Newcastle to Norfolk

Sunday 1st June 2014

George's World Tour South of Stoke - Day 1

Today is the start of our first big trip in George this year. We have 2 weeks off work and are going to spend it seeing some of the sights of the South of England.

We didn't set off until about 3pm today because I couldn't be bothered to do any packing last night, choosing to drink wine and occasionally add to a list of things to do before going on holiday whilst sprawled on the sofa. And then we had a lie in until 10am this morning!

We're a bit worried that we've forgotten something important as there seems to be a lot more room in George than usual, but nothing's come to light (or should I say not come to light) yet.

We're spending the first few days canoeing in the Norfolk Broads, so it was about a 4 hour drive to get here. We stopped off at a little service area somewhere near Cambridge for a break and some food at about 6pm. The car park was a bit chaotic, with a coach parked terribly, and a coachful of people wandering round. We managed to squeeze through and into a space, and it took me about 2 seconds to convince Claire that we should have a Burger King for dinner instead of cooking something.

As usual with places that have photos on their menu, I was disappointed that my cheeseburger and chips weren't as big or colourful as they were in the photo on the wall. But as that was about a metre tall and probably photoshopped I shouldn't have been surprised.

We went to eat our mini meals in George, but as we walked back across the car park we could hardly see him for the scrum of coach passengers crowded round him. Now as some of you know, George is a handsome little van, and is particularly eye catching when he's got a big green canoe tied to his roof. But he's never had that sort of attention before. There must have been about 15 people standing round him pointing and gawping, and one of them was poking his windscreen with her finger! I think she was intrigued by the rainbow splodge tax disc holder. We managed to shoulder barge our way through, and most of George's fan club dispersed to let us eat out dinner in peace. Claire said through a mouthful of chips "I think they're Dutch" as if that explained everything.

We got to the Broads at about 8pm and then spent about half an hour driving round trying to find somewhere suitable and free to park up overnight, where we wouldn't be ousted by an angry farmer at stupid o'clock. We've found a little dead end track which hopefully won't upset anyone to the extent that they can be bothered to tell us to move, and have parked George up for the night.
We're having a couple of Carling Zest beers, which we discovered were only a measly 2.8% after we'd bought them. Still, they taste nice and at least I'm not going to be drunk if the angry farmer does make an appearance.

Tomorrow we're going to make an early start to get a good 5 or 6 hours of paddling in before the rain arrives at 3pm.

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