Remembering How to Cook….and Drive in the UK

After 12 new countries we finally arrive back to a familiar country, the United Kingdom! We visited both England and Scotland but only spent time in places we hadn’t visited before, so no London or Edinburgh this time. Our first week we headed to York for some chores and to see if we remembered how to cook for ourselves. We also get to find out if I remember how to drive after 6 months, on the other side of the road, and a manual on the other side of the car.

Making our way to York

Since our flight from Cairo got us into London Heathrow airport quite late, we decided to do another hotel attached to the airport. After plenty of walking and a few wrong trains later we finally crashed into the comfy bed. The next morning we started with a few delays on the new Elizabeth Line into London, but only to catch a bus to take us north to Leeds, and one last bus to York.

We got into our Airbnb just on the north side of the city walls and walked to the grocery store across the parking lot to stock up on goodies for the week. We had been craving some comfort foods that we hadn’t been able to have in the last 4 months, such as grilled cheese, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and tacos!

We were ready to do a few housekeeping things such as being able to wash our clothes with an actual washer! Especially after the dust in Nepal and Egypt it was nice to get everything thoroughly cleaned. I also was able to get my hair cut for the first time since December. I have an undercut and Mr. Wander used his trimmer to clean it up a few times. We also brought scissors so I would cut his hair but since my hair is short and has layers it’s best to leave it to a professional. I was so pleased with how it turned out, I like it even better than the cut I had before!

I had also tracked down a “haberdashery” store, (what I would call a craft store) that had crochet hooks so I could finally start crocheting again! Unfortunately the size 7 in US and UK are not the same, they’re only 0.1mm different but it was enough to see a difference in the doily I was working on. I’m glad I brought 2 different bobbins of thread so I could just start a new one!

Our last errand was trying to get my drivers license, it hadn’t arrived in time before we left for Japan but my in-laws kindly shipped it from the US to be picked up in a spot in York. It was a good 25 minute walk from the apartment but it was a nice sunny day. There was some confusion (and some frustration) since they wanted a barcode but eventually he let me pick it up just using my passport for identification. On our way back to the apartment we took the scenic route along the river and stopped at a cute coffee shop for caffeine and goodies.

One of the days we decided to go for a little walk around the city walls, which are mostly intact. You do have to go up and down stairs for the sections where it no longer exists but we were able to be on the walls for most of the 2-3 mile loop. We stopped for lunch at a place called the fat badger for burgers and I got to have the first stout in a LONG time, of course a Guinness, and Mr. Wander opted for a cask ale.

A Few Bumps in the Road

We enjoyed watching some UK television as we worked on posts and future travel logistics and after 5 short days it was time to pick up our campervan!

We rented on a site called Goboony, where you rent from individuals instead of a company. It works somewhat like Airbnb, and we rented it for a full 4 weeks to travel through Scotland. We had to walk to the train station through the rain on both ends but it was only about an hour and a half total time with walking and riding the train. We met the owner and got to know our van, Ruby, and pretty soon it was time to practice driving!

I had driven a campervan on the left side of the road when we were in New Zealand in 2019. I also had a manual car in college and drove a rental with through Italy and Switzerland two years ago, but this was going to be my first time putting both together: driving manual on the other side of the car! So we spent a good 15-20 minutes just circling the neighborhood as I got used to shifting. When I felt more comfortable, Mr. Wander navigated us to a grocery store where we stocked up for a few days worth of meals. Mostly rice or pasta meals or fixings for sandwiches and snacks.

We drove North a few hours towards Scotland to a layby for the night. These are areas alongside the road where you can park to take a break from driving, take picture of scenery, or if not otherwise posted can park overnight. We shared it with another camper or two and a truck at times and made some rice and went to sleep. Since we didn’t rent from a company, the van didn’t have blankets so it was a bit chilly with just a sheet and pillows that we found in the van. Despite our sweaters, pants, and wool socks we were still a bit cold.

In the morning we drove to several places until we found a mall with a department store and found a few blankets on clearance. We had mostly interstate driving to do up until Glasgow but we missed an exit and in turning around on some complex roundabouts I unfortunately had a bit of a fender bender. Most of the roundabouts are pretty obvious what lane you can be in to exit or continue on a roundabout and this one was less clear. It was set up more like a road in a giant oval over the motorway since it had 6-7 exits but apparently in some spots two lanes can exit. I was on the outer most lane and someone on the inner lane wanted to exit when I wasn’t and they came flying around me. They were really nice about it and so were the owners of the campervan. It was just a small dent on the van and some paint to touch up but a little more damage to the other car, thankfully all the people were fine, just shaken up.

After exchanging all the information we continued on our way and made it to the caravan park which was part of a country club with cabins, hotel rooms, stables, and caravan hookups. It was really nice and compared to others we had found, it was a great deal for only £30 per night. Many places want to charge £25+ or around £18 per person and they didn’t look anywhere near this nice. I was happy we could book that morning because the entire park filled up by the time we went to sleep.

We did visit the restaurant to get a drink and dinner that night because I just needed something to help bring the nerves down. I had a delicious beef pie with red wine and Mr. Wander had a burger and cider.

It Can Only Get Better

Getting in an accident in the first 36 hours of driving this car was not a great start, but thankfully was our only major incident. It helped we mostly stayed out of any large cities until near the end when I was more comfortable driving Ruby. Driving the manual on the other side of the road and car felt natural pretty fast, and I adapted easier than in 2019. It was the size of the van that was more difficult both because I really needed to downshift on most hills, especially when there were tight turns, and the roads seemed much smaller here than NZ. We’ll be sharing some pictures and at least one video of a single track I got to drive on.

Next time will take us around the Western part of the Scottish mainland and up through the Isle of Skye. We visited several castles, a few waterfalls and met our first highland cow!