Owning
a Campervan in the UK. Copyright not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission of the author.
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Owning
a Campervan in the UK. “The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” - Herman Goering (second in command to Adolf Hitler) at the Nuremberg Trial
The 2004 UK trip.
For our latest tour of the UK and Europe we have decided to buy another campervan in the UK and keep it in storage for some years, and use it once or probably twice a year for tours of Europe that will last about six to nine weeks.
Like our previous tour reports this is about how to do it economically, and how and where to wild-camp, or boondock (park overnight) free. Intermingled with these gems of campervanning wisdom are my comments on the world we live in, which have been described by one member of the American press in commenting on my views on the world, and the USA's government policy on international relations in particular, as those of , "a pompous, narcissistic, self-serving, egotistical, condescending, sociopath." That's me he is talking about folks, just in case you are wondering. At least he didn't accuse me of being afraid to speak my mind.
So you have been warned, but personally I consider that a compliment coming from a member of the American press, as that is part of the mass media, that cess pool of cultural depravity and agency of deception and propaganda, which I regard with an even more vitriolic distain.
We tell you where and how we went, but don't attempt to describe all we saw. There are plenty of travel Internet sites to give you those sort of details. Here you will find practical notes particularly relevant if you are thinking of doing a similar tour. In particular how to keep costs down.
Here let me confess at the outset that my childhood comic book hero was Scrooge McDuck, (blessed be his illustrious name) and I am the very antithesis of the modern conditioned consumer. Natural enough for one who is so pompous, narcissistic, self-serving, egotistical, and condescending, that I seek no status in the symbols of modern consumerism. I wear no brand name training shoes, nor flaunt designer labels, and in fact I delight in getting clothing bargains at the charity shops in the UK or the USA or wherever I am, even from the trash and treasure shed at local tip near where I live, where I recntly found an excellend set of mechanics overalls. I lament the rise in prices in UK charity shops and commend to you the RSPCA charity shops as the best source of bargains, as they have resisted the trend to move "upmarket" and pretend to be some sort of poor mans boutique.So I love saving money more than spending money. That which I have saved, I keep in my money bin so I can dive in and swim around in it, just like my hero Uncle Scrooge McDuck does. Well, it's better than being a fan of "Mad-Rambo-Man" and blasting everyones head off with a "Mega-Ka-Blazzam Blaster"; isn't it?
Notes on when to buy your van and on Ebay UK.
THE place to buy your campervan now is Ebay on the Internet, of this there is no doubt. Prices are realistic, but don't make the mistake I did and offer over the bidding for a seller to end his auction early. I did this, and although I thought at the time that I had studied the market sufficiently, and that it was a good deal, I realize now that I paid too much. Be patient and let the market find its true level in the bidding. Being essentially a tourist in the country, and a bit too anxious to get my campervan, with the benefit of a few months hindsight I now realize that in paying £10,000 for the van I bought I probably paid about £2,000 to £3,000 too much for my van. No wonder the seller seemed happy.
The main problem with Ebay is that you will probably see good vans you will want to inspect before bidding a long way from whereever you base yourself in the UK, and you will need a rented car to to get around. If you stay in London public transport is fine, ant not too expensive within the city and suburbs, but to travel to other areas of the UK, for more than a few short trips out of London, or wherever else you base yourself, a hire car will be MUCH CHEAPER because long distance train fares in the UK are astronomically expensive, unless you book a week or more in advance. For two people travelling together a rental car is the only way to go. You can rent an almost new small car in London for £145 a week unlimited mileage, if you rent from Practical Car Rental in the suburbs, NOT from one of the major international car rental companies at an airport..
The current temperature and time in London
A one day return train trip for two persons to less than 100 miles out of London will cost you more than the rental on a car for a week. If you doubt this advice check the ticket prices on the Railtrack website.from London to say Reading, only about 50 miles.
I also came to the UK early in March, because my earlier experience in 2000 in buying another camper told me there was a seasonal increase in demand, and that the bargains tended to disappear with approach of summer. This may have been correct in 2000, but there are several new factors. Firstly this time I was looking to buy a considerably more expensive van, (£10,000 or more) which is out of the price range of the seasonal young "backpacker" type of tourist that tends to buy up the best of the cheaper vans (VW campers etc.) for tours of Europe around late March to April. Last time for my tour in 2000 I paid only 4,000 (see the 2000 trip report) and this lower priced marker (or even below) may be more seasonal. There are also far more campervans on the market now in the UK than a few years ago, and the emergence of Ebay has made it easier to find good vans for sale. In looking at Ebay adverts again even into June 2,004, I see plenty of good vans still for sale, and at no higher prices than before the summer holiday season.
So I would now advise the prospective campervan buyer to leave it a bit later in the year to come to the UK to buy your van. The weather will be better in April or May and from what I have noted by observing Ebay, you can still then find good vans. This year the weather in March was miserably cold and wet compared to other times I have been in the UK in 1,997 and 2,000 at the same time of year. I was reminded of the bleak and miserable England that friends who had emigrated from the UK to Australia had told us about. I had, after several probably fortuitously atypical pleasant experiences with the English weather thought they were exaggerating, but now I believe them. Come in late April or May, the more expensive vans are still there than, and the weather is a whole lot more enjoyable.
The campervan market on Ebay UK is much smaller than the USA market and although growing is at a lower level of sophistication, more due to the users than any limitations of the Ebay site.
The average UK E-Bay advertiser does not fully exploit the capability of the medium and quite a lot of the adverts are reminiscent of a newspaper classified, lacking in detail and illustration. The Brits are a grumpy lot in their adverts with frequent phrases like "No time wasters", "You are bidding to buy, not to kick the tires" Threats of "Legal Action" for non performing bidders, but often a patchy and inadequate description of the vehicle. The result is that most campers advertised on Ebay UK fail to sell. There is also a noticeable tendency to attempt to obtain unrealistic prices by setting high initial starting prices or unrealistic reserves, so much so that many campers on Ebay receive no bids at all, perhaps over 50%, and about 80% fail to sell or meet the reserve set by the vendor. One therefore needs to be wary of the advertised prices, they are not a good reflection of the reality of the marketplace. There are notable differences between the UK Ebay camper market and that in the USA where I think the majority of vendors are more adapted to the effective use of the medium than in the UK.
There is not uncommonly a stubbornness about the British advertiser in being reluctant to meet the reality of the market place and just as I have noted in advertisements in the LOOT newspaper, camper vans will often be advertised repeatedly for months on end at prices clearly above the market. Many private sellers have perhaps had an inflated trade in valuation from a dealer on a newer camper and get the idea that they should be able to sell the van for that amount on the private market or on Ebay. The reality is of course different. If buying from a dealer there is some statutory warranty, and often an extended dealer warranty, that the private vendor does not have to provide. Also the prices they are offered as a trade are based on high profit margins on a new van and well above their vehicles real secondhand value. I have observed the market for many months based on adverts in the LOOT, on Ebay, and a number of other UK campervan sales Internet sites and consolidated the details of many sales and offers into an Excel spread sheet to familiarize myself with the real value of vans in the market to enable me to make these observations.
Campervans also cost considerably more in the UK than in the US. You get a lot more van for your money in America, and this reflects the exchange rate strength of the Pound against other currencies. The 1,986 Fleetwood Bounder 28 foot van with 21,000 miles, we bought in the USA in 2,002 was a much bigger and more elaborately equipped camper for US$12,100 than the 1,990 Peugeot-Talbot Capri 18 foot van with 34,000 miles we have bought this time in the UK for £10,000 (US$18,000).
A liter of diesel costs 77-80 Pence in the UK which makes it about 400% higher than in the USA, and about 250% higher than in Australia, so this greatly affects the type of vans available, and what you should buy. Refer to our tour report on our 2000 tour of Europe for more notes on buying a van in the UK, much of which is still relevant. Fuel costs are somewhat cheaper in Europe, but still very high compared to the US and to a lesser extent Australia. Diesel is the only way to go in this situation, as it is much more economical, and in Europe costs less than petrol.
Some Internet sites where campervans are advertised.
Ebay UK Seach for campers - diesel with shower.
http://www.findit.co.uk/motorhome/uk.htm
http://www.autotrader.co.uk/CARAVANS/caravans.jsp
http://motoring.loot.com/
http://www.ukmotorhomes.net/cgi-bin/eclassifieds/classifieds.cgi
http://www.caravanfinder.co.uk/Accomodation in London.
