Bucks and Sussex

So we have been at it for a week now. A kind of Holiday of Readjustment, traipsing from place to place on the map in an absurdly haphazard way, bypassing cities and towns in which we might consider making our future home, in order to string together random locations that we would surely not. This wildly disorganised and expensive vacation season must surely give way to something more methodical soon, if only to spare the lungs of the people from the evils of our diesel fumes. We've clocked up over 500 miles, and yet have felt like we haven't really started.

After a visit to the small and weird Royston Cave left our children wondering what on earth it was that their parents were mistaking for something important, we spent the night in the car park opposite The Harrow, a nice-enough Chiltern Hills coaching inn with friendly staff, tasty chips and the most unremarkable beer offering imaginable. This was conveniently close to Great Missenden, where I sought the truths behind Roald Dahl's farmer and old lady of whom he told my friend Big H. But did not find them, of course.

We then moved on toward the South Coast. M has wanted to visit Charleston for some years, and so wasn't about to let the Philistine Men of her family ruin it for her. We remained in the van in the car park and made pasta, then I sat over E while he ate it, explaining in some detail why Making Himself A Sandwich Instead was no longer an option. 

We found such a good parking spot outside the fantastic Snowdrop Inn in Lewes that I was reluctant to leave, especially as they had all sorts of delights from Burning Sky and Wild Beer on the bar. It's pretty clear why Nice Families left East Dulwich in droves for the home of Harveys throughout the early 21st Century. Lewes is a very pleasant town indeed, apart from the shitbiscuit who hit his horn when we had to stop at a >6'6"< width warning and turn around. Perhaps I should have proceeded regardless and wedged my new home firmly into the thoroughfare in front of him, to see if he liked that any better.

Now we are parked outside the boys' oldest friends' house, in Worthing, where they've lived for about a year. Toilet cassette and waste water emptied, the best broadband we've had in a week, and a gilt-edged parking voucher in the windscreen, we are getting pretty comfortable in a great town that has a bit of everything we are looking for. But there is an awful lot to see out there, and we do seem to be really getting started on it at last.