Touring Norfolk in motorhome

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 The Norfolk ‘chronicles’: 4^th June to 8^th July 2021

Day One: 4^th June: ‘breaking the ‘nightmare’ journey’

Route: A38 – M5 – A39 – A37 – A4174 – A420 – A46

Campsite: ‘Charity Barn’ Minchinhampton – CAMC CL site

Mileage: 170 miles

Time travelling: 6 hours

Expenditure:

·        Iced Lattes - £8 (is it our imagination or have prices gone up this year?)

·        Fuel: £15

·        Campsite £16 per night for hard standing and EHU

·        TOTAL = £71

 

We left our storage site at 10.00am. The journey should have taken three hours. We’ve done this journey regularly in the past so we know the route and timings well.

It took six hours!

 

Cornwall was emptying on a Friday of half term. This is not what is supposed to happen! Holiday makers go home on a Saturday not a Friday! Irrespective of the forthcoming G7 summit, it is dashed uncivilised frankly!

 

Until Holden Hill, it was fine. From Kenn, at the bottom of Telegraph Hill to Taunton services then took an hour and a half, crawling nose to tail traffic; a permanent barely moving car park on the M5 heading north during which time we became intimately acquainted with the rear doors and art work of the artic lorry in front of us. To say we crawled in a ‘stop – start’ fashion is to understate the nightmare. It was a mass exodus of disenfranchised tourists heading home, northwards!

 

From a crowded Taunton Services, (where lorry drivers struggled to find a parking slot due to motorhomes and caravans and the queue for the loos was almost 100 people long), to Junction 23 of the M5, took a further hour and a half during which time we gave up the will to live. Trapped on the inside lane, barely moving, we were elated for any opportunity to suddenly change up into third gear (which was always accompanied by a profound sense of elation).

We detoured off at junction 23. We still had the Weston and Clevedon stretches to do and the various traffic management interactive maps just showed a tunnel of red along the M5 until well past Bristol.  Over to Walton, Street, Wells and then up to Bristol over the Mendips; around the Bristol bypass, where we lost a further half hour and then across towards Bath before heading north once more along the A46 and over the M4.        

Five and a half hours driving time. Five and a half hours!  We were exhausted, frazzled!

‘Charity Barn’, a CAMC CL campsite, immediately off the wonderful Minchinhampton Common and a short walk from the ‘The Lodge’ pub and restaurant was a welcome sanctuary from this madness.

There are plenty of walks around this ancient village. The local shops are a mile away in a pleasant village centre with an old market hall, and central War Memorial.  Nailsworth Morrison’s is two miles away down the steep ‘W’ switch back bends into the valley below. Think some of those twisting roads in the Dolomites, only a much shorter version!

Sunsets are spectacular and are accompanied by the braying of resident donkeys in buttercup filled fields. There are no facilities other than drinking water, waste water pipe drain (you can’t get your motorhome over it, so it is a bucket job) and a chemical disposal point, which is basically a toilet bowl behind a wooden screen. Rustic charm.

The next two days are spent visiting family and walking around the various villages and the common.  We chat, we walk, we eat and we relax. ‘The Lodge’ on the common is well worth a visit.