Bosman's
Bush Telegraph - the final edition!
- 5 December 2000
Hello all,
Well, I
guess its mission accomplished! We
arrived on this little waterlogged island on Friday afternoon after a whistle
stop tour through Paris. Our plans
regarding the Paris bit were very ambitious and as usual things never quite
work out as they are supposed to. We
had thought we would just sail into the city, find a little pension in the
Latin Quarter to spend the night, scoff a couple of baguettes and then head off
on foot to take in the sights. Ha Ha! Any of you who have ever driven in Paris will know that it is like
ancient Chinese torture. The drivers
rival the diabolical Syrians and its not difficult to understand how Diana died
in a speed related motor accident.
Every Tom, Jacques and Michel thinks that they are professional rally
drivers and cars weave in and out of the traffic at breakneck speed. All the cars are covered in dings and
scrapes - either from being side swiped or from being rear ended. Tempers flare and rude hand signals are the
order of the day. And that's not even
mentioning the general mayhem that takes place at the Place Charles de Gaulle
which sees 11 of Paris major roads merge into a single circle around the Arc de
Triomphe. Not the place for a little
diesel Land Rover, I might add. The
other stumbling block was that every small, authentic Francophone pension (read
dingy but well situated) charged an extortionate price for a room. In the end, after spending the better part
of three hours trying to find suitable lodgings we had to chuck the pension
idea and very unceremoniously dumped the Landy at the train station. From there we caught the metro into town to
see the sights which involved a quick peek at the Tuilerie gardens and the Louvre,
a hike up the Champs Elysee and a trip up the Eiffel Tower. Oh, and of course, the obligatory pilgrimage
to the Virgin Mega Store to by an overpriced CD. By 11pm we were footsore and exhausted and managed to pick the
right train back to the station (not by our own skill, I might add, but by some
sort of force majeure or act of God) It was good to be there despite all the
moans and groans but Paris is yet another thing to be added to the Bosman's
versus the World rematch list!
From Paris
we headed up to Calais where we caught the ferry to Dover. What a relief to be among English speakers
again! We had thought that the English
would be just like us, you know, as ex-colonials we would feel a sense of
homecoming to be back on English soil.
Ha, ha again! Our fellow ferry
passengers were a breed apart. The
minute they got onto the ferry they hit the duty free shop, everyone loading up
trolleys full of beer, wine and spirits.
The ferry company actually offers a free delivery service to the car
deck should you spend more than 150 pounds at the duty free and there were a
lot of chaps taking P&O up on their offer.
For the rest, everyone immediately settled down to the serious business
of getting tanked up in the bar and grousing about the weather and the trains.
The ferry
landed at Dover at half past two and we sailed through customs in a matter of
minutes. It's just more than 100 miles
from Dover to London so we expected to be there by mid afternoon. Another ha,
ha for that! The gallivanting Bosman's
who have navigated their way through the whole African continent were
completely floored by the London road system.
Its like code - everything has a number like M25, A23 and Junction 7
which is all very well if you know where you are headed but for newcomers who
are mapless its a nightmare. We had
been given some pretty decent instructions by Rich so we set about following
them diligently. His first instruction
was to get onto the M25 which we did and we merrily carried on for nearly an
hour before we started seeing road signs for Cambridge which was a tad worrying
considering that even we knew that Cambridge was not in London. We decided that we had better turn around
and pulled off the M25 into one of London's northern suburbs. Miraculously at this point we got a call
from Jen who lives here in London and she was able to consult her map book and
give us some on the spot directions. Thanks Jen! We had gone north instead of
south on the M25!! We knew we had to
turn around but this left us facing yet another problem. On our way north we had been through what's
know here as the Dartford tunnel (read mammoth traffic hell)! In one direction traffic flows through a
tunnel and in the other it flows over the most enormous bridge I have ever
seen. From what we could establish, the
Dartford tunnel is THE busiest place in London from a traffic perspective. More worrying though was the fact that we
had had to pay one pound to travel through the tunnel and it was the only pound
that we had having been change received when we spent our last francs on the
ferry. To get back over the bridge we
would need at least another pound and as we were penniless at that stage we had
to find an ATM. To cut some cash and
headed south we were stuck in London's Friday afternoon rush hour. We tuned into the BBC and listened to the
traffic report. We kept hearing how the
M25 was blocked up for 4 miles through exits blah and blah and consulting the
road signs we found that we were pretty much slap bang between exits blah and
blah! Who else but us would have
meandered through the busiest traffic area on a friday afternoon - TWICE!
