The castle was surrounded by extensive gardens, clearly visible from atop the towers, so after we went for our castle tour, we headed out to the gardens. They were a very pleasant walk, and as we wandered along we heard a familiar bird call, and soon found the caller. The call was familiar to us, because at our first house in Taggerty we had a resident peacock (who had escaped from somewhere), who used to sit on our roof and call, and then walk up and down our verandah looking at himself in the window glass. A beautiful animal indeed!

As we neared the castle, we could see people hanging from ropes on the face of the towers. At first, we couldn't see if they were alive (or dummies) and what their purpose could be. But as we got closer and then went inside and climbed the stairs within the towers, we could see they were indeed alive and activity engaged in painting the window frames. We couldn't work out if the castle owners had hired climbers who learned how to paint, or painters who learned how to climb. Perhaps it was just some blokes who saw a niche market for workers who could climb and paint the window frames of the many castles dotted around the UK/Europe.

After a couple of hours at Lulworth Castle, we decided to push on and go to nearby West Lulworth, where we had heard a lot about West Lulworth Cove. We made the decision to go there before we encountered the double-decker bus, which was coming up the narrow, winding road and we were trying to go down same road. We squeezed by (with 50mm to spare) and found a parking spot for the van (in a place reserved for motor cycles, because we had no other options). We then headed for the Cove. This was a cultural experience in itself. The "beach" had no sand, but was covered in pebbles and stones. It was almost the last day of Spring, but was unseasonably warm for England, so this brought out lots of pale-skinned English people for "a day at the beach". I remained fully clothed, because while it might have seemed warm to an English person, it was still decidedly cool by Australian standards. So while Rita went for a walk along the beach and dipped her toes into the (cold) water, I stood and just watched the passing parade - fascinating!!

After about an hour, we decided to get a different perspective of the Cove, by walking up an escarpment next to the Cove. The further one got away from the beach, the more attractive the Cove appeared, until we got to the top of the hill and could hardly see the pale bodies at all.

We parked the van inside the castle grounds (after squeezing through the iron entrance gates), and then walked to the castle, which was an impressive stone building, with towers on the four corners. Built in the 17th century, it has remained in the hands of the Weld family to the present day. One thing that is not realised on approaching the castle is that most of the interior is totally empty. This is because the castle was consumed by fire in 1929, and many of the floors etc were destroyed. When a decision was made on the castle's future, it was decided to retain and restore the outer walls, but to leave much of the interior as a shell of the building, housing a museum describing the history of the family and castle. This is surprisingly effective today, as one can clearly see the bones and skeleton of the structure.

The wind was quite strong at the top of the hill, so we soon tired of that and walked along the escarpment and into a more sheltered valley, where we got an interesting view of some rock formations, juxtaposed with a yacht sailing along in the background.

We awoke at the expensive South Lychett Manor Campsite near Poole to find we had no power (after paying 44GBP for the privilege of having overnight power to charge the batteries). We reported it to the management and found that someone (not us) had tripped the ampage switch. We got power back on at 1000h, just in time for our departure. While the high cost, and the mediocre quality, of English campsites had been a bit of a disappointment so far, we decided to make the most of the situation by being tourists and visiting a few of the destination sites in the region.

But as we headed to the first of these, we realised the difficulties that we would face driving a left-hand-drive campervan on the left side of the road, especially on the narrow rural roads in England. It was even more difficult when driving on roads/lanes which had hedges or stone walls on the edges of these roads. I have seen such roads on TV in shows such as Vera, where the police cars speed along such roads, but in those shows the road has been closed to traffic coming the other way, while they do the filming. We had no such luxury here in real life. It was even worse in these touristy areas  where cars are discouraged from going to the sites, and double-decker buses are provided to carry the tourists to and from the site. I can now tell you, from personal experience, that a campervan and a double-decker bus (both with wing-mirrors tucked in) can fit on these roads with 50mm to spare!! It was bad enough for me as the driver, sitting on the left of the van right next to the gutter/hedge/stone wall, but for Rita as the passenger it was even more harrowing as she looked directly at the vehicles coming from the opposite direction. On many occasions she asked/directed me to "move left", but I was already as far left as I could go. By some miracle we survived the day's driving, but realised that our plans for further touring along the coast in the South of England would need to be curtailed, if the van and our nerves were to survive.

