UK Road Trip, Part 1

Hey guys.
We haven’t written in a while as we have been quite busy! Since we have already covered the trip to Avebury & Stonehenge, I’ll continue from when we left London again, and headed north this time. First Stop was Birmingham. I have to say that driving around the UK was quite funny at first, because everything is so close, and what seems like a long journey to them over here barely gets us to the top of Victoria. After only a few hours we had reached our first destination. Birmingham.
Now I do want to say we only have 2 weeks’ worth of driving & a lot of ground to cover, so most places we only stopped in for a night. Birmingham was quite cool actually, we went to see the “famous bullring” and that was fairly interesting. It really is just a shopping complex, but the design is really interesting & worth a look. The place we stayed was the Birmingham Central Backpackers and the place comes highly recommended. It would have been nice to chill out there for quite a while I think.
Just before I move on in the trip, I do want to mention that Petrol is quite expensive over here; you are looking at £1.20 a litre. So although driving short distances, it is still rather costly. Not to mention our lovely travel agent again although asked directly failed to inform us of the additional charges for my age on the car hire, so we started on the back foot. It’s kind of turned into a bit of a joke, because it doesn’t seem to matter how hard we work to get back on top, or how many days straight we eat noodles, there is always a new thing/issue to take us back to the drawing board…or behind it in some cases. It is a part of the adventure though I guess. It has made for a lot of disgruntled laughs. I think if we took it all too seriously I’d be grey haired by now.
Anyway moving on…After Birmingham we headed up to Leeds. We very thankfully got to catch up with Luke (one of the English boys we met in Spain) and crash on his couch. Leeds was very entertaining namely because Airbourne were playing one of the big arenas that night, and there were “metalheads” everywhere. I didn’t even know who Airbourne were, but 1 You-Tube clip was enough to shame the Warnabool lads.
We from Leeds crossed over to Liverpool (not everything seems logical, but it all had its reasons I promise) Liverpool was lots of fun. We were pretty much immersed in everything Beatles from when we arrived. And once again we were staying at a great place (Bankhall Hotel) which just made everything that little bit easier. Liverpool we actually stopped in at for 2 nights. We spent the first day visiting Penny Lane & Strawberry Field etc, and the second at the Beatles Story Museum. We also headed to the Cavern Club for a few drinks.
The Cavern Club was quite an experience. Even though it was just a cover band on, we went the night after we learnt all about how it used to be, apparently the room was so packed out during the Beatles sets that one night the sweat and condensation on the walls started dripping & shorted out their equipment (or so the Beatles Story says, and who am I to argue?) So it was cool to go down & be in that space. Now it isn’t quite the original, as it was demolished in the 70’s, but was rebuilt at the same address, in the exact same dimensions, and with the same bricks SO it was an authentic as it could get. We met a cool couple there from London too who thought it was outrageous that we didn’t care about Danni Minogue (I think I actually pfft’d her) or neighbours, and that I didn’t watch East Enders. She was a funny lass. I was quick to point out that Kylie is dearly loved & at least as far as I was aware my nanna used to still watch Home & Away & Neighbours.

So after Liverpool ( and this is where our driving pattern becomes illogical) the plan was to drive to York( 2 hours away) and then half way up to Scotland & crash at our midway cheap hotel we had booked, be there just after dinner time for a nice rest.

All did not, to any stretch of the imagination go to plan. We were cruising quite happily on the M62 when signs start flashing saying it’s closed between j22 & j24, which are just exits. Now perhaps Naively ( but we’ve done alright) we actually don’t have a map, we just look up where we need to go & write down the directions, because of this, we were not going t turn off & guess how to drive to the other side of the country, we figured we’d just to the detour. I guess I was part hoping that the people from Britain would go another way, or it wasn’t going to be that bad…Whatever went through our minds was wrong. We were in bumper to bumper traffic for 1 hour before we even made in off the freeway onto the detour. Then the detour took us through a whole host of small towns, of course all 1 lane. So our hour of 4 lanes wide of cars crawling along was all squeezing slowly though these tiny streets, for oh about 4 hours…!
By the time we finally got to York it was well and truly dark, making it harder to see signs & make turns, we just wanted to get to bed. York though is amazing & wonderful & I wish so much that we had time there. We did miss our turn though so we drove around the city centre for ages (not made for driving, and mainly one way streets) o we did get a nice look, but the wall & the bars are just utterly breathtaking & one of the most overwhelming structures we came across, mainly I guess because it is so underrated and less spoken of.
To finish the day we continued our drive on a dark small road to our resting place, and were very very happy to be there and sleep.

To be continued….
xx