To buy a van in the UK London is probably the best place to base youeself. There is a large local campervan market and public transport is excellent to get around the city to inspect vans. However tourist accomodation can be very expensive and even the worst hotels in central London will cost about £50 per day for a double room that is cramped dingy and dosen't have its own bathroom facilities. You will do a bit better out near Heathrow Airport, where hotels like the Ibis offer business traveller acomodation in reasonable three star conditions for a bit more money.
However we strongly recommed that you arrange a flat or house share where you will have your own catering facilities through the use of the kitchen. If you live in a Hotel and have to eat out most of the time it will also get very expensive. Pub meals are the cheapest alternative, but self catering is much cheaper and we think much more convenient for the job you have to do, that is finding your campervan.
The place to arrange your London accommodation is the FREE Internet site Gumtree.com where you can respond to or place your own advert. We placed an advert in early March 2004 and were deluged with over 20 offers by e-mail with three more people even phoning us from London to offer accommodation. We offered to pay up to £100 per week for accommodation within the London transport Zones 1 to 6. This refers to the London Underground fare zone system and if you are in this very wide area transport links will be close by, and not too expensive, at least by London's inflated cost standards.
London flat dwellers don't like to leave a bedroom empty for even a few weeks because rents are expensive for one wager earner on their own. Short lets are advertised in a seperate section on Gumtree,and we placed adverts in this section and also advertised in the longer term rental section of Gumtree, on the basis of being a stop gap tenant that would move out on a weeks notice when the flat "owner" found a longer term tenant. This approach also brought a lot of offers.
You will see flat shares and house shares advertised at all sorts of prices, often asking extra for "outgoings" and demanding bonds, or setting all sorts of odd conditions. Ignore them. State your own conditions clearly in your advert, NO bond, NO outgoings, NO fixed term, but that you are willing to move out on a weeks notice. That's what gets them to respond and agree to your terms because the flat "owner" will have some income while he finds a longer term tenant on what ever terms he wants to offer. The flat "owner" sees it as a win-win deal for him, and it is for you too. Probably you will find your campervan and move on before he finds a permanent tenant. If not you can very easily find another short let on the Gumtree and move out in at the most a week.
Give your Gumtree advert a catchy title line to make yours stand out. We used. "We pay you rent while you find a long term tenant", and got lots of responses. We stated our limit as £100 per week, but this may not be the best policy as then everyone wants a hundred a week, and we even had one responded who had been advertising her flatshare for £80 a week for some time offer it to us for £100. I would now advise you to indicate merely that you want a budget room, and ignore any respondents that ask over £100, or who come back wanting extras that you indicated you won't pay.
We have found that for quite satisfactory accommodation in 2,004 you don't need to pay any more than £100 per week for a double bedroom, including use of the kitchen, with all furniture and utensils included, use of the washer and dryer, and no extra outgoings to pay. Our house share even included use of the owners Internet account so I could connect my laptop to search for campervans on Ebay. If you have your own mobile phone and use that for long distance calls and only make local calls from the house phone it won't cost the landlord anything because local calls are free in the UK.
Notes on the Road.
11/03/2004 Thu.
We arrive at London Heathrow. I think the pilot of our Malaysian Airlines flight must have made a major navigational error and landed in the Central African Republic instead of in England. The population at the airport consists almost entirely of blacks, hardly an "English" face to be seen. However a quick check with the inquiry counter reveals that this is indeed England. I'm not sure if I'm relieved or even more horrified. The New World Order has been hard at work.
We take a minicab to Harrow (£20.00 plus airport parking fee £2.30) to meet our hosts as arranged over the Internet and later by phone. A nice clean reasonably sized room about 12ft by 12 ft, with plenty of wardrobe and drawer space. Generally excellent accommodation for £100 per week. About 1 Km from either of two underground railway stations. We can use the Internet all we like, and are given access to the hosts Internet account to facilitate finding our campervan. Out host even swaps some software CD's with me, some of the items bought in Kuala Lumpur for some of his collection.
12/03/2004 Fri.Shopping for food in Harrow and Wealdstone and using the net to find vans occupy today.
13/03/2004 Sat.Shopping and van hunting via the Internet.
14/03/2004 Sun.
15/02/2004 Mon.Travelling north it is difficult to find accommodation south of Manchester as most is full, but after refusing to pay £69 at one hotel we eventually find a motel for £42 which is much better value. I would not like to travel from hotel to hotel or have to search for B&B's every night, we found it a pain, and at holiday times in the UK it could be even more difficult. This is one of the beauties of a campervan, home is where you are.
16/03/2004 Tue.
I subsequently have found the van is not 1991, but was first registered in the UK in 1990, and the vehicle chassis was made in February 1988, and allowing time for the coachwork conversion to a campervan and the time it spent waiting to be sold accounts for the different times. So it is really a 1,988 vehicle, and I should not have paid £10,000 for it. I now know why the seller seemed so keen, and I wasn't careful enough to check the vehicle compliance plate for the date of manufacture. I relied on the MOT certificates which show the year of first registration, not year of manufacture. The van is probably worth closer to £8,000.00, so I can expect to loose 2,000 more than I would otherwise have done when we sell it in a few years time. Well shit happens, I don't often get deceived. You can't win them all.
After several thousand miles the van runs well, doesn't use any oil and starts first time. All the appliances work well and there are no apparent problems apart from a slight vibration from the gear stick. So we haven't had any other unpleasant surprises and with secondhand vehicles that's not too bad.
17/03/2004 Wed.
To save money don't eat at or buy fuel at the motorway service areas as prices are considerably higher than in nearby towns off the motorway. However to make these savings be prepared to spend some extra time travelling, as gettting off the motorway, driving into often congested towns with poor parking and getting back onto the mororway can sometimes take a lot longer than you would like. If there is a super-store (large Tesco or ASDA supermarket with its own parking) close to the motorway exit go for that, it will save a lot of time.We find Tesco have generally competitive prices, and super-stores usually have a cafe. Tesco are cheaper than Sainsbury's, who are loosing market share, no wonder. ASDA (Wal Mart in the UK) also have cafes. ALDI stores also offer good prices on groceries, but have no cafes.
18/03/2004 Thu.If you are considering a GPS system for a campervan, get one one with an external antenna which would be much preferable in a campervan of this type (bed over cab or Class C as the Americans term them). GPS units that plug into a Compact Flash adapter for the PCMCIA slot in a laptop are readily available on Ebay for about US$80, complete with an external antenna and a Compact Flash to PCMCIA adapter. This type of unit has the advantage that you can also use it with a Pocket PC.
For up to date reviews of GPS units go to pocketgpsworld.com where you will find helpful reviews of units like the Globalsat CF unit. USB connection GPS units are also available even more cheaply on Ebay, but at present they don't seem to come with an external antenna, which you will need in many campervans, and not so many pocket PCs have USB ports yet.
In my opinion A Globalsat CF GPS unit used with a laptop and running OziExplorer software and using scanned or downloaded maps is vastly superior for campervan navigation to a GPS unit like a Garmin Etrex, or any of the other brands of GPS. You can use any map you want to, provided you learn the simple skills of how to scan and calibrate maps, instead of being limited to the expensive proprietary mapping provided by the GPS manufacturer.
For use outside the vehicle you can simply unplug the GPS receiver from the laptop and the external antenna, and plug it into the CF slot in a pocket PC which if running OziExplorer CE can use the same scanned maps as the laptop.
19/03/2004 Fri.
I found the following:-
· It is impossible to get insurance (comprehensive, including the compulsory third party liability) from any one except Downunder Insurance if you are not a resident of the UK. I tried perhaps 20 insurance companies and brokers, all refused to issue a policy. It makes no sense because the van will be in secure storage 8 months of the year, so the risk of a claim must be much less than average. Despite this I had to pay Downunder Insurance £670 for 12 months comprehensive insurance. A typical British resident pays around £300 or less for the same insurance. The underwriter, Landmark Insurance, will not issue policies direct to non UK residents as they have a brokerage agreement with Downunder. There has to be an opportunity here for some competitor to enter the market as Downunder are ruthlessly exploiting the situation. Come the revolution put the fat pigs on the list of those to be exterminated for economic crimes against humanity, that is making me pay over the market for their monopoly product.
· You don't need to produce the certificate of insurance to transfer the vehicle registration, only when you renew the ROAD TAX, which in this case falls due end of September. Neither do the insurance and tax periods have to coincide; the insurance just has to be current at the time the tax is renewed.
