Touring Norfolk in a motorhome

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Day 6: 9^th June travelling to Norfolk via Cambridge

Route: A4095 to Bicester – A41 – A421 – A421 to Milton Keyes – B4034 to Bletchley Park – A421 to junction 13 M1 – A507 to Baldock – B656 – A505 to Duxford Chapel – A1301 to Great Shelford

Distance: 90 miles

Travel time: 3 hrs excluding supermarket stop at Bicester

Expenditure:

·        Breakfast coffee and rolls £7.00

·        Bletchley Park £42

·        Fuel £30

·        Campsite for next five nights – hard standing and EHU

Campsite: Camping and Caravan Club site – Great Shelford

 

We woke up to rabbits. Surrounded by rabbits. If they weren’t so cute and fluffy, it could be a scene out of a horror movie in which we are hunted by rabbits!

Morning routines are set now. The ‘bed fairy’ packs away the bed, folds up the bedding and has the coffee on before Maggie emerges from the bathroom.

This morning our quick get away wasn’t. It was the EHU stand that delayed us. Our cable just wouldn’t pull out. Steve tried every possible manoeuvre to no avail. Once again, our neighbour came to the rescue. “Push the red button” he yelled out of his window. It took a few moments for Steve to find the red button and hey presto, the cable disengaged immediately. Well, that was a new one on us!

As was trying to work out the grey water dump site at the motorhome service point. Did you lift the drain cover in the centre of the designated bay? If so, how could you do that with a motorhome parked over it? If you lifted it beforehand, how could you drive in to position so that the pipe was over it without a wheel going down it? With no one around we cheated, using the three-metre black hose we carry, to drain into a grating drain which said ‘Waste water’.

Boy, does Milton Keynes have a serious roundabout problem. The air suspension proved its weight in gold at this point of our travels. Navigation by Maggie was exemplary as always. We arrived at Bletchley Park, calm, collected and pleased to see that it was gated ‘secure’ entry to the car park. We left the motorhome in the upper car park with just the steering lock on.

Bletchley Park was absolutely worth the detour. It is an extraordinary, fascinating place of such huge importance to our country’s story. The guides were excellent, the welcome warm, the displays well researched.

You can find out more about Bletchley Park at www.bletchleypark.org.uk

There is the Victorian mansion with Commander Denniston's office and the library, recreated as they were in WW2. there are veteran exhibits and stories as well.  We missed the garages, very irritating, which store war time vehicles and a display about how intelligence material was transported. Huts 11 and 11A are as they were and the displays explain how the team helped during WW2 solve the challenge of the Enigma through the creation of the Bombe machines. Huts 3 and 6 were the restored German Army and Airforce codebreaking huts whilst hut 8 contains the recreated office of Alan Turing and displays about the German Enigma machine and the code breaking work undertaken. There are picnic areas, deck chairs under trees and a lake to stroll around as well. 

 

The camping and caravan club campsite at Cambridge is large and well run. The welcome is warm. Our gravel pitch was spacious although the space between us and the other vans and tents allowed to pitch in front of us was less than we would have liked. Facilities were clean, the motorhome service point easily accessible. There are good bus and cycle links into the city centre.

The highlight for Steve was seeing what he thought was ‘the beast’. He had read about this purpose built motorhome on a lorry base in a CCC magazine – a couple who had sold up, invested in a purpose-built expedition lorry and set off travelling around the world. This one on site was huge, the wheels alone almost the height of Steve. Shiny grey with fold down steps and all manner of lockers beneath, from which, the owners took out an assorted array of gizmos and equipment. He was really upset he couldn’t sneak a look inside. 

(Post script addition - since returning home, I have found the article and it turns out it wasn't the one I was thinking of. Very, very similar but not the one. the one I mistook it for belongs to David and Charlotte Stephenson who wrote a great article about themselves and 'the beast' in the May 2021 Camping and Caravanning Magazine from the Camping and Caravan Club. And for those who want to know, the lorry base is a Mercedes Atego, an ex German army troop carrier and they have a blog you can visit at www.sommertravelling.com . They are currently in Senegal and definitely not Cambridge!!). 

The weather is with us, a balmy 24C with gentle warm breezes, cloudless blue skies and parched baked hard ground and early evening, Steve takes the opportunity to repack the external storage locker more efficiently (based on the old adage from his mountaineering days “put in first what you need out last and put in last what you need out first”!)