Needless to
say it was only five hours later that we finally made it to Bridget's flat in
what she and John have christened DUC (Deeply Unfashionable Croydon) home to a
small and very close knit group of our South African friends (no names
mentioned). It was great to be back in
the welcoming arms of Bridge, John,
Jill and Marke who had organized an ad hoc "you've finally arrived (and
not a minute too soon) party" complete with the most delicious home cooked
meal and champagne. Thanks guys! Being
in the UK is quite an experience.
Everything is incredibly organized - great public transport (we think so
at least), special pedestrian crossings, central heating and the most divine
supermarkets (Marks and Spencer is like Woolies gone mad!). We are already getting into the swing of
things though and are learning more about the Spice Girls, the Gallaghers (Liam
and Noel), the Queen Mum, the problems with the trains and the bad weather than
we care to know at present. We have
already got lost at least once on the tube system and ended up at Clapham
junction (If you get lost there you may as well be in hell - its a complete
maze!) and been yelled at by a train driver (can you believe that - the only pity
was that we couldn't understand him because of his thick London accent).
Our first
priority (other than watching SA getting clobbered by the Brits on the rugby
field) was to find a home for our Land Rover here in London. Not an easy prospect. Luckily Bridget has a garage although its
one of those minute garages only fit for those cars that look no bigger than a
shopping trolley on steroids. We sussed
out this garage and figured there was no way our car would fit in without
having its roof rack and tent taken off.
Bridge had told us that her
garage was
number 3 and had given us the keys to it.
There was some stuff in it, she had said, but she wasn't sure who it
belonged to - it had been there since she had moved in. Nev had just
taken off
all the stuff on the roof and was in the process of dismantling the roof rack
when a women popped her head around the door and demanded to know what we were
doing in her garage. Nev was of course
very righteous in his insistence that the garage belonged to Bridget and John's
flat. No, she insisted, it was hers and
belonged to no 9 (her flat) and, in fact, the stuff at the back was hers! We agreed to check it out and low and
behold, one call to Bridget's landlord revealed that Bridget and John's garage
was in fact number 22 and not no 3 as we had thought! We all felt incredibly sheepish and embarrassed and poor Bridge
had to go on a PR exercise with the women in no 9. Sorry Bridge! No permanent damage done, I hope, and we
rapidly moved our stuff out into no 22. All of our stuff looks totally out of place in pristine London.
Carrying our jerry cans, spades, pangas and axes from garage to garage we felt
like neanderthals plus we got a couple of stares from some very nervous looking
Brits in Bridgets block. Unfortunately,
despite all our wrestling and fighting there was no way we could get the Landy
into the garage so we had to make another plan. Fortunately Hamish came to our rescue and agreed to let us park
our car in his garage. So the Landy is
putting her feet up and having a well deserved rest in her new, very swishy
lodgings in Maidenhead right next to the Thames albeit in two inches of water
due to the recent floods!
So our
journey is over - its been a real epic which has taken us from the southern
most point of Africa over the entire continent to the Sudan, through the Middle
East and Europe and to one of the business capitals of the world. We've travelled from the Atlantic ocean to
the English channel taking in the Indian ocean, the Red sea, the Mediterranean,
the Adriatic and the Aegean. We've been to the highest point in Africa, Mt
Kilimanjaro, and the lowest point on earth at the Dead Sea. We've checked out the Limpopo, the Zambezi,
the great Nile, the Seine and the Thames.
We've fought the Sudanese bureaucracy, the diabolical Ethiopian roads,
the manic Syrian drivers and the massive European fuel prices. We've relished
the ancient churches in Lalibela, Vic Falls, the pyramids of Meroe, the ancient
city of Palmyra, the mind-blowing Venetian cappuccinos and the migrating herds
of the Masai Mara. From Zanzibar to Petra its been a roller coaster ride and
its been so worth it! Not only have we
got a pretty good idea about just how far London is from Cape Town but we have
learned a heck of a lot about the world and more importantly about our place in
it. We have dispelled the media gloom
about Africa and discovered it to be a genuinely fantastic and worthwhile place
to visit. We've learned a lot about
ourselves and each other (and Land Rover maintenance) and, all in all, feel
dead ready for a boring, settled life!
So, I guess
this is the last Bush Telegraph. I hope
you have enjoyed the ride as much as we have.
Thanks so much for all your support and the "save the Bosman's
campaign" suggestions – your emails have honestly kept us sane! Don't despair though - we may not be
gallivanting through Africa but if our last couple of days in London are
anything to go by we will continue to have adventures. So watch this space for the "Bosman's
London letter" - first edition expected in Jan! If you want to "unsubscribe" (or subscribe) as it were,
let us know and we will take you off our list – no offence taken, guaranteed!
lots of love
Penny and
Neville