· The MOT (roadworthy) certificate which is issued for 12 months from the date of the mechanical inspection also does not need to cover the full period for which the tax is paid (six or twelve months) but only needs to be current on the day the tax is renewed. Out MOT certificate is current until 13 Feb. 2005, so it will suffice to renew the tax in Sept. 2004 for 12 months.
· MOT certificate inspections cost around £30 for the inspection although I have seen some garages advertise them for £27. Any work required as a result of the inspection is of course additional. You can have the repairs done by the MOT inspection garage or anywhere else you want.
· Road Tax must be renewed before it expires (payable at a post office) but can be paid no more than 14 days before expiry. However if you declare that you intend to take the vehicle overseas you can pay it up to 46 days in advance of the due date, but only at a local office of the motor vehicles registration department (whatever the fools call themselves these days) and not at a post office.
20/03/2004 Sat.
21/03/2004 Sun.Visited some relations of a friend who took us to lunch at a Turkish restaurant, excellent food. Mothers day three course ala carte £19.99 per person.
22/03/2004 Mon.
23/03/2004 Tue.
24/03/2004 Wed.
CALOR brand gas is the most widely available brand in the UK and although other types (brands) of cylinder are available, the brands are not interchangeable, and even if the others may be cheaper the limited availability would rule them out for anyone touring.
The system of exchanging cylinders instead of refilling a customers own cylinder as we do in Australia is a pain in both the arse and the wallet, and it is to be hoped attempts to introduce it in Australia fail miserably, as they will if consumers have any sense. The greedy capitalist pigs trying to foist this unwanted and unnecessary "service" onto the Australian public deserve to enjoy a long period of bankruptcy followed by a good public flogging of 200 lashes for their efforts at exploitation.
Considering that LPG is an internationally traded commodity with a worldwide price, the charges for LPG in the UK are nothing short of obscene, and justify a death sentence with aggravated suffering on the bloated imperialist oppressors who exploit the market in this grotesque manner.Apart from "Calor" gas, the best of a very bad lot, special suffering should be adjudged upon the decadent capitalist pigs responsible for "Camping Gas" which in 2000 cost the obscene price of £7.00 for 2.7kg, and now costs £12.99 for the same miserable quantity, truly price gouging at it's most extreme. Hang the bastards from the nearest town gate, a favorite English practice until the 18th century, until the life drains from their miserable carcasses, and the crows pick their bones.
The reason they get away with this exorbitant pricing is that Camping Gas has been the only type of cylinder which is available in both the UK and across Europe. (in 2000 we found it available with cylinders exchangeable in UK, France, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Austria and Germany. I presume it is also available in Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Portugal. What the situation is in the recently extended (May 2004) European Union countries I can't say, but I expect it would be available there too. Despite this I recommend you avoid using it, and refer to the Europe 2000 tour report for more information on ways to do so.
Some progress in cylinder standardization in Europe appears to be underway, but the details are unclear and I'll have to wait until we venture into Europe in September 2004 to find out for myself, unless some one can advise me by e-mail. I have tried to get information on this through relevant travel news groups, but the information obtained, while suggesting that the situation is improving, was conflicting and incomplete.
Now there is a solution. Refillable Cylinders made by
[Richard Glazebrook Director Tel. 01509 843331]An 11Kg cylinder costs £78 in June 2004 and the fittings for refilling cost £50. You also ned several adaptors to fit French and other European LPG bowser hoses to your van.
After having the Gaslow cylinder fitted before our later trip to Europe in Sept 2004, I can't recommend it highly enough. LPG problems and high costs ore gone for good. Overall the installation with two extra adapters and fitting charge of £30 cost £203, money very well spent I can assure you. Compared with the hassles we had finding Camping Gas in Europe on our earlier tour in 2000, and the obscene cost of the miserable 2.7Kg of LPG they contain, a Gaslow refillable is LPG HEAVEN, and Scrooge McDuck is doing cartwheels in his money bin at the thought of all the money we will save in the long run. And that's without all the time you save by not having to find Camping Gas, because LPG service stations are everywhere in Europe.
25/03/2004 Thu.
26//03/2004 Fri.
Today we found a Calor agent who changed our 3.9kg cylinder for a 6Kg cylinder for no charge except the gas £11.25. This despite being previously told that you couldn't change one cylinder size for another, or that there was a small FEE, according to one campervan dealer. There is NO fee. However you can not change a 6kg for a 13 Kg cylinder, so I'm told, by the Calor agent in Sittingborne Kent. I will now use a 13Kg cylinder as the main supply, with the 6Kg as the temporary replacement for when the 13Kg. runs out until we can get it replaced. The 6 will fit under a seat in the van. Unfortunately the gas compartment will only take one 13 Kg. (or 15 Kg of Butane) cylinder, and won't accommodate the 6 Kg with it. You could house two 6Kg cylinders, but they are much less economical to buy. But before our next tour to Europe we will be buying Gaslow refillable cylinders.
Propane (RED) cylinders cost to exchange for full ones:-
3.9Kg £9.45
6Kg £11.75
13Kg £14.25
Hire fee propane £1.9.99
Butane (Blue) cylinders cost
4.5Kg £9.75
7.0Kg £12.25
15Kg £17.25
Hire fee butane £24.99To "rent" a 15Kg (if you don't have an empty to exchange costs £24.99, and somewhat less for the smaller sizes. This so called "rent" is a one off, not recurring, charge, if you don't have a cylinder to exchange.
Butane (BLUE) cylinders are similarly uneconomical in the smaller sizes, and use a completely different regulator connection so you can't interchange them without changing the regulator.
We will buy a Gaslow 11kg refillable cylinder and perhaps a 6Kg refillable too, and use them in place of our existing Calor cylinders. This will prove much cheaper than Calor gas or any form of European exchangable cylinder. A 11 Kg cylinder should last us about two weeks.The "Camping Gas" bastards can starve, until they are strung up!
We head north via the Dartford tunnel under the Thames (Toll £1.00 for the van, and for cars) into Essex to explore a part of England we have not seen before on our previous tours with small hired VW campers in 1994 and 1997.
27/03/2004 Sat.In Chelmsford we call at the Tesco superstore and notice the parking attendant taking an unusual interest in our van. The car park is festooned with threatening signs about Tesco customers only, maximum stay three hours, wheel clamping with a £40 release fee, hanging drawing and quartering for overstaying. We have only been there five minutes, so Sharon decides to ask him what he finds so interesting, he circled the van like the Indians surrounding Custer, and entered our number into his little computer. "We have a lot of people parking here during festivals", he says, "and it gets very busy, we particularly watch out for camper vans". We can see that as customers are cueing up to get into the carpark at 9AM. I decide to pump him a bit more and ask if it is just this Tesco that is so uptight about campervans, and mention that we have stayed in a few, and that ASDA seem to welcome campervans.
He melts under out our velvet interrogation and reveals that they never actually wheel clamp anyone, haven't burnt any overstaying customers at the stake since 1,998, and that he hasn't issued a ticket in the twelve months he has worked there, and that if we did want to stay overnight, could we please go to the smaller carpark round the back of the store. So all the signposted bluster was just propaganda. You can park overnight in Tesco, even in Chelmsford, if you follow the standard etiquette.
Charity Shops - Observations
Since our last visit in 2000 things have been all downhill for the dozens of charity shops (op-shops as they are known in Australia) we have seen, or should I say they have tried to move up-market. The result is that goods are now overpriced and in some cases are more expensive than new clothing back home in Australia. Shirts for £3 to £4 (A$10) that used to be 50P four years ago, and you can forget about outfitting a camper van from op-shops, the range of household items is very poor and patchy. As for antiques, there are no bargains to be had now in charity shops, old wares are sold at antique shop prices and you would have to be lucky to find any real gems. You are much better off buying new items at ASDA or in "Pound shops". In Chelmsford we found a shop offering new factory seconds clothing at much less than the op-shops for secondhand clothing. However an Oxfam shop in a nearby village yielded a nice jumper for £1 off the "bargain rack" for Sharon, so all is not lost for charity shops yet.
We found RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) charity shops had consistently lower prices and commend them to you. Not so numerous as the shops of other bigger charities, but worth checking carefully whenever you see one.
28/03/2004 Sun.
