It's hard to believe that we've had this bus for nearly a year and that the in-laws have not seen it yet. Accordingly, we arranged a weekend near their house, but it is quite hard finding a site in "sarf-east Larndarn", especially with the Olympics in full flow, so we headed for a suitable Camping and Caravanning Club site at Oldbury Hill near Sevenoaks.
The journey down on Friday was horrendous, with slow traffic on the M11 due to people rubbernecking (plonkers) and a 5 mile tailback to get over the Queen Elizabeth Bridge. You would think that with such massive tailbacks they would open the tollgates to ease the flow, but the opportunity for money grabbing means much, much more than that. Pah!
Oldbury Hill is a very pleasant location near the site of an Iron age fort. It is surrounded by very attractive towns and lovely views, albeit the site itself is on quite a slope. The site staff, however, have this slope well managed and have wooden chocks to level each unit. The staff are all barking mad though, which made for an very entertaining set up!
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| Parking across the slope |
On Saturday, due to Father in Law being not fit enough to travel, we walked the mile or so to Kemsing station to catch a train to Bromley to visit them. We walked along very narrow lanes past numerous delightful cottages converted oast houses, watching out for the ever present threat of getting a good soaking from this drought ridden summer. Kemsing is an unmanned station with just one machine providing a permit to travel to prevent being fined for travelling without a ticket. This machine swallowed our two pounds. There was a help point nearby and, pressing the button gets you through to the the South East Railway help desk - IN INDIA!! They were bloody useless. I am not sure they even knew where Kent was, let alone Kemsing, so we boarded the train and expected a fine from the inspector. She was, however, charming, and obviously well used to the problems associated with unmanned stations, broken machines and Indian call centres. Time to watch the Titfield Thunderbolt again to see how railways should be run!
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| After a heavy downpour, the sun comes out |
Sunday, father in law still not fit enough, but Andrew and Michelle descended to eat us out of ice cream. On Sunday evening we had a pleasant walk around the fort (well, I did anyway. There was the usual moans about mud, hills, horse manure, flies etc (see previous posts)) before retiring to the local pub for a well earned pint and watch a bit of Da Lympics on the large screen TV.
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| Visitors |
On Monday Debbie had to work, so it was pack up in bright sunshine and a drive to Bromley to enable the in-laws to inspect the vehicle at home. Weekend target achieved!
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| Our bit of support for Team GB |
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