Fairly early start, 8:30, well for Gemma at least. Dad drove us to the hire car place after a short breakfast. It seemed to be in chaos with a different crew on from before. However found a teen who knew what she was doing and picked up the car. It's a black diesel golf, manual and 1400 cc. This is going to be interesting driving. It's a long time since I drove a manual and it's a fair bit of car for only 1400 cc. Gmaps Page.
We set off for Tankfest. It's only at Bovington which is about 40 mins away. It does not take me long to find out that the car is completely gutless. This engine could not pull the skin off a rice pudding. I an going to have to work the engine and gearbox fairly hard to get any reasonable performance out of this car.
Well here we are at Tankfeast. We are of course in the overflow car park as the whole area is taken over for the festival. As we are walking towards the event I start getting an inkling of one of the aspects that will dominate this holiday, it's HOT! This whole holiday is going to be hot!
Just as we get in they start a display, modern tanks rolling and growling around loud bangs etc you know the drill. We have only been outside for less than an hour but Gem is wilting. It occurs to me that as everybody is out here that visiting the inside museum would be good. Inside it has changed a lot from how I remember it. Much larger thought I do find the layout a bit confusing. Anyway tanks tanks tanks!
Here is the link to my Flickr tanks page.
I find a UE which is much like I expect it to be. The Tiger II us vast as is the Conquerer. For some reason many of my photos don't turn out very well but unfortunately I don't realize this until much later. We have lunch which was ok (Cornish pasty) but unimpressive. I have seen what I wanted to see and Gem is tanked out so after about 3 hours at the festival we head off. Before we go we spend some time in the shop where I would have expected more to interest me but in the end I bought a desert rats hat that I end up wearing for the whole trip around Europe.
As we pull out of the car park Gem is busy punching in coordinates to the GPS. I was expecting cars to come with GPS now days but this cheap one does not, however just incase that was the situation I had brought my tom-tom GPS with me. Before I came I loaded up the Europe maps. It was an absolute god send. It made driving the UK so easy and Gem and I were able to keep talking to one another for the whole trip. How did people survive without GPS?
Our next stop is Clouds Hill. The home of T E Laurence when he lived in this area. I had never hear of it but as it's only 10 mins away off we go! I am not sure what I was expecting but not something this small. It's the smaller than Dads trailer. We drive into a car park (stall) the size of a lawn, stop in one corner (stall). There is a ticket hut in a garden shed then a short walk to the house. It's really just 4 rooms, 2 up 2 down. The down is a reading room and a kitchen, the up is a bed room and a wash area. It's how he left it but its all very Spartan. It has a customized reading chair that looks like a good idea but other than that very simple. I sit out side for a while and wonder what it would be like to live here, there is no internet and no cell coverage. Very peaceful, I would not mind retiring to a place like this as long as the essentials were provided.
Then we are off to Kingston Lacy. It's a nat trust manor house, set in a large grounds. Quite a nice look to but inside there are just to many pictures. It's like somebody had two houses worth of pictures but only one house so they just jammed them in anyway.
We decided to visit the gardens but that's when things went a bit wrong. I wanted to see the kitchen gardens having seen the TV series and wondering what it looked lime for real, however we got there 20 mins late and it was all locked up. Gemma wanted to see another garden (there were about 8) but despite one sign we could not find it? Then we decided to follow a marked path back to the house. Little did we realize that it would be three miles!
We even had to climb over the fence and walk across the staff car park to get back. I can't believe that was what we were supposed to do but neither of us could see where we had gone wrong. Fortunately the tea room was still open when we got back as we really needed a cup of tea. I decided that as we were clearly going to be visit nat trust properties that I would join up. So after tea we visited the membership shed and did the paperwork. I did indeed get my value out of the membership as I visited enough properties to get my membership fee back but additionally as of this writing I have never been charged for my membership. All the debit details etc were correct but nothing has ever shown up?
As it was getting really late and we did not have accommodation sorted out yet we headed for Portsmouth. While I drove Gem used my iPhone to search for accommodation and then phoned ahead and booked us some. Portsmouth travellodge was our destination, our trip there was uneventful other than at the last bit the GPS path went wrong as it tried to take us round the back of the lodge and directed us to drive through a brick wall! Just as well I did not follow those orders, anyway as I could see that actual entrance by that point we made it safe and sound by about 7 pm.
I had never been in a Travellodge before it's very spartan. T E Lawrence would have liked it. Just a small check in desk, we had to wait a while and I suspect that most of the time there is only one staff on duty. However the room is ok, I had the bed and Gem the pull out couch/bed contraception. The taps leak in the bathroom and the shower will through you against the wall it's so powerful but as a rest and refuel stop it's fine.
After we had got sorted we went looking for food. There is an Orchard pub (The Sovereign) next door so we went there. Modern looking pub but very water stained floor, later we heard it was water from the ladies! We waited to be spoken to by staff,Gem went back to room to get something, when she got back I was still being still ignored. After I while we went up to the bar to order some food. Got told off because we had not selected out table and made a note of its number. Food was tatally average and the staff were having a set to behind the bard over shifts or something like that. Other than its attached to the travelodge I cant see why anybody woul dgo here? Anyway we refued and decided to turn in for the night early. After all the head a etc we were both a bit nackered and we wanted a sharp start in the morning.
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