The computer navigation system using scanned maps of the UK road atlas, the London A-Z street directory and Landranger 1:50,000 scale maps downloaded piecemeal from the Internet and stitched together using Panavue software has proven a great success. The only problem is frequent loss of signal from satellites to the GPS, which I am sure is mainly caused by the overhang of the overcab bed on our Class C camper van. A GPS with an external antenna would be a definite advantage over the Garmin Etrex. A type that plugs into a Compact Flash Card socket could be used either with an IPAQ pocket PC or plugged into the laptop's PCMCIA slot with an adapter would be the ideal type.
Visiting Colchester proved an expensive mistake. After locating the shopping area we observed many vehicles parked along a wide road where there were double yellow lines. Being a Sunday afternoon, we assumed that the usual parking restrictions were relaxed and joined all the other vehicles. The signs also suggested this was the case, referring to additional parking restrictions on Monday to Saturday. After exploring the rather uninteresting modern shopping area we returned to find a parking ticket for £60 on the windscreen, £30 if you paid up within 14 days. It seems the apparent relaxation of the parking restrictions on a Sunday only applies if you are "disabled" and display one of those little blue and white wheelchair cards in your vehicle. I eventually found a parking attendant who very pleasantly explained all this to me, and despite seeing the obvious logic of my assumption advised that the simplest thing to do was to pay the £30.
The FINE new Society of the New World Order.
Now in the famous anthem "Rule Britannia", there is a line "Britons, never never never, shall be slaves." Written in a time when the British Empire "enslaved" a goodly chunk of the world, it now has an ironic ring to it. For now you Poms are slaves, and you can sing anthems with gusto, and wave flags at the Prom Concerts in the Royal Albert Hall, all you like, but it doesn't change the facts, you are enslaved, serfs of the "new feudalism" that is the New World Order. The continual petty revenue raising of the nearly 3;000 speed cameras, the proliferation of parking fines, even on a Sunday when there is no traffic congestion to justify it, and the omnipresent pay and display carparks, right down to having to pay 20P to have a pee at some London railway stations.
You are slaves in that you have accepted the criminal "privatization", code word for theft, of your national assets such as railways, airports, water and electricity, telephone system, and this merciless never ending pin pricking imposition of FINE justice. You all suffer it in silence, not to mention having your once great country overrun by culturally discordant and incompatible immigrants of every imaginable colour and creed. In fact I think a lot of you Britain's are disabled, brain dead in fact, for having allowed your country to be "privatized" to the point of the absurd, and absolutely overrun with so called "migrants", and accepting this FINE society.
I know so very many of you English resent it all, so many of you have told me so, but you all suffer it in silence. Yes my beloved Poms, you are slaves, your songs of defiance come to nothing. Your actions or lack of them to demand your freedom speak louder than your words, which but romantically echo the past glories of a fallen empire. Now you are slaves of the New World Order. Perhaps your fathers should not have tried so hard to win World War II, for on doing so you ensured your enslavement by a force far more insidious than Nazism. Yet few of you will ever, could ever, understand this, for you truly believe the propaganda of our times. The scales have not yet fallen from your eyes. Germany was never the natural enemy of Britain, you were conned into fighting WWII for international Jewry. Churchill was a war mongering drunken dupe heavily influenced by a pro war Jewish dominated lobby group called "The Focus". He was effectively a bankrupt and was bailed out by a member of the Focus called Sir Henry Strakosh. (Research these names on the Internet and find the truth) Hitler was right!
You aren't alone my Pommy mates, the same things have happened to us in Australia. Why is it so? Who has done this to us, and why have we all accepted it like lambs to the slaughter? Why do we not rise up and overthrow these tyrannical oppressions? Why do ALL the politicians we elect, no matter what party they claim to represent lead us down the same cursed path to hell? Why has it happened all over the world at much the same time, in very similar fashion? Nowhere do the common people like what has been done to them. Nowhere do they say on masse that this is NOT what the people want.
The NWO is the ultimate dictatorship, for the neuvo serfs believe they are freemen, that war is peace and hate is love, just as George Orwell foresaw in his monumental thesis of insight into the future of humanity, "Nineteen Eighty Four". Perhaps it should be renamed the "Twenty Fifth Protocol." On the ecconomic side the "corporate state" is behind the so called globalization of trade and services, and on the immigration side which works hand in glove with it, the most cogent theory I have come across to explain it is that it is a policy of International Zionism to create a situation where Jews are no longer the most visible minority in societies, but where there are multiple minorities in all societies. A version of "WHERE DO YOU HIDE A TREE?", in a forest of course. So there is created a forest of minorities. Only immense wealth and power could have exercised the degree of influence needed to bring this about. The sort of power and wealth that brought about the Balfour declaration; and had WWII fought for it by proxy by the UK and America. You think it's impossible, a fantasy? Read some real history my friend; revisionist history. For what you presently believe about these things is the result of propaganda, presented as fact, you have been fed all your life. Ask the question. Who benefits?
Once upon a time it was minorities that were oppressed, now in all the so called "western democracies" the "minorities" are a polyglot multitude and the majority are ignored. Why is it so? Who benefits? You can't even question the official version of at least one element of history anymore, it's been made a CRIME to think!. In Germany, it is a crime to question the holocaust, similarly in France. What kind of truth is it that is so fragile that it requires laws to protect it from even being questioned?
There is a new breath of fresh air sweeping the world through the medium of the Internet which exposes the propaganda of our times and revises the nonsense we have all been taught as "history". Revisionism it is called, an objective search for reality and truth in history is what it is, and the establishment of the New World Order fear it, lest it expose the manifold evil of their deeds of the twentieth century and the means by which they have reduced the freemen of England to latter-day serfs.
Knowledge is power. Those that do not learn from history are destined to relive it. The fact that our history as officially taught is mish mash of lies, half truths and gross distortions, has been a factor in the recent rise of the NWO and the enslavement of humanity by the corporate state.
"Enslavement" in the third millennium sense is a different thing from the traditional concept of enslavement, as a purely physical state of lack of freedom. Now in the information age it means being denied a just share of the enlightenment of the knowledge age, being denied a just share of the benefits of the unprecedented productive capacity of technology. It means having the quality life which should be available to all, denied to many, having conditions of employment rolled back towards those of our grandfathers, longer hours, reduced job security, reduced leave and overtime conditions imposed on workers.
These things are being unjustly imposed on workers at a time when productivity through automation and the computer industrial revolution (the third industrial revolution) has never been higher, and is advancing by leaps and bounds.
Workers in "the west" are forced to accept relatively lower real wages, (measured by falling home affordability rates) by job exports to third world countries, mainly by multinational corporations [MNC's]. The MNC's profit excessively at the expense of all other sectors of society, and hide their immense profits through tax haven shell companies and transfer pricing. Workers in the newly industrialized countries receive some benefit, but only at the expense of workers in the consumer countries. Wages and conditions are forced down globally in a race to the bottom. A Chinese peasant works for less than $1.00 a day, doing the work once done by an English worker for $10.00 an hour, the English worker is on the dole, and lives from hand to mouth. The goods are sold for whatever the market will bear in each country, without regard to the cost of production.
These things constitute part of the material aspect of "enslavement" in the contemporary sense.
Being brain washed to accept these things as "normal" or "inevitable", even as good and desirable, and having ones mind enfeebled by a diet of trash, trivia and endless "sport" served up by the popular media constitute the cerebral and spiritual aspects of contemporary enslavement.
Being denied a true understanding of history and the elite power structures of the world, and being brainwashed into a belief in patriotic duty and thus deceived into involvement in wars of capitalist intrigue, waged primarily for profit, is one of the most commonly perpetrated and dastardly aspects of contemporary enslavement.
That higher education is becoming increasingly expensive, and is deliberately being made unaffordable to many, in the information age, is a perversion of natural justice of the most egregious form. That education has been "commercialised" and what was freely offered a generation ago is now subject to a plethora of fees and charges, justified by the "user pays" mantra of capitalism is another aspect of contemporary enslavement.
Study and learn from the Internet the reality of our times. Knowledge is power.
29/03/2004 Mon.
The English back roads are poorly provided with facilities for travellers. Very seldom do you find picnic tables and little parks as we have so commonly in Australia, and there are few places to even pull off the road. The "A" roads are also poorly provided with parking places and often the few places provided are no more than a narrow one lane wide parking bay immediately adjacent to the traffic lanes. There is always traffic, even on the back roads. On the motorways there are privately run service areas where there is fuel (prices generally high) restaurants (high prices) and toilets. Parking areas are stark paved areas and there are usually no landscaped areas for motorists to park. The standard is generally much below that of highway rest areas of Europe, America or Australia.
