The Albatross
Monday 10 June 2019
Today was a bit of a driving day, so after another excellent lazy breakfast and some pointers about some highlights up North from Johnny and Bridge, we hit the frog and toad. Now today our sole goal was to get to York, about a 4-hour straight drive, so Tuna had some diversions planned, it was raining lightly, but not too bad. First, we stopped past Bury St Edmonds where there is an old Abbey, which is now just ruins, but looked like a good spot to change drivers as it was about an hour down the road (normally Tuna and I do 2-hour stints, but UK driving takes so much more concentration than Oz). It was very damp, so neither of us felt like a stroll, nor did we want a coffee as it was only an hour in. Therefore, after a quick unintended detour through a shopping centre car park we shuffled off to Ely where Johnny had suggested there was a very fine cathedral. Fine it was, but with many more on route, we skipped the full tour and took the tight arse option of just looking at the free bits.
It was lunch time so had a fantastic superlight non cheesy pizza and went back to the motorway. Then we hit road works, boy did we hit road works. Fortunately, we managed to get in the right-hand lane or we’d still be travelling. At this point it decided that a torrential down pour was in order, so blind, with about 10 centimetres between the truck on one side and the concrete barrier on the other we proceeded. Eventually we popped out and passed the cars on the other side whose queue must have been 30 or 40 km long. It was still chucking it down as we stampeded down the motorway.
As we were now very delayed, we decided against the next detour and just went to town, eventually the rain eased and so did the traffic. Into a fab apartment that Tuna located which has everything in spitting distance of attractions, free parking (although very, very squeezy), and a host of awesome supermarkets, restaurants, and bars. We chose just to raid the local Asian supermarket as we are craving vegies and something non-British (although we have eaten fantastically except for Harlow – don’t go to Harlow)
Time to lie on the couch.