We had no trouble finding the place – the huge car park, which also contained a number of buses, was seething with people. After two circuits of the car park we couldn’t find anywhere to park so Jane went off to explore while I continued to orbit the car park. Jane wasn’t gone long, the place was packed with people and she felt she would rather start her exploration of British shops somewhere smaller. However, she wanted to return to Bicester Village when it was less crowded.

Next stop was the Market Square in Bicester to visit a wine merchant to buy John a good bottle of wine for his birthday. We had no trouble finding S H Jones shop, but it was closed Tuesdays!

Bicester High Street

Lunch was eaten at the Penny Black pub on Bicester’s pedestrianised High Street. It was our first English pub meal of the trip and we went for traditional pub fare - Bangers and Mash for me, Fish and Chips for Jane. It was interesting to see the pub menu had lots of healthy options with the calorie content of all the dishes and extras stated. That could be something they might want to adopt in the USA we thought.

Bangers and Mash

 A phone call found that S H Jones’ Banbury branch was open so we drove there and bought John a Central Otago Pinot Noir. Then we set a course for Coventry where we visited Go Camping who claims to be the UK’s largest camping store. We wanted to look at a replacement for the lounger we bought in France that took up half of Myrtle’s garage and camp stretchers to enable us to sleep outdoors on hot nights in Europe. We found what we were looking for and decided to return once we had Mabel as it would be impossible to get the stuff in Smarty.

John’s birthday was celebrated by a dinner that Ruth had gone to a lot of trouble over. Stella and Frank came along and we all enjoyed Nachos followed by very good roast pork, complete with crackling with birthday cake made by Stella and cheese and biscuits to finish.

Day 27: Monday 14 April - Knowle, by Ken

After breakfast Ruth, Olivia, Jane and I took Twiggy out for two laps of Knowle Park. She was just as manic as yesterday running here, there and everywhere and chasing dogs. However, instead of playing in the stream today she chose a muddy pond in which to have a dunk. Nearing home Twiggy suddenly became very reluctant to walk which Ruth put down to her anticipating the unwelcome hosing down that was to come. Sure enough, she was not happy under the hose again.

Olivia, Ruth and Twiggy

Twiggy In Full Flight

Twiggy On The Attack

Twiggy After Her Dunk

We had a good catch up with Harry and Ella via Face Time, they both seemed in good form.

Then it was off to Solihull to get a birthday present and card for John (42 tomorrow).

Back at Knowle we had a delicious lunch of Ruth’s home-made cauliflower soup and a slice of pasty after which I prepared a Cowboy Casserole for our evening meal.

Late afternoon we walked round to Phil and Kerry’s to collect Smarty. They were sorry to lose her after 18 months’ use (compared to the 6 months we had in 2012). Phil fessed up to not being able to open the boot. Smarty seemed very unfamiliar to us in that I didn’t know where the ignition key went which Phil had to explain (it’s just behind the gear lever). Also, I struggled to remember how to select Automatic – a small button on the side of the gear knob.

John is very busy at work meaning he didn’t get home to gone 7:00 and our Cowboy Casserole dinner was eaten late.