We are travelling the back roads the "B" grade and unclassified roads, as here the landscape interest is greater and the opportunity arises to stop in quaint villages and explore. The English seem always to be in a hurry, traffic moves fast on the motorways and the speed limits of generally 70MPH are routinely ignored.
30/03/2004 Tue.
Spent the night in Tesco Ipswitch, undisturbed. Found some bicycles in Tesco for £50, which is the best price so far. 26 inch wheels, 18 speed gears, no mudguards, low straight handlebars, in ladies and gents styles. Not happy entirely with the low handlebars and we will not buy yet, perhaps a boot sale will yield a better bargain. An op-shop in Woodridge yields a nice jumper for Sharon for £3.50 and a stainless steel tea pot come kettle for the van for £2.49. Not many £1.00 bargains to be had but they are still worth checking out.
Heading towards Orford Castle the road is blocked by an accident, a milk tanker and a car in collision. We have just spotted our first forest SONP on the edge of Tunstall Forest and decide to turn back there to stop early and do some work on the van, and see if the wreck is cleared by the morning. I strip and scrape the rear view mirror mountings and repaint them with red oxide primer as they were showing signs of rust. Looks like I've got to it in time as it is still only superficial with some shallow pitting.
It isn't surprising that there is an accident on these narrow roads. Many drivers can be seen cutting blind corners, the Poms seem to be ever in a hurry, and often seem to be driving too fast for safety in the conditions. One needs to be aware of these matters and take it particularly easy on the blind bends to give the inevitable fool going too fast on the wrong side of the double lines time to avoid you. There isn't any room to move over yourself, roads often have a wall or hedge within inches of the pavement.
Where to buy your groceries and wine in the UK - ASDA clear leader.
Very clearly the best prices for grocery items are at ASDA, the UK arm of American Supermarket and general retail giant Wal-Mart, and at ALDI, the German discounter, followed up fairly closely on a few selected grocery items by Tesco. LIDL stores are also worth checking. Lagging well behind in the competition stakes is Sainsburys and other smaller grocery chains such as Morrisons, Safeway, Waitrose and Iceland. Tesco Extra stores also carry a range of general merchandise, although smaller Tesco's are purely a grocery supermarket.
At our first encountered ASDA in London we noted many shoppers with trolleys piled high with goods to such an unusual extent and with such relative frequency as to be noteworthy. As there are not a lot of ASDA superstores in the UK, although many larger towns have one, many customers really stock up when they visit one. So should you to save money. ASDA, like most grocery chains, have a house brand that sells for much below "branded" goods. All of the ASDA house brand products we tried proved to be of good quality, as did the house brands of TESCO.
ALDI have some very good buys too and should not be overlooked, and have good weekly specials, not only food but hardware, technology products, computers , tools, and clothing. A rolling anthology of various lines that are not stocked for long makes ALDI worth checking out regularly while travelling the UK or in Europe. New weekly specials released every Thursday are part of the ALDI formula to keep consumer interest in the store.
We await the opening in of ALDI Brisbane Australia in June 2004 with great expectations. They have forced Australia's dominant grocery retailers Coles-Myer and Woolworths to reduce prices by up to 25% on many lines in areas where ALDI has opened stores.
For wine ASDA is the clear leader, followed by ALDI, with the others hardly in the race. A very limited range of Spanish red and white table wines can be had from ASDA for under £2 a 750ml bottle, and a lot more for under £3. Many very ordinary Spanish and French wines sell in the UK for £5.00 to £10.00 a bottle. In their home countries similar red and white table wines sell for the equivalent of 40 Pence a liter.
Much of the domestic equipment for our van comes from ASDA, clearly the price leaders on most things, although we did pick up two very good stainless steel saucepans with laminated bases for £3.50 each as a half price special at the first Tesco we saw in Harrow London, perhaps they were quitting the line and wanted to get rid of the last oddments
Charity shops have proven to be not a lot of help in outfitting, except for our kettle come tea pot. Watch out for "Table Top Sales" held in village halls on weekends and Car Boot Sales held in fields during the warmer months. These can be a good source of genuine bargains for items that you are not in a hurry to acquire. We picked up some wine glasses for 10P each and some cassette tapes 12 for £1.00.
On the Price of wine in the UK, the value of the £1 and the wealth of the World.
(Scrooge McDuck's hypothesis of currency numerical parity. )Wine in Spanish supermarkets retails at the exchange rate equivalent 40 Pence a liter for Vino de Mesa, table wine, or quaffing wine, but of very pleasant character. The mark ups on wine in the UK are so enormous that there can be no moral justification for it, and the profits being made must be so huge that only transfer pricing between the multinational importers and tax shelter intermediary companies operating in the worlds tax havens can be used to hide the true extent of the profiteering. Another example of how multinational companies, the agents of the establishment of the NWO, exploit their position, rip off consumers, and avoid having to pay any taxes. All done under the noses of their subservient hirelings, the so called "national governments" and the "elected" politicians that the neuvo-serfs still naively believe represent the peoples interests. What a joke!
Even with higher British taxes it is clear that enormous profits are made on imported wine. The artificially high exchange rate of the £ contributes to this situation. The fact that a great portion of the worlds wealth is still controlled from the UK through the City of London, and that a large portion of the worlds greatest fortune, the Rothschilde's global holdings, is based in the UK. ( I have seen one estimate of the magnitude of the Rothschilde's wealth on the Internet at 100 Trillion US$. That the United States of America's national debt is around 4 Trillion US$ puts it in perspective, and there are other estimates putting the Rothschilde's wealth at almost 50% of the total value of global stockmarket capitalization). This I believe one of the underlying reasons for the maintenance of this artificially high Pound exchange rate.
The high exchange rate of the Pound Sterling against all other currencies enables the worlds goods to be bought very cheaply, and on sold to the British neuvo-serfs at prices far higher than the same goods sell for in other parts of the world such as Asia, Australia and the USA. Thus the British common people are effectively taxed because they fail to reap any benefit of their overvalued currency, unless of course they travel abroad. Take for instance goods made in China, which I have seen retail in Malaysia for 1 Malaysian Ringit. Officially there are about 7 Ringit to the Pound, but the same goods sell in the UK for £1.00. The multinational corporations buy cheaply in Asia and sell to the UK public in Pounds, pocketing the huge difference in real wealth. This they use to expand their ever increasing dominance of the world's governments. This is one aspect of the New World Order, and those behind it are the mega trillionaires of a few dominant dynasties. Governments have been subjugated to be their mere catspaws, and Nation States their hunting grounds. The peasants, the common people, the neuvo-serfs, have been sold this travesty of justice on humanity under the brand name of Globalization. The Corporate State, effectively global rule by multinational corporates, and hence by the tiny mega wealthy elite, including such ultra capitalists as the Rothschilde dynasty, who effectively control them through their vast stockholdings.
Travel to the various countries of the world alerts one to these economic peculiarities, and one is able to read between the lines of prices and official currency exchange rates to observe what MUST be happening.
I combine this with my lifelong study of the stockmarket, from which I now make my living, and an interest in global economics and the reading of a number of monumental exposes of global political and economic and power reality such as "Tragedy and Hope" by Professor Carrol Quigley, "None dare Call it Conspiracy", "Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler" by Professor Anthony Sutton, and the more recent researches of groups of dedicated revisionists into the activities of "The Bilderberg Group" ," The Council for Foreign Relations" in the USA, "The Royal Institute for International Affairs" in the UK, and the "World Economic Forum". This fascinating study of the hidden reality of how the world really works enables me to make these statements with a high degree of confidence.
If you don't believe it, of you think it's nonsense, inquire for your self. Read, search the Internet for the above names of authors and organizations. Read the books available from AMAZON the Internet's greatest bookseller. The truth is out there, seek it and you shall find it, and you shall become enlightened too. The Internet is the greatest medium of free thought in mankind's history.
Knowledge is power. Ignorance is the profound condition of the masses. Ignorance leads to serfdom.
31/03/2004 Wed.
Orford Castle costs £4 per adult to enter unless you are a member of English Heritage, which is rather expensive for what it is, a VERY minor castle indeed. So as we had no particular interest in it, we didn't bother to pay the equivalent of A$20 for two for a look inside. Bear in mind that this is comparable to the admission charge for the Palace of Versailles in France, one of the architectural gems of the world, and you will appreciate how steep prices in the UK are, even for fourth rate attractions like Orford Castle.
