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).
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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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