Wonderful night in the Yotel. I will be staying here my last night too, so it is comforting to have that locked in. You can check in for a couple of hours or for overnight, so it is perfect for weird flight plans. I will be leaving at 7:55 am so I don't have to worry about getting up at some miserable hour and finding transport to the airport, etc.
Highly recommended.
Went to pick up my car at Green Motion - located at a Holiday Inn about 5 miles from Heathrow. The first car they tried to give me was very small. No trunk so everything in the car would be visible to all the thieves I have been constantly warned about so I upgraded tosomething a little larger with a trunk. Got every kind of insurance available j-i-c and took off around that parking lot. First concern - the GPS doesn't work! Turned out you have to download UK maps. Duh! Sounds simple now, but everything we had looked at online said oh yeah, GPS will work everywhere. At least I was not the only naive one - Ron made the same assumptions. That is one critical piece of equipment. I can barely get from my house to the Y at home without the GPS so I'm not ever going to try it. The car rental place would happliy provide me with one for only 11 pounds per day, so I went to the local Tesco (as close to a Wal-Mart as the English get) and bought one forr 68 pounds. Cheap at the price I think. It is a TomTom, very user friendly and very fast response. Beautiful posh English voice telling me what to do and where to go.
I took the M4 and M5 motorways down south. Three lane each way called a dual carriageway and just like the interstate. Driving on the left is easy on these roads. The most difficult thing is learning to look to the left instead of the right for the rear view mirror! The car is a Peugeot, and stick shift. The first 30 minutes were pretty hairy - getting used to the stick, using a new GPS, dealing with the rain (first I'd seen all trip) and remembering to stay to the left. My worst habit was tending to wander to far to the safe side of the road, but there are thos same corrogated bumps to let you know if you've gone off the road so that kept me pretty straight. I drove about 5 hours yeaterday, and the four hours that were on the interstate were easy-peasy. The one hour that was wandering off the motorway into a little town for some lunch was terrifying. These villages were all established before care, and the twisty little roads require someone with a surer sense of the car than me. New plan - stay off the small roads! I have pictures I can look at any time I want to scare myself silly again.
Got safely to Truro (thatk you TomTom) and found my hotel for the next six nights. It is terrific. Small but cosy. Had a wonderful dinner of carrot and orange thick soup with a mixed green salad. The hotel has a lounge with a bar, and I had a glass of Merlot after donner, looking over my guidebooks and fell into conversation with George and Pat, from Hobiton (about 2 hours east of here). They had heard me talking to the hostess (who checks you in, tends the bar, and helps with the food orders) and scuttled over to sit near me in the lounge. They are travellers themselves, and looking for conversation. They said it is nice to have a visitor who wants to visit someplace besides London. They have been on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and spent some time in WAshington and Boston so they had plenty to tell as well as plenty to ask. It was a wonderful conversation, and I had a great evening.
I had about one hours worth of rain on the trip down from Heathrow, but have had absolutely gorgeous weather every other day. I came prepared for rain but am happy to be disapponted in my expectations. According to the front desk, Tuesday will be wet and miserable but every other day this week should be just like today. The temp is about 12 degrees centigrade (65 or so in the real world).
I always thought they used kilometers, but they use miles.
Off to my cute little room for the night.
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