First Week: from Home to Nonancourt

Wednesday 2nd – Wednesday 9th November 2022

Time to set off on our first trip to Spain since early 2020’s aborted expedition…. Having packed the house up and set off without (we think) forgetting anything drastically important, we spent our first night away on a car park in Builth Wells

Overnight: The Groe car park, Builth Wells

It’s a nice location and we’ve stayed there before without any issues. Being free from 6pm until 8am, though, it now seems popular with lorry drivers; SOK soon had big lorries parked either side (yes, completely ignoring the concept of marked bays) which, of course, started up and left very very early the next morning.

Still slightly fatigued on Thursday morning but happy to be back on our travels, we continued our route southward, stopping along the way to have a look round Leominster. I’d had cause to drive to Leominster for a day over the summer, and Mark was keen to see the fabulous Priory Church of St Peter and St Paul (the earliest parts of which date back the the 12th century).

Mark particularly liked the ducking stool, which was last used in 1809.

From Leominster, we continued our journey to the very cute village of South Newington in the Cotswolds, between Chipping Norton and Banbury.

Our purpose here was to visit the Grade 1 listed church of St Peter ad Vincula, which contains some very impressive wall paintings dating back to around 1330.

No expense seems to have been spared by the local Giffard family who paid for the paintings. They were apparently painted by an excellent craftsman using oil on plaster, which may account for their longevity.

One of the most famous shows the murder in 1170 of Thomas Becket, a subject matter which did not commonly survive the reforms of Henry VIII:

Another, showing the martyrdom of Thomas Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster in 1322, is not quite as well preserved. The Virgin and Child painting is remarkably intact given its age:

Finally, this one shows St Margaret of Antioch, patron saint of women in childbirth, slaying the dragon:

In addition to wall paintings, South Newington also provided us with a place to stay overnight within easy walking distance of the church. The site had everything you could possibly want except for mains electricity (which we don’t need), and was very fairly priced at £12.50 for the night.

Overnight: Newton Grove CL, South Newington

Mark picked up a leaflet from the information board at the camp site about the nearby Rollright Stones, so we went to take a look on Friday morning.

The Kings’ Men stone circle has a diameter of 30 metres and probably dates back to around 2500 BC:

The King Stone, dating back to 1800 – 1500BC, was probably erected to mark a Bronze Age burial site:

Finally, the Whispering Knights are the remains of an early Neolithic burial chamber from around 3800 BC:

We spent Friday afternoon driving down to East Preston near Worthing on the South Coast.

Overnight: Mark’s cousin Ruth’s drive, East Preston (2 nights)

We had a great couple of days in East Preston, where Mark has relatives. We were spoiled rotten! So much so that it was a shame to have to drag ourselves away on Sunday to continue our travels. We’ve already threatened to go back on our way home…..

We took the slow route along the coast to Canterbury on Sunday rather than the quicker route suggested by Sat-Nav that involved the M25, which meant that we had an uneventful journey without too much traffic (and no protesters).

Overnight: New Dover Road Park & Ride, Canterbury (2 nights)

We’d allocated ourselves a day in Canterbury on Monday before catching the ferry on Tuesday. Last time we visited Canterbury, we did the Cathedral and the Beaney museum in the city centre. This time we thought we’d follow the general line of the old walls.

We started with the Dane John (“donjon”) mound which was first created as a burial mound during Roman times. The Normans found it a very handy ready-made motte to stick a wooden castle on following their arrival in 1066:

It didn’t take long for the Normans to get round to building a stone castle nearby.

To be honest, Canterbury Castle was a great disappointment: it’s all fenced off with a sign saying “closed due to falling masonry”. It’s clearly been closed for some time. Surely someone at the very least needs to carry out urgent reapirs if only to stop more bits falling off it?

Further around the walls, the West Tower (apparently the largest surviving medieval gateway in England, built around 1379) was looking in much better condition:

Mark now had his biggest disappointment of the day. He’d wanted to pop into the Beaney museum for another look at the clangers (his favourite part of our previous Canterbury visit). Nothing doing – the museum is closed on Mondays. “I don’t ask for much in life” he muttered dejectedly…..

Heading out beyond the line of the city walls, we knew that St Augustine’s Abbey (English Heritage) was closed on weekdays at this time of year.

What we didn’t expect was that a church would be closed on Mondays and Tuesdays….

St Martin’s is the oldest church in continuous use in England. Well, continuous if you discount Mondays and Tuesdays…..

Mark decided that the lych gate would be the perfect place to shelter from the rain whilst eating his sandwiches:

We had a look at the outside of the building; it is a real mix of different periods.

According to our book, inside the church is a Norman font brought from Canterbury Cathedral but apparently reassembled incorrectly so that the patterns on the different pieces don’t line up. We’ll have to investigate that further on a future visit.

The outside of the church is almost impossible to photograph – there are too many trees!

Mark’s day went from disappointment to seeing stars at the Catching Lives charity bookshop:

Having crouched down to look at some books inside a big old fireplace, he stood up and cracked his head hard on the wooden beam above. Ouch! There was blood, and a sore head for a couple of days. Ironically, the piece of wood he hit his head on was probably the only non-wonky part of the whole building!

We left Canterbury on Tuesday morning for the short drive down to Dover. On arrival, we got moved forward from the ferry we’d booked to an earlier one that was just finishing loading, so we didn’t stop at all; it was round to lane 126 and straight up the loading ramps…..

The crossing was much calmer than the weather forecast had suggested, and the ferry itself was probably the emptiest we’ve ever seen.

Safely on the other side, we’d planned to drive down to the Auchan supermarket at St Omer for our first French shopping trip.

Having acquired supplies of all of our favourite French goodies, we carried on to the small town of Montreuil sur Mer (which is quite a way from the sea; apparently it was an inland port).

Overnight: Aire Municipale, Montreuil sur Mer

Our plan to jog around the town ramparts before setting off on Wednesday morning was derailed by bouncing rain (with hailstones mixed in at one point). We donned waterproofs for a wander around the town centre instead.

The town square doesn’t look like much in the dreary weather, but was actually surrounded by all kinds of small shops with beautifully arranged window displays:

We came across an equestrian statue, which we were surprised to discover was of Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig. He had his headquarters at Montreuil sur Mer between 1916 and 1919:

Much of Wednesday afternoon was spent travelling, arriving at the town of Nonancourt at around 4pm.

Overnight: Nonancourt

We’ve stayed on the motorhome aire at Nonancourt once before, during the mass exodus of British motorhomes towards the Channel ports in March 2020 as Europe closed down around us. There are six official motorhome spaces here but that night, every available inch (including all of the town hall car park) was full of motorhomes. No-one said anything; I guess the locals also had other things to worry about at that point…..

We thought we’d go and have a look at the town centre this time as we didn’t have chance on our last visit. It has plenty of old and interesting-looking buildings, including another St Martin’s church:

We’ve slipped quite easily back into dossing mode over the last couple of days, so it’ll be more of the same as we make out way south; a bit of travelling and a bit of exploration each day.