If you are considering a tour of the UK an annual member ship of one or other of these organizations is the best deal at about £47 per couple combined membership. Individual admissions to trust properties can be up to £10 each or more, making it an expensive proposition to visit more than one or two properties. We intend to take membership of the National Trust next year and have a tour based on a number of visits to trust properties.
Neither organization's membership gives admission to any of the big name sites like Warwick Castle, Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Hampton Court Palace or the Tower of London, and some other notable sites, which all operate as separate private concerns.
Orford is a picturesque little village, and we took the opportunely to visit the 12th century church.
You will find a few ruins, castles, old abbeys, roman ruins etc, where admission is free, but they are generally only those in a very advanced stage of decay. We came upon one such Leiston Abbey along the B1122 north of Leiston, and were able to wander the ruins and park free. Such places can also sometimes provide free overnight parking, and it seems you could do this at Leiston Abbey.
Proceeding north to Southwold on the Sussex coast it was a pleasantly sunny afternoon, and we were able to see just how awful most English beaches are. Apart from the typical overdevelopment of guest houses along the foreshore, the inevitable entertainment pier, and the rows of beach sheds despoiling the already narrow beach, the water is muddy and cold at the best of times and the coarse sand or pebbles make for a very harsh beach. Still pity the poor Poms, that's their lot, so no wonder they go overseas for sand and sun.
Whatever else there may be that appeals to us about the UK, and there are lots of aspects, beaches are not one of them, except perhaps for some of the more remote and unspoiled coastal areas of Cornwall, Wales and Scotland, which do have great scenic appeal. With those exceptions, beaches in the UK are a no, no, for Australians visiting. Despite this the beach resorts will be crowded to the point of bursting during the simmer, Easter too, and our advice is to keep well away.
We proceeded on towards Norwich and stopped for the night in a lay by beside the B1062 near the village of Mettingham. The country side is just beginning to emerge from the effects of winter and trees are coming into leaf. It is the English countryside and the small towns and villages with their great variety of architecture and history which we find the most appealing facets of England.
1/04/2004 Thu.
Wine is priced for FOOLS, who spend ten times the price to get something of no practical difference. With the exception of the trained palates of a few wine experts most could tell little difference between a £2 wine and a £10 wine, because apart from the subtle variations due to region, blending and soil etc, it is in my opinion largely a matter of personal taste which wine is "better", and price often has little to do with quality. There are excellent £2 wines and very bad £10 wines and vice versa. Taurus excretus omnius vicit. (Bullshit conquers all!)
Classical Music Broadcasting in the UK.
BBC radio 3 broadcasts a good classical service, but geographic coverage is not complete.
Apart from the BBC broadcasting is very commercial in the UK and the one specialist classical broadcaster Classic FM 101.5 is no exception. While they play some pleasant music it is mainly excerpts, single movements from works. The selection is principally "relaxing" pieces, very pleasant music but consequently an unnaturally constrained selection from the classical repertoire It reminds me of the French classical FM station which also plays snippets of the classics, but here in the UK they are punctuated by annoying commercials, in lower class regional accents, instead of endless discussions of musical minutiae in French.
Classic FM is not a very satisfactory classical service in my opinion. Are they trying to pander to the reduced attention span of the proletariat, or just trying to fit in more adverts? Either way you would be advised to bring some of your favorite CD's or tapes, as one soon tires of the this over commercialized, moronic, elevator music style of classical presentation. In comparison the job done by Australian ABC, Classic FM and the various music broadcasting societies in Australia is of a standard orders of magnitude superior to this classical rap style of broadcasting. The only really good classical music broadcast coverage in Europe is Radio National de Espana.
02/04/2004 Fri.
The brake lights had a blown fuse. Now I know why I should have bought that card of fuses I saw in a cheap shop for £1.00 a few days ago. Fixed it with some aluminum cooking foil in the old fuse, and it didn't blow again, so maybe it was just that a 10 amp fuse was too small, and finally blew after aging and surface corrosion reduced it's rating. We will keep checking the brake lights for a few days to make sure, as driving here where a lot of drivers go too fast and tailgate, without brake lights is not a good idea.
Inside Norwich Cathedral.
We drove into Norwich and explored along the river to the Cow Tower, an ancient city fortification dating from the 14th century, and visited Norwich Cathedral. One of those UK churches that put up signs saying admission is free, but that they expect a donation of £3.00 per person to see inside. Now we have sometimes left donations in churches for restoration funds, but this peculiar British practice of half commercializing the churches is not only torturing the language, but is I find annoying. Either charge admission, in which case I will go elsewhere, as small village churches are often just as interesting as cathedrals, or don't charge, in which case I may leave a small donation in a discrete donation box. However such blatantly contradictory and unsubtle signage claiming free admission but almost demanding payment leaves me cold.
Norwich cathedral is notable for the unusual feature of having retained the Bishop's throne above and behind the alter. This is an almost unique feature of cathedrals in the UK and Europe. The Bishop, almost an incarnation of god almighty, gazing down from his throne, lords it over the assembled multitude of nobility and peasantry, in a time when the church was a political power, and belief in God was not only universal, but mandatory, under pain of death. Less subtle times they were, but at least the power structures were clear enough.
3/4/2004. Sat.
A town of manageable proportions, with free parking at some points along the river front near town. A good pedestrian mall shopping center and several op-shops and pound shops yield some more items for our van, Spanners, wire brush, wet and dry sandpaper (to deal with any more rust problems) cargo tie downs and construction adhesive. The Oxfam and RSPCA op-shops, they seem generally better value than most others, yield a pair of knitted woolen gloves and a pair of jeans for me at 50P each, my kind of price. Sharon lands a top for £1.60 and a jumper for 50P. Good shopping.
Halfords, the UK's not so super cheap auto parts store, can't figure out the oil filter I need for the van, despite their computer system, and being given the number on the present one, OC2. The one they say fits is obviously far smaller than the existing filter. I have to find a Peugeot dealer and ask them.
Halfords sell oil filter wrenches that sell in Australia for few dollars for £12.99, that's about A$30 for the sort of thing you can buy anywhere in Australia for under A$5.00. The cheapest one they have is a chain wrench for £3.99, however I recall seeing one in a pound shop for about £2, so I will wait. In any case, I talked them into loaning me one so I could move the filter to read the number on it, so now it's only hand tight as it should be, I can change it without a wrench, when I can buy a new one that is. Oil filters generally sell for around £6.99 to £8.99, currency parity again.
Do you see what I mean about the Poms being ripped off through their high currency exchange rate?.Who is making all this excessive profit? Certainly not the Chinese peasants, who manufacture almost everything, in their giant prison camp called The Peoples Republic of China. In fact it underlines the claims proven in the book "None Dare Call it Conspiracy", by Garry Allen, that Communism and ultra capitalism are the two sides of the same coin, that the worlds power structure is in reality very different from what most simple minded members of the prolatrerian masses believe.
Read, learn, search the Internet, comprehend. Knowledge is power. Ignorance is feudalism reincarnated.
4/4/2004. Sun.
An advert on a supermarket notice board shows a bike for sale for £10.00 so after phoning and finding the place I decide to buy it. It needs a bit of TLC, but is basically sound. Full suspension Aplllo Raptor 26 inch wheel model with 21 speed gears, but only 7 speeds work due to a rusted cable. I can fix it. (No I can't it nned a new part, and that would cost more than the bike did, so I have 7 speed bike).
The most interesting thing about the bike was seeing the home where the vendor lived. In the south Lincolnshire town of Spalding. The small terrace house looked unremarkable from the outside. The shirtless young man who answered the door bell advised the bike was out the back and to come through. Inside it was a vision of absolute bedlam. Filthy floors spattered with grease, and the whole atmosphere reeking of poverty and deprivation, but mostly a lack of pride in the human condition. We had entered the abode of the the lowest class of England, the proletariat, the neuvo-serf. People can be poor, but do they have to lack the basic pride to maintain their homes in a reasonable state of cleanliness and order? This was an illustration of the term to "live like pigs in shit". We bought the bike, and after much confusion as to how to attach it to the bike rack on the campervan, returned to the pound shop to buy some more bungee cords. The bike has half inflated tires, it has not been lubricated, the chain is rusty, and a spray with light oil renders instant improvement. I'll need some Allen keys to effect the other needed maintenance. Poverty made worse by neglect, this was once a relatively expensive bike, allowed to deteriorate by lack of attention, sold for £10. It will do me as well as an £80 new bike for the next couple of years, and by the time I've finished will work as well as a new one, albeit with only seven speeds. Do the peasants make themselves poor?
