DAY ONE HUNDRED AND TWO. The sea was quite rough when I woke in the morning. Everyone else in our cabin was still asleep so I lay there looking out the porthole at the green waves rolling around the ship with the wind whipping spray off the whitecaps.
After showers we went up to the cafe for a huge breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausages and chips. There were quite a few green faces around, not all of them due to the rough sea. Pullar & Skip were well under the weather after a night of drinking whiskey with some of the ship’s crew and Skip decided that he didn’t want his breakfast after he’d ordered it so he gave it to me. While I was eating this second brekkie a kid spewed right behind us so that did it for Skip and he headed for the dunnys!!
After breakfast we went and packed our gear then spent the remaining two hours of the voyage wandering round the ship or sitting in the lounge watching the swells.
At around 10:00 we sailed past a lighthouse and half an hour later we were sailing into Plymouth Harbour. The sea calmed as we came in past the headlands and sailed up the harbour past more lighthouses and the many old, stone maritime buildings built on the cliffs above the water.
We docked on schedule at 12:30 and drove the truck off the ship, once again back in England. Immigration and Customs were pretty straightforward. They put a drug dog through the druck which gave druggie Skip another fright, especially when it started barking at Chris and Bron’s stuff. The customs man went through it and found nothing so we were free to go.
The weather as we had sailed up Plymouth Harbour had been beautifully clear and cold, with a calm blue sea under a bright blue sky. But as we drove out of Plymouth, the fog came down and turned the day into a bleak and miserable one. We spent the day wrapped in our sleeping bags as the cold and wet, but never-the-less beautiful landscape of Devon rolled past.
We stopped for lunch at a Happy Eater¹ then later on for a coffee at a roadside cafe. Darkness was on us by 4:00 and it was bitterly cold.
We drove into London at about 10:00 and dropped Sale off then headed for Earl’s Court². We parked the truck on a corner and unloaded our gear onto the footpath.
One by one everyone drifted away in taxis or on foot to their friend’s flats nearby or in other areas of town. I walked up the street to a hotel called The Hunter’s Lodge where the police were busy rescuing a drunken Aussie who had passed out on the fourth floor parapet.
Linda and I lugged our heavy packs, our day bags, the camera tripod, the Tuareg sword, our treasures from Africa, down to the hotel and booked in, went upstairs, showered and went to bed.
¹The Happy Eater was a motorway restaurant chain in England. It’s logo, a happy round face with a comma for a tongue brought to mind a Pacman. The food was dreadful – tepid, greasy and expensive – and so Linda and I always referred to these places as The Spewing Pacman.
² The inner London suburb popular with backpackers and antipodeans.
CurseOfTheTraveller 