A humdrum departure

Sunday, 27th September

When we fetched the van from storage and parked outside our house to pack you would never have guessed that we had spent five months living in it last winter. A break of a few weeks and we were struggling with the basics. Which way did you turn the dial for hot water only? Why was the water pump not working? (It helps if you turn the 12 volt supply on!). It took three backbreaking attempts to load the heavy electric bikes onto the elbow high rear cycle rack. Which way round did they go? Clueless! Eventually we were ready, house locked, documents and tickets triple-checked; slowly we wended our way through a chicane of neighbours' cars. 

"Are you SURE you locked the front door?"

Leaving for a big trip is always a bit of a let-down, it's so exciting for us, and totally unimportant to the world in general. What we needed was a send-off, with tear-choked loved ones waving spotty hankies from the quayside. What we got was a clutch of local cats who were so disinterested they seemed reluctant to budge, even with three and a half tonnes of gleaming white metal trundling towards them.

The journey towards Oxford was wholly uneventful. The stretches of motorway with 50 mpg. speed restrictions that so infuriate you as a car driver seem matterless when you drive the van, as that's its usual cruising speed. The Redbridge Park and Ride is one of the few car parks in the Oxford without height barriers, and at £2.00 for 24 hours is really good value. The signs say that you cannot sleep there overnight, but how could anyone tell unless the traffic wardens carry 'snoreometers'. It's a ten minute bus ride down Abingdon Road to the city centre. 

Matthew was waiting for us at the bus-stop looking remarkably perky for someone who had been out until 5am celebrating his birthday with friends. He suggested we had tea at the roof-top cafe of the Ashmolean Museum, all very lovely with its view across the 'dreaming spires'. While we there we hatched a plan to have an evening meal together in Wallingford where we were going to camp. This is where the wired world really does come into its own. In a matter of moments we had ascertained from our collected smartphones the time of the last bus on a Sunday from Wallingford to Oxford, a list of interesting looking gastro-pubs from Tripadvisor, and the best route to take from Google maps. How did we ever cope with just one-inch-to-the-mile, and Yellow Pages?

The Ashmolean Museum roof terrace cafe

Birthdays = BIG cake...

Christchurch College

Christchurch Meadow

The Bridge Villa campsite proved to very good, with superb facilities (heated!), friendly, helpful managers and an interesting mix of customers, not all boring grey-hairs like ourselves, but families and VW camper enthusiasts too. Even better, off season the site accepts ACSI cards, so it only cost £15 per night with EHU. Given the good bus link into Oxford then it's a promising alternative to the Oxford CCC site.

Bridge Villa Camp Site, Wallingford

There were lots of places to eat in the Wallingford. We ended up in The Old Post Office in the market place. The menu leans towards an Italian style, but lots of other options too, and the meals are well cooked using well sourced ingredients. It was good. The place too was airy and had been re-modelled in a modern style with an open kitchen on view. 

Wallingford itself is a bit of an architectural gem with an endearing mix of Georgian town houses and mansions next to older artisan cottages and some Victorian terraces. It is a classic riverside market town with narrow streets leading to an open square next to a squat towered flint church. 

Pub by the river

I suppose the only regrettable aspect of the place is its gentrification. Clearly, when it functioned as a market town its population was varied. Small artisan cottages are built cheek by jowl with imposing Georgian gentlemen's residences replete with classical porticos or grandiose doorways. Such a social mix is a thing of the past. Even the smallest two bedroom cottage on offer in a local estate agents window was priced far higher than our 4 bed detached in Derbyshire. Wallingford is now the preserve of the well heeled. It's not surprising, with its riverside location and ancient buildings it is lovely. In a world where only the market rules, what is desirable comes at a hefty price beyond the reach of the majority. 

Early Georgian doorway

More a mansion than a 'town-house'.

Artisan's cottages opposite stately villas

A gem of a mainstreet

In a sense, this was reflected in the clientele at the restaurant. I commented a while ago about going out for a meal with Matthew in Oxford where we were the oldest customers in a crowd of perky twentysomethings. Tonight the tables were turned. Matthew, even after having achieved the venerable age of 29 yesterday, was just about the youngest customer in a sea of older couples. I guess young people would struggle to be able to afford to live in Wallingford, and have been priced out of the place. It's a pity.

Just before 9 o'clock Matthew hopped back on the bus to Oxford and we wandered back across the bridge to the campsite under the spectacular light of a full 'super moon'. In the middle of the night a lunar eclipse was destined to produce a rare combination of blood and super-moon, an event that would reoccur next in 2034. The thought that by then I would be 79 years old, if here at all, led me to declare that I would get up at 4.30am and photograph the phenomena. Gill's scepticism about my likelihood of managing this was revealed by her well considered silence on the matter. It is true, I do have a tendency to sleep like the dead. However I did manage a brief resurrection in the small hours, and here's the photo to prove it. Like most rare, much vaunted moments, as I stood outside, under-dressed in the freezing cold, and stared up at the half eclipsed moon, I thought, hmmm, that's a bit underwhelming, went CLICK! and crawled back into bed.

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