We find a shop called Wilkinsons, which turns out to be a sort of hardware and general merchandise chain that we have seen before but not known what they sold, we find some mudguards for £2.99, and a cycle helmet for £7.99. They stock the best range of reasonably priced bike bits, cables, brake pads, pumps, and other accessories that I've seen in England Mudguards £2.99 that cost variously £7 to £10 elsewhere for a cheap piece of plastic.
Halfords in Spalding are also totally dependent on the same computer system for information about oil filters and again despite them being as helpful as their limited knowledge allowed I was still left without a new oil filter. There is a Peugeot dealer a couple of mines out of town so as it's getting on for 5PM we decide to find a place to stop for the night and see if they can identify the filter tomorrow. We soon find a roadside loop to spend a quiet night. A very changeable day, sunny with rain storms, strong cold winds and sunny again, English weather. I still seems unusually cold for this time of year relative to other times we have been here.
5/4/2004. Mon.
6/4/2004 Tue.
Lincoln Cathedral. Noted for its Gothic facade.
I changed the oil and oil filter today at the roadside layby where we spent the night south of Lincoln. I used an oil pan drainer come bottle I bought in Big W for £4.99, similar to one I bought to do the same job on our RV in the USA in 2002.. Mileage 34, 690. Next time I'll remember to check that the old filter seal isn't still stuck to the sealing face of the engine filter mount, before screwing the new filter in place, resulting in a massive oil leak on starting the engine. Lost about a liter of oil before I switched off the engine and realized what had happened, after examining the old filter and finding no sealing ring. Oil of SF grade 15W40 suitable for diesels in ASDA was £5.27 for 5 liters, and the filter cost £6.14.
Hailstones now, it is getting colder. We don't feel like putting our noses out the door except to go shopping.
Another supermarket advert yields a bike for Sharon for £22.00 including a set of mudguards. A 6 speed 26 inch wheel ladies bike in generally good order. The vendor has a couple of tires in good condition for £5 which will do as spares, in case we need them, as the tires on my £10 bike are not too good. They are the first thing to be tied on to our roof top luggage rack. That big black plastic box from B&Q is looming larger as a reality for some extra storage. To find a bike helmet we head to Tesco, they don't have them at this one, but it is open 24 hours, so we decide to stay in the carpark for the night as it's wet and bloody cold.
So far most of our holiday has been taken up with shopping for things for the van, and the weather has been too bad to do a lot of sightseeing on foot. Although there are occasional points of interest along the way, picturesque old buildings etc. this area of East Anglia does not seem as interesting as other parts of the UK we have visited in the past. Perhaps familiarity breeds contempt.
We have had no difficulty finding places to park free overnight, usually in Tesco carparks or highway parking areas, but one could not say that they are very desirable campsites. Probably one may find more appealing sites in the more remote parts of the UK.
7/4/2004 Wed.
Our old friend David cooks us dinner, an excellent Chicken Kiev with a blue stilton cheese sauce. We spend the evening in The Vine Hotel with our friends, a few pints of Bateman's bitter ale and a whisky or two leave me with a hangover. British pubs might be much more enjoyable if it weren't for the ever present tobacco smoke, and the high prices. Despite the atmosphere and the fact that they are a popular institution in the UK these factors ruin them for me. Then again, I'm not a "pub person" as we don't frequent hotels to drink back home either, preferring the atmosphere of home, and the economy of home brewed beer and home distilled whisky rather than lining the pockets of the tax collector through the exorbitant taxes on alcohol in the UK. To illustrate the extent of this taxation a bottle of whisky costing £12 in the UK retails in Spain for about £4, and it's the same brand made in Scotland. Talk about ripping off the British public.
8/4/2004 Thu.
The weather continues to be bitterly cold, although the locals think it is nothing unusual for this time of year. The biting winds are the main problem. We will come to the UK later into the spring next year, and head straight for France.
9/4/2004 Fri.
Skegness is a holiday resort for those desperate for a holiday resort in my opinion. There are hundreds of "hotels" in reality converted houses run by a mom and pop couple. Very ordinary accommodation, and totally unappealing beaches that are far too cold at this time of the year for any thought of swimming. Yet the place is packed with hundreds of thousands of visitors at Easter and throughout the summer. Many stay in on site static caravans. The class status of most of the visitors is apparent by just walking the streets and observing the dress and demeanor of the crowds, these are the working class, the peasants of modern England. If you think it's snobbish to say that, check it out for yourself, it is just a frank statement of reality.
In the pub bar the glaring class differences are apparent just by listening to the conversation going on around one. How low are the educational standards, aspirations, and standards of behavior of many of lower class has to be observed to be comprehended. Truly there is a serf class in the modern UK.
10/4/2004 Sat.
11/4/2004 Sun.
Near the Humber Bridge there are several nice free parking areas with picnic tables (closed at night say the signs) one through the town of Barton Upon Humber, and the other north of the bridge. Bridge toll £2.50 (A$6.00) for cars and campervans, so unless you want to see the bridge maybe choose a more inland route and avoid the toll.
The town of Beverly in East Yorkshire is a real gem. Free 2 hour parking close in to the city center, large market squares and numerous interesting buildings, a magnificent Minster and several smaller churches dating back almost 1000 years, as well as numerous pubs with excellent special price lunches, if you can stand the smoke. As it was Easter Sunday and everything was closed we decided to overnight nearby and return the next day, so we found a very large roadside loop parking bay on the A1079 to Market Weighton, past Bishop Burton, that has, amazingly for the UK, some roadside picnic tables.
This is an old road section and is well signposted with "P" signs. It also seems to serve as a local pick up point for homosexuals, as lots of lone men of all ages cruise the area in cars and some stop to lurk in the bushes. So if you are that way sexually inclined and travelling in a camper, I'm sure you wouldn't have to wait long to get some suitable company. This seems to be a fairly common sort of meeting point for British gays as we noted a similar lay by along the A2 to Canterbury during our tour of Europe in another campervan in 2000. Probably any reasonably secluded lay by not too far from a fairly big town would serve a similar purpose.
12/04/2004. Mon.
We spent the night in a lay-by on the A166 road to York. While good roadside stops with any sort of amenities in the UK are rare, in most areas of the country there are plenty of places to stop free overnight in roadside parking areas Look for the larger ones where you can at least park well clear of the road. There are often small parking bays on the edge of the traffic lanes, but none of those we have marked as SONP waypoints are of this type as we would never park there overnight unless desperate.
York, The Mickelgate Bar, restored gate on the London road.
13/04/2004. Tue.
Free parking close into York can be had along the road running through parkland north of the racecourse, less than a kilometer from the old city walls puts it within easy walking or cycling distance. There are no parking restrictions and you could also park here overnight. We explored the city on foot.
A plaque on the Mickelgate Bar, York.
Upun the Micklegate of York it was once the practice to hang the severed heads of leaders defeated in battle. Here in 1460 hung the Duke of York, in the words of the Bard in Henry V, "That York may overlook York".
A system that has its merits. How fine it would be to see Bush and his velvet mouthed lackey Blair "overlooking" York, from upon high on the Micklegate!
York. The Shambles, a well preserved street with many buildings dating from the sixteenth century.
14/04/2004. Wed.
Well preserved sections of the city walls can be walked along free (like the city of Canterbury in Kent) and numerous well preserved ancient buildings make York a tourist attraction popular with French and American tourist groups. We drove back to the free parking near the racecourse and took our bikes to the city walls and explored on foot before cycling along the river and returning to our van with the aid of my Garmin Etrex GPS. Finding the ASDA shop we were greeted by signs proclaiming beheading for customers staying more than three hours, so set of in search of a place to stay and returned to our abode of two nights previously along the A166.
The Public Library in York wants £1.00 for 30 minutes use of the Internet. Stuff the bastards, they can keep their Internet. Public Libraries in many other part of Britain, in the USA and Australia usually provide free Internet access. Demand better you Brits, FREE Internet at public libraries. Next they will want to charge you to read the books.
15/04/2004. Thu.
Truly the roadside facilities in the UK are the worst in Europe outside of ex communist countries and third world failed states. You Poms really get a rough deal, you deserve better, demand it, and you want it FREE, not for a FEE! Stop your war mongering governments. and lap dogs of the New World Order like Blair groveling to US global imperialism and you won't need to spend so much on bombs and bullets and more of the national resources could be devoted to providing a better standard of living for the oppressed British working class, including decent education, and better public facilities such as more public toilets, parks and roadside rest and picnic areas.
