Sunday 10 June 2012 YHA St Pauls to YHA Truleigh Hill
This morning got off to a truly magnificent start with
attendance at 8 am communion at St Pauls with the 50 strong congregation seated
in the choir stalls. We sat next to a very kind and engaging older lady (
perhaps mid 80’s) who is a parishioner there, has to catch a bus to get there
tho, and is a member of the Honourable
Company of Fishmongers and a Freeman of the City of London which among other
things gives her the right to drive a herd of sheep through the City.
Then checked out of YHA
(after rolling suitcases down the 56 stairs we had carried them up
earlier in week) and headed on Tube to Heathrow to pick up the rental car from
Alamo. Nice chatty woman just happened
to say she had a Volvo V60 available in the class we had ordered instead of the anonymous potluck brand for ” just a few more GBP per day and since
were going to be driving around in it
for 39 days we might be more comfortable in it perhaps ?”
We were easy meat and who wouldn’t be for fully adjustable heated
leather seats, in car GPS, sunroof (tho why that in England today !!) iPod/USB
connectors, separate ventilation for driver and passenger. We had to have
lesson on how to even start the car as well as how to operate the GPS which
took about ½ hour so didn’t get away from there until about 12ish heading off to Sissinghurst in Kent which we had visited once before in the
autumn on first trip to England in 1989. GPS worked fine however driver (H)
ignored instructions resulting in 26 mile detour so arrived there about 3 pm
and of course it started raining the minute we stepped out of car.
Castle and gardens as beautiful as before (in full summer
bloom in contrast to the autumn hues that were there our last visit) and there
is now an organic vegetable garden. There
also seemed to be more ancillary things
than I remembered like restaurant, gift shop and displays in oast house.
Back in car , reset GPS to take us to YHA Truleigh near
Brighton, and first part of journey was fine through narrow roads and beautiful
Kentish countryside but then somehow we found ourselves on a portion of
motorway M25 with no off ramps for 15 miles heading straight back to London.
Figured out that GPS was taking us by the biggest motorways possible rather
than cross country, a wee problem that is easily rectified by ticking the” no
motorway” box in settings but which was
a bit pointless by then. Unfortunately ran out of time to visit Lindsay and
Lisa in Brighton.
Arrived at YHA
Truleigh which is on top of a hill about 4 miles north west of Shoreham about
7.30 pm in torrential rain. Nice man cooked us Cumberland sausage and mash for
dinner there with enough left over for lunch tomorrow.
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