Author: Mrs A
Location: Little Gaddesden, Hertfordshire & Hastings, East Sussex, UK
Tuesday morning started wet and cold, a shock after our first couple of days with brilliant sunshine, but it was a good day for driving. We farewelled John and Catriona and headed south, aiming for a little village in Hertfordshire, Little Gaddeston, where my cousin lives.
It was not as smooth a journey as it could have been. We did not yet have SIM cards or any internet data, so we were reliant on our in-car sat nav rather than our more trusted friend, Miss Google. Our lack of trust was justified when it kept directing us off the main roads and onto winding country lanes. I eventually found that ‘motorways’ were turned off in settings! The software was quite out of date too, with several roads missing. I managed to get onto a free wifi signal at a service centre and set up the route via Google Maps on my phone. Much easier!
Other than that, the journey was fabulous. Truffy-the-truck (our newly named motorhome) is so comfortable to drive and with fabulous visibility. We were soon parking up and joining Karen and Iain for a cup of tea before Hannah and Ella came home from school.
Wednesday all too soon our visit was over, and after a morning debating storage solutions with Iain, drinking endless cups of herbal tea and watching Karen try out my ebike on their local hill (it got the tick of approval!), we pulled away and continued our journey south, heading to Hastings.
Cousins reunited As we travelled through Kent and into East Sussex the temperature gauge dropped from 9 through to 4 degrees centigrade, and the brown looking clouds soon revealed their contents to be sleet and snow. Not far from our destination we found ourselves driving through snow slushy roads lined with white roofed houses – amazing! It’s been a long time since we have seen scenery like this.
We made it without incident to my mum’s house and parked up outside.
We had a great couple of days there, getting our first lot of kit shopping done for Truffy (we have to completely set up our new home!) as well as joining up with a local doctor. Marmalade, their young ginger cat, got lots of attention and cuddles, particularly from Mr A in the early hours of the morning (jet lag o’clock!).
On the Thursday evening we treated mum and Barry to dinner at a restaurant in Hastings as a thank you for all their help with our return…taking receipt of many parcels, sharing letters and even receiving nuisance calls in the early hours of the morning from Vodafone robots…
Friday morning we packed up Truffy again and headed off towards Brighton, with a slight diversion to catch up with a lovely lady, Karen, who has idiopathic subglottic stenosis and lives just a mile from home. I spent a good hour chatting with her – she’s a GP and is really keen to raise awareness of the disease. There will potentially be a presentation for me to do when we come back from travelling in Europe…I’ll be keeping in touch to hopefully organise that.
We were excited to finally be spending a night in our new home!