Privatization is theft. England, you have been robbed!
16/04/2004. Fri.
Staithes beach. North Yorkshire. Cold and stoney. Beaches are not an English strong point.
Whitby is a picturesque town, but is overrun with local tourists, at this time of year it is school holidays. Surrounding the town are numerous static caravan sites, similar to those around Skegness in Linconshire. Here the oppressed Britts enjoy the holiday in Hell, and they thank God for the privilege, poor bastards. These battery hen holiday farms do nothing but create a blot on the landscape. Despite it being a wet overcast and foggy day Whitby is crawling with local tourists, all wandering around with nothing to do. Thank goodness I'm not English and poor, or I'd be condemned to have to endure such crappy holidays too. Here I can just observe what they think is a holiday, and thankfully drive on to something better. The even sadder thing is they don't know any better, and so many are so limited in their outlook and by their standard of education that they don't even know how they are being exploited.
The ruins of Whitby Abbey are one of the main "attractions" although it is not teribly spectacular and little different from other ruined abbeys throughout the UK. Apart from the inevitable entry FEE, there is one of the cursed PAY and DISPLAY car parks to contend with too, so we just took a free look, a photo and drove out to the turning circle past the car park, where on can get a good free view of the ruins, and left it too the local tourists. We prefer the FREE abbey ruins, (such as those at Leiston previously described on 31/03/2004) that are often just as interesting if a bit more decayed. The coastline here near Whitby is quite attractive, although today is so foggy and overcast that little is visible, and access is severely restricted by private land abutting the seafront.
The problem with being asked to PAY for every monument, abbey, castle, cathedral, ruin, museum, garden, historic site, or other miscellaneous point of interest in the UK is that unless you are really discriminating, when touring, you could go broke through the fiscal death of a thousand FEES, as such are so commonly demanded here. We usually easily manage to avoid PAY and DISPLAY car parks by parking a little further out from the center of activities, and have selected rigorously those attractions we will pay to see. We intend to do a National Trust crawl tour of the UK in a year or two, using this campervan.
We recommend you PAY to see these, and be very parsimonious about what else you pay to see:-
- The Tower of London
- Windsor Castle, (London)
- Buckingham Palace (London) ( If it is still open)
- Hampton Court Palace (London)
- Warwick Castle.
- Leave a Pound in any Cathedral that doesn't too brashly demand an entry fee. The miserable warlike British state needs to support it's historic buildings more, instead of sucking up to the American Imperialists, and if you keep donating the oft suggested £4 per person to look in a cathedral, the evil smooth talking bastards like Blair will be able to continue to shirk their responsibilities and squander the national wealth on bombs and bullets, instead of caring for the national heritage.
- Join The National Trust, and gain access to hundreds of historic properties for twelve months.
The National Trust costs about £47 per couple for a year, and membership gives access to all trust properties. In our opinion National Trust is better value then English Heritage, as they have more sites in their catalogue and cost about the same. Unfortunately the two organizations do not offer reciprocal membership rights.
There are also available various "tourist passes" for a group of privatly run attractions known collectively as the "Treasure Houses of England", whiuch include such places as Castle Howard in North Yorkshire and Chartwell. These places charge around £11 (A$29) per adult admission and although the passes offer apparent good discounts, the premises are so widely scattered that you are umlikely to be able to see them all within the several available limited periods of validity of the passes, unless you rush from one to the other. The passes cost considerably more than a National Trust annual membership for a couple, so in my opinion they are not such good value as National Trust Membership.
After driving through the coastal areas of North Yorkshire we finally stopped for the night at Redcar, in a P&D car park on the beachfront, that is FREE from October to April. So they only tax the peasants from May to September at this particular site, when the peasantry is present in sufficient numbers to make it worthwhile to employ enforcers to hand out £60 "penalty notices" under threat of beheading and transportation to the colonies if you don't pay. For now it's FREE! And the docile Poms just quietly accept it. Oh, England, thow neadest another glorious revolution, soon!
FREE Internet access is available in Saltburn public library. See, I'm right! You don't have to PAY if you don't want to. DON'T PAY, and the FEES will GO AWAY! Stand UP and demand proper PUBLIC SERVICES, not BOMBS for BUSH! Perhaps I phrased that badly, actually a few bombs, preferably very big ones, well placed, would do him, and the rest of us, the world of good!
17/04/204. Sat.
Durham is another town boasting a large Cathedral, and a castle in the center of town. We had the good fortune to come upon a rehearsal of the evening concert to be given in the Cathedral by a large choir and symphony orchestra, and were able to watch and hear the performance free, apart from leaving a small donation to the cathedral maintenance fund.
Outside the signs say admission is FREE, but they would like a donation. Only inside to they more blatantly state that you are expected to donate a minimum of £4 (A$10) per person. So I felt that I had been induced to enter under false pretenses, only then to be badgered for money. So we left a couple of pounds and bought a brochure for £1.00, and that was their lot. I wouldn't have gone in at all if they had been upfront about their expectations. You can't even trust the church to be clear honest and forthright anymore, as if you ever could, so stuff them, I'm not paying £4. If they can't be open about it they can stick their Gothic columns up their ecclesiastical arses. Trying to make you feel guilty by signs stating it costs £40,000.00 a week to maintain the cathedral, AFTER they get you in by signs proclaiming FREE entry simply isn't honest in my view. It's trying to make you feel GUILTY, a favorite trick of all religions to control the masses down the ages. It used to be sex guilt, make the peasants feel guilty for doing what comes naturally, and then offer them forgiveness for their so called sins. Just a form of protection racket, on a par with the Mafia.
You get the impression I don't like religion? Damn right I don't. So why do I go into churches you ask? Simple, its the architecture, history, music, art, and an insight into the political power structures and way of life of bygone times that they record. Religion is crap, and in my opinion those who profess such beliefs are either charlatans, bent on the exploitation of their intellectual inferiors, or they are intellectual microbes incapable of or afraid of independent thought. Religion is a crutch for intellectual lameness and all the good done in it's name is outweighed by all the evil. All religions are obnoxious and the cause of war, oppression, guilt and evils too numerous to mention. The Christian religion is obnoxious for its holier than thou proselytizing and culturally arrogant missionary soul saving. The Jewish religion is obnoxious principally for the audacity of its claim to be "God's chosen people" and for spawning Zionism, a major curse of the world.
Imagine the awe inspired in the simple mediaeval peasantry by the magnificent cathedrals, the ceremony and ritual and music of the church. This was the most magnificent thing in their ignorant primitive existance. It is not surprising that then men beleived, truly believed, the mythology taught as religeous dogma, many still do. The peasants, the majority of society, lived in dirty little hovels by comparison, and saw themselves as a lower form of life to the nobility and clergy. In a world with little scientific insight into the nature of things, religion was plausible, a framework of reference in a mysterious universe, and control of the simple minded peasants was easy.
Such was the feudal system, and such is the New Feudalism, on another albeit higher and vastly modernized level, which is now spreading the control of the New World Order over the globe. For the new feudalism is a construction of illusion, manipulation and deception where the neuvo-serfs believe they are freemen, believe those who are in fact their Lords are their elected representatives, believe there are no more Kings, for the real Kings whom the Lords actually serve, are now invisible. The neuvo-serfs believe that they are in charge, through what they call democracy, an ideal which has existed more in the conception of minds desiring it than in reality. Now democracy itself is the greatest illusion of all. All common men aspire to it, many believe they have attained it, all hold it holy, all preach its virtues, but few understand that it is now but an illusion whose purpose is control by those few who understand the reality of the worlds power structures. Through it the masses are brought to believe that it is they who exercise power, whereas power is really exercised by those who, through the modern mass media, mold and control the common peoples thoughts, desires, fashions, fads and fears. Thus the modern society is conditioned to accept, as being in the public good, modern means of regimentation such as increasingly intrusive surveillance, identity cards, record keeping, data bases, spying and reporting of one citizen by another for increasingly petty matters, restrictions on freedom of speach, and piecemeal errosion of fundamental freedoms. For the people are no longer vigilant, they are apathetic, and the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. It is becoming reminiscent of the much maligned system of local committees reporting on "suspicious activity" operating in Nazi Germany in the lead up to W.W.II.
"Without economy
none can be rich, and with it few can be poor." - Johnson [1709-1784]
UK 2004 Part 2
- Boondocking in the Lakes District.
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