Date:         Fri, 21 Jul 2006 06:28:04 -0700
Reply-To:     Malcolm Stebbins <mwstebbins@YAHOO.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Malcolm Stebbins <mwstebbins@YAHOO.COM>
Subject:      UK Summary trip report
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

My wife Pat and I just returned from another "Trip of a life time".  We just finished a 76 day,
10,408 kilometer tour of England, Ireland, Wales, and the BeNeLux countries (and one night in
France for good measure).

We rented a VW Eurovan Camper from Marc Peters (mobylhome.nl) for the same cost that it would have
cost us to ship my van over to and back from Europe, as we rented the van during "off-peak", &
"shoulder" times.

Pat's profession is Anthropology and her hobby is gardening, and my hobby is photography, so this
trip was designed to visit many gardens, manor houses, archaeological sites, World Heritage sites
& cute villages (etc.), while I sought interesting photos.

All-in-all, we visited:  38 gardens, 15 National Trust sites, 14 World Heritage sites, (some of
these overlap) and countless cute little villages.  We spent only a few days in major cities
(London, Dublin, Brussels, and Amsterdam); also, we stayed off the major highways and hunted out
small back roads that were often so narrowly hemmed in by hedgerows that one could not open both
front doors at once. Just great!

The highlights were:  the Keukenhof Flower Show in Netherlands, which is the "largest flower show
in the world".  What a mass of colour.  The Chelsea Flower show in London was really the raison
d'etre for the trip, and while I found it much more like a large, crowed flower flea market, Pat
was in flower heaven.  So many flowers "forced" to bloom in a one week show.  Throughout the trip
we visited several gardens designed and planted by the famous team of Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude
Jekyll (GEE-kul).  These Lutyens/Jekyll gardens were truly a 'cut above' the other gardens in
their design and planting.  Some were truly hard to leave.  The Cotswolds and the Lake District in
England live up to their reputations and are delightful, albeit heavily touristed, but we were
there in May, so not quite as busy as later in the summer.  Ireland was remarkably a
disappointment, in the architecture of the houses (just square cinder-blocks new homes), and the
towns and cities we did not find to be cute or quaint.  Modernity was not what we were searching
for.  As we returned to the BeNeLux countries, we had a delightful few days in picturesque and
quaint Luxembourg.  Pat is a fan of Art Nouveau, so Brussels was a delight with all of its Art
Nouveau buildings; there was also a wonderful Art Nouveau exhibit (featuring the work of collector
S. Bing) at Brussels' Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts.

The weather was great.  While it was rainy and cold back here in Halifax, we had only a few days
of rain.  Even Ireland was sunny for nearly 3 straight weeks.

Driving a left hand drive car on the left side of the road was a bit different; however, I made no
mistakes till we got back to the right hand side where, just for an instant, in Belgium, I turned
into the wrong lane - no on-coming traffic though. Whew!

Approximate cash cost was about CDN$15,000 for 76 days, giving a cost-per-day (including the van
rental & cash paid for air tickets) real close to CDN$200/day for the trip.  Much of that was
fixed costs (van rental, camping clubs, Nat'l Trust, Lonely Planet books, maps etc.  And food
costs we would have had to pay here anyway.

I took over 10,000 photos and deleted about 8,000 (as I ‘bracket’ most shots), with more editing
to be done. Once I get the photos pared down to the “best of the best” I may post some photos.

Best deals were joining the 2 main camping & caravanning clubs, and the National Trust (free entry
to all National Trust sites).  We bested our own record with 69 straight nights sleeping in a VW
camper.

Special thanks to Marc Peters for the rental.  Special thanks to Mike & Ann Plompen for a
wonderful stay at their house and their gift of Belgian chocolate and Belgian beer.  Mike collects
Syncro 16s from all over Europe and they are for sale on his busman.be web page.  Special thanks
to Robin Oomkes for putting us up at his place in Brussels; Robin is what I’d call "a renaissance
man":  well read, well mannered, hospitable.  He can discuss topics from music to politics to
vanagons.  And all of that in any one of 4 or 5 languages!

For the camper crowd:  the van was a 5 cylinder 2.5L TDI Diesel T4 Eurovan syncro Westy (no
locking diffs)  we averaged 7.7 liters/100 kms (about 30.5 mpg) which is great.  Taking back roads
and keeping the speed to about 70 kph sure helps on the fuel economy.  The large Syncro fuel tank
and 7.7l/100kms meant about 800 or 900 kms between fuel stops.

We had a great time, especially being with one another 24/7, and rarely outside of arms' reach
:-).

Anyone who'd like more detail is welcome to ask.

Drive safely!

Malcolm and Pat






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