Wanderung 25

Fall Follies

August - September 2011


 

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Friday, August 26th, 2011: Drive from Wales to Southampton

Bob:

We had enjoyed our stay in central Wales very much, but we had reservations that night in Southampton, where we were scheduled to return our rental car the next morning, so after breakfast we paid our bill and bid our genial host and hostess adieu. I had mapped out a diagonal route southeast through Wales and across the Severn River to Bristol in England. The route down through Wales was uneventful, but it was raining so I could not keep to the speed limit of 60 mph like the GPS was assuming. Still we reached the mouth of the Severn River in about two hours and continued into England over a very pretty suspension bridge.

Monika:

After a last breakfast cooked by our genial host, it was, unfortunately, time to drive to our final destination, Southampton, where we would turn in the car and board the cruise ship. When I entered the address into the GPS, I was relieved to see that it was just 180 miles and about 3 and a half hours. Of course, it would be longer for us, since we were going to take the scenic route rather than the motorway.

The first part led us south from Builth Wells to the south-eastern corner of Wales at Newport. The roads were the typical two lane roads of Wales and the landscape hilly mountain sides with fields going up the hills.

At Newport we caught the M4 through a series of ramps and merges. England has the interesting habit, of painting the road number you are headed towards on the street. So I had to read street signs on the pavement coming at me at 60 mph and decide which of 3 lanes to take. To my utter surprise, after three of these types of ramps we did end up on the right road, I am still not quite sure how. At this point we crossed the Severn river on a mile long bridge with beautiful suspension cables. Quite a sight

Bob:

From Bristol I planned to either continue directly southeast through Bath to Salisbury or first take a dogleg East on the M 4 motorway to London before dropping down South on the A 46 to bypass Bath and connect to the A 36 that would lead us to Salisbury. Fortunately, we ultimately chose the latter route because when we bypassed Bath, even though we were a couple miles East of the city, the traffic jam of cars waiting to try to get into Bath was backed up onto our highway and almost not moving at all. We finally gave up and took a detour even a bit further East to drive through Bradford On Avon and Towbridge to ultimately join up with the A36. I am not sure we saved any time by our detour, as the route through Towbridge consisted of more than 10 roundabouts, each one of them arranged in some odd way and all of them snarled with traffic, but at least we were moving even if slowly most of the time, and that felt a LOT better than not moving at all.

Monika:

We left the M4 to head towards Bath. When we got close to Bath, we got caught in a horrendous traffic jam, and we decided to change our route and head a little farther east before going south to escape it. This led us through the town of Bradford on Avon, where again the traffic was stop and go, because at one point in the town the main road was so narrow that it was impossible to drive two lorries past each other at the same time. You just can't move those old houses back from the street! This was a charming old town, complete with hotel and pedestrian street.

Once across the Avon we forged ahead to the next town of Towbridge. This town must boast at least 10 round-abouts and probably a lot more. I managed to get us lost on one, but we got back on the right route. After that, there was only the occasional round-about, until we got up to the outskirts of Salisbury. There really was no way to avoid it, and the ring road had stop and go traffic for a couple of miles.

Bob:

By the time we reached Salisbury, I had been driving 4 hours and was ready for a break, so when we spotted a Tesco we thought we would stop and find something to eat. We were lucky in that it was a large Tesco complete with a cafe on the second level, so we had a lunch of jacket potatoes in the cafe and bought sandwiches to take with for our evening snack. The long break also gave me enough energy to face the last hour or two of driving. By the time we reached Southampton and found our B&B, I was ready to call it a day as far as driving went!

Monika:

But we finally did get onto the road to Southampton. There we spotted a Tesco. It was high time for Bob to get a rest. He had been driving for about 4 hours, with just a short rest for fuel. But now at Tesco, we looked for snacks and wine to smuggle onto the ship and sandwiches for the evening meal. We also found, that they had a cafeteria, which had our favorite jacket potatoes.

So we had lunch and shopped, and an hour later Bob was ready to tackle the last 30 miles into Southampton. The GPS guided us to our B&B where we found a parking spot right in front of it. We signed in and unloaded the car completely, after all we were going to turn it in tomorrow. But we were told, we had to park it in a parking lot by a restaurant a couple of houses down.

Bob:

After checking in and parking the car we walked down to the harbor and first found the Hertz rental office where we had to hand in our rental car the next morning. Then we found the route where we had walked from the train station to board a cruise ship headed back to the United States during Wanderung 15. I had assumed that there was just one terminal for cruise ships and we would therefore leave from the same place. As it turned out, however, this time our cruise ship departed from the Cunard Overseas docks over on the other side of the historic downtown area of Southampton. Surprise!! So we walked through the downtown area a bit, trying to find a good route to roll our luggage down from our B&B, which was situated on a small rise known as the Polygon, over to Gate 4 and the Overseas Docks. Specifically, we were trying to avoid uphills and anyplace that required the negotiation of a lot of steps, as horsing our 40-pound bags up and down steps was quite exhausting.

We found one possible route and followed the street back uphill to the Polygon, where we locked ourselves in our cozy little room and had our evening snack. Afterwards we just read, emailed, facebooked, and composed our journal entries for the rest of the evening. We were quite relieved to hear that our house was OK after a magnitude 5.8 earthquake hit Virginia near where we live, but then we found out Hurricane Irene was bearing down on the East Coast of Virginia. And here we were missing all that! What wonderful timing!

Monika:

That done, we just rested for a while, until Bob felt like going out again. We wanted to find out where to take the car tomorrow and where we would board the ship on Sunday. Walking past the railroad station to the quay, I remembered when we had taken a ship from Southampton a few years back during Wanderung 15. We had spent a few days in London and taken the train to Southampton. The entrance to the port we used for that cruise was at Gate 8. But when we inquired with the guards at Gate 8, we found out that the Crown Princess would be docked by Gate 4, at a completely different part of the port. Good to know, but by this time we were too tired to walk that far and check it out.

After checking the location of the Hertz office, we slowly walked back to our B&B past a city map (yay!), and some neat sculptures. Back at the B&B we checked the internet and wrote on our journal .



Copyright 2012 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt


 

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