#104 October 15-21, 2022. Nomad Diary. Bridgend Housesit. Train Day Trip to Newport. Move to Eastbourne and Begin Deal Housesit.

 

Our Bridgend neighborhood. Darrell walking Roxy.

Tapas Restaurant in Bridgend.

Saturday Activities.

Saturday. 15. Today was living at our housesit with Roxy the Shih Tzu. We take turns walking her in the morning and in the evening. With our plan to take the train tomorrow to Newport, about a 30 minute ride from Bridgend, we want to find out how long it will take us to walk to Bridgend from our house. The distance is about 2 miles, and we decide to walk there with Roxy and have lunch then walk back. We enjoy the nice weather and the pathway for walking with our little dog. She does great and we find that it takes us about 40 minutes to walk to the train station. We find a lunch place and have lunch while Roxy hangs out under our table. We order three small plates to share: a chicken chili with salsa verde (it was really basil pesto! lol!); Korean chicken wings and salt and pepper squid. We enjoyed our lunch and then walked back to our house. We rest at our house. Darrell does his Spanish lessons and I don’t do Spanish very often even though I look at it sometimes. In the evening we have salads for dinner and I also fix an egg with sliced chestnut mushrooms. This evening I have two friends in the states to call using whatsapp. My great friend, Laura and I have had a learning relationship for years. We discuss life, living and growing as a christian, and working EPT trades together (Emotional Polarity Technique, an emotional stress relieving and verbal brain retraining technique, taught years ago to us by my sister Dr. Annette Cargioli). 

Week’s Happenings.

Street in Newport near the train station.

A traditional sort of Sunday menu.

Darrell ordering lunch at the bar and they will bring it to our table marked with a number.

One of the many colorful mosaic public art on the underpass footpath in Newport

Sunday. 16. We do our morning exercise routine, DDP Yoga after taking Roxy for her morning walk. Feeding her takes a couple of minutes as she eats fast. We make breakfast in our very nice modern kitchen. Then we take Roxy on another walk before leaving around 9am with the expectation to be back at 4pm. I send Susan, our host, a message that we are leaving. She lets her neighbor know that they can come get Roxy anytime for a walk. We learned after we returned at 4pm that the neighbors took Roxy on a super-long walk and when we got back to the house she was refusing to go out on another walk! Lol! I took her on a short walk anyway and she did well. We had a sunny day to travel, walking two miles to Bridgend and getting on the train to Newport. The ride went well and the walk both ways. When we arrived we used google to get us to the church building. We were there with others to worship together for about 1 ½ hours. We met many people and visited a little with them. This group is a mixed group with several immigrants from Africa, Nigeria in particular. After we finished there, we walked 15 minutes back toward the train station. We took some foot tunnels under the main roads and found some beautiful mosaic artwork. It was colorful and enjoyable! We then found a restaurant and had a ‘proper’ English Sunday lunch! Lol. This consists of roast meat, potatoes, a bread like a popover called Yorkshire Pudding, some roasted root vegetables and gravy.

Roxy playing with her ‘Bee’

Walking to the Bristol waterway through a mile+ of sand dunes! This is a flat area near the river.

Detail of how rocky the sand is just along the coast.

Monday. 17. We stay close to our house, and take turns with Roxy’s walks today. We enjoy a slow walk together in the afternoon and working on our computer.

Walking through and over sand dunes.

The sea. The Bristol waterway.

A horse and a rider enjoying the sea.

Flower close up with dew droplets around the petals.

Saw this peacock on our walk.

Tuesday. 18. On this morning we plan to walk to the coast about 3-4 miles from our house. We take care of Roxy so she is set to stay in the house while we are gone for a planned 3 hours. The day is beautiful and sunny and slightly cool. Great for walking. We take off and make it to the sand dunes that we walk the paths through to the beautiful coastline. I could spend all day here resting, gathering rocks and shells. We take pictures and head back to our house over the sand dunes and through the woods! Lunch today is all of our left-overs! It’s plenty and delicious! We are resting for the afternoon and thinking of our plan to leave at 11 am tomorrow to walk with our luggage to the train to take us to Eastbourne. Our remaining time here is packing our things and cleaning up Susan’s house, washing our sheets and towels in the morning, and writing her a thank-you note.

Walking 2 miles to Bridgend train station while rolling a luggage and carrying a backpack.

Gary and Tricia from Australia have been Nomads and travelers for many years. We met them in April on our Panama cruise and have spent considerable shipboard weeks and excursions including Halifax, Canada, Iceland, and the Shetland Islands! Here having dinner at Lamb’s Inn in Eastbourne where our paths have crossed.

My very delicious pub dinner that I ordered off the appetizer menu. Goat cheese on an onion tart on arugula and sliced beets with balsamic reduction. It was super!

This is Darrell’s more traditional pub style dinner of sausage and mash with veg and gravy.