Our first destination for the day was at East Lulworth Castle, a short distance to the south-west of Poole. We fully realised that we were now touring in England, not France, when we saw our first thatched cottage opposite the entrance to the castle.

We had enjoyed our time at East and West Lulworth, but figured it was time to move on. When we arrived back at the van, we saw that the double-decker bus was loading with passengers to go back up the hill. So we waited until the bus had departed, and then we set off, confident that we now wouldn't meet the bus on the way down. How clever are we?? Apparently, not clever enough, because we didn't figure on a second double-decker bus doing this route, which we now met on its way down the hill!! I have no idea how the two buses passed each other on the hill.

But this experience convinced us to abort plans for further south-west coast explorations in a campervan on narrow winding roads. Also, given our experience with last night's expensive campground, we started looking for cheaper options further north. We remembered Irene saying that a good option was to park overnight in the parking area for a pub, which is encouraged if you buy a meal or a drink at the pub. So we searched our campsite apps, and found one at the Halfway Hotel in Yeovil, about an hour north. We then headed north and an hour later arrived at the hotel. We stopped outside the pub and Rita went inside to enquire, to be told that they were happy for us to park overnight, but that we shouldn't come to the pub for a meal, since they were short-staffed and struggling to cope with their expected clientele. So we got free overnight camping without the need to buy anything!  When we got to the parking area down the back of the pub, we were stunned. It had green grass, picnic tables, a lake and a family of geese! A wonderful site that we totally enjoyed, and which counter-balanced our experience from the previous night outside Poole. Things are looking up.

Tues 30 May - narrow roads, East Lulworth Castle, West Lulworth Cove, Yeovil

Our day started by checking out the geese who swam in from the lake and made themselves at home in front of the campervan, eating, sleeping, cleaning, sleeping, eating etc etc.

After breakfast, while Rita did some practice on the steel pans outside, I watched the State of Origin Rugby League  game from Adelaide, with Queensland defeating New South Wales 26-18 with some late try-scoring action. We rang ahead to the next proposed campsite, Bury View near Bath, and confirmed a vacancy. The proprietors said they might be out shopping when we planned to arrive, but just to wait at the gate for them to let us in. So we modified our timing, and Rita continued playing the pans, until it was time to leave in order to get there just after they got home. It was a pretty uneventful drive, on roads that were wide enough for the campervan, and we beat them to the gate by about 5 minutes.

The elderly proprietors were very friendly and gave us the combination to the gate lock and then told us to choose whichever spot we liked (there were only 3 other vans there at the moment). But as I started the van to enter the gate, I noticed that something felt strange, so after getting through the gate I stopped to check and found that we had a flat rear left tyre. I crept into the nearest empty space and inspected it in more detail - yep, it was definitely flat!

I finally found the jack (under the passenger's seat) and tried to raise the tyre off the ground (after getting some pieces of wood from the proprietors to spread the load of the jack on the soft grass beneath). But the van was just too heavy for me to raise it completely. But at least I raised it enough to take the weight off the flattened tyre and prevented the rim from causing any more damage. I then asked the proprietors if they knew anyone who could fix the tyre. They gave me the name of a tyre mechanic in the next village, so I rang him and he said he could come to the campground about 1130h tomorrow, in between other scheduled jobs. Since there was nothing else to do until then, Rita started practicing on the pans again, while I went back to the front gate where we had stopped outside, to see if there was any evidence of what caused the flat tyre. It was clear from the marks in the gravel that the tyre had been OK when we pulled in off the road, and had gone flat in the time while we were waiting for the proprietors to return from shopping. But there was no sign of what might have actually caused it to go flat. So with that resolved, I went back to join Rita and pulled out the baritone pans that I was trying to learn. However, while Rita knew all her songs by heart, I still needed to use some music scores. But we had no music stand, so I improvised one by careful positioning of the luggage rack on the back of my bicycle.

In the evening, we went for a walk in the adjacent field, and I got an interesting shot of the sun setting behind a tree on the horizon

Wed 31 May - pans, State of Origin, Bury View, flat tyre, more practice, sunset

--o  And so endeth Spring  o--