He enjoyed it.

Wednesday. 19.  Today we wash the sheets and towels and hang them on the clothes drying racks. We fix ourselves a wonderful breakfast and walk Roxy a couple of times. We pack our things and have time to walk half a mile to a coffee shop with Roxy and have a cappuccino. We leave by 11am to roll our luggage to the Bridgend train station 2 miles away!  We arrive in plenty of time. The weather is clear and dry. We get a sandwich at the train station to keep us settled on our trip. We have a change in Cardiff where we almost missed the train! The track location of our train changed and we had no notice of this so we were confused. We saw at least one other person looking confused with us and we were able to get information about which platform our train was on. We had to carry our luggage down and up two flights of stairs. Darrell helped me by picking up one end of my suitcase while he fully carried his own suitcase. We made it to our train. It was comfortable and we changed again in London. We had time to get a sandwich in London before getting on the train. Once we arrive to Eastborne, Tricia and Gary were waiting with their car to retrieve us and take us to the Lamb’s Inn for our overnight room and we had dinner there together. We made plans for the next day as they came and got us on Thursday morning to drive us 2 hours to Deal for our housesit.

Breakfast at the Lamb’s Inn in Eastbourne. Traditional English breakfast and tell them what you don’t want on your plate! No beans or tomatoes or juice for me.

Inside the Lamb’s Inn has parts that have been here since 1150AD and earlier!

Original handwritten 1734 poem. Darrell says it starts like a good joke: A man, a priest and a poet walk into a bar…

The old well on our tour.

This old worn hand-carved bench likely dating 1400-1500.

View of Eastbourne from our 3rd floor window.

The Lamb’s Inn been here a long long time.

Gary on a Rye cobble street

Me and Tricia in Rye (Gary and Darrell in background)

The four of us at the English Channel near Deal

Beach detail.

Some mosaic art at Walmer.

Dinner at the Grand Hotel on the beach.

Thursday. 20. We sleep in until 8am! And we have breakfast downstairs at 8. We make it about 8:15 with a few other overnight guests. The manager gets our orders and makes us fresh coffee by the cup! We enjoy looking at the original items displayed in the pub. A handwritten original poem from the 1700’s. Some old newspapers framed and old furniture that is worn down through the original hand-carvers marks likely dating 1400-1500’s. John the manager talks to us about the history of the pub and offers to show us the old well and the cellar. We go and enjoy his commentary. We pack up and are ready when Gary and Tricia come round to get us at 11am.

Gary is driving the car that they bought while they have been here for the last several months. Rather than staying in the UK, they drove over 10,000 miles over to Greece and back through 16 countries I think! We are now on a 2 hour drive to Deal along the English Channel coast. We stop for lunch in Rye, a great little tourist town with medieval houses and buildings that have been restored. We linger over a delicious Italian lunch with dessert, walk around town and go on toward Deal. We stop at Walmer castle just before Deal and get out of the car around 3 or 3:30. It’s too late and too much money to go to the castle now. So we walk a little up the coast and then back to the car and go on to our housesit house to meet Jill and leave our luggage. We arrive about half a mile inland and in town to Jill’s house where we say our hello’s and leave our luggage while we go to have a light dinner and say our goodbye’s. We eat dinner on the beach at the Grand Hotel. The menu appears to have an Asian inspired chef cooking. It’s a bit trendier than we’ve seen to now and it was fun to read and know that we are here all week. Gary and Tricia drop us back to our house and have hugs until the next time we meet which may be at their house in Brisbane in 2024! We spend the evening with Jill and Percy her Cockapoo that we will be caring for over the next week+. 

A screenshot talking to Jeremy’s family! We hope to be with them in Portland, Maine in late January!!

Beachfront in Deal

Sculpture leading out to Deal Pier

Percy on his walk.

Friday. 21. Jill leaves by 8am and we have already made ourselves at home by making our breakfast and setting off the smoke alarm with our toast! Lol. After breakfast Darrell is staying in and working on the computer while I take Percy, our dog for the week on a couple of walks. Once I find out that he isn’t well trained, then I leave him at the house and I go into town to explore. Around lunch time I text Darrell to meet me for lunch and we have a delicious lunch at a Turkish place. I have already purchased some fresh sourdough bread, one of my favorite town finds wherever I am. We go to the grocery and back to our house. 

Nomad Notes.

Tricia and I talked about how tired we were from travel and needing some down time. Darrell and I have looked forward to these housesits as a downtime for our travel. All of us travelers agreed that getting to our upcoming cruises would be a welcome rest onboard for several weeks. Since being in England, Our longest stay was 16 nights in London. We also did 2 weeks in Edinburgh in two different houses. We are considering how long we stay and how that helps us rest, relax and just live day to day rather than be a tourist everyday. Lol. For now I am enjoying this low-key seaside town during this off-season week.