North

Sorry for the lack of updates -innternet has proved harder to find than \i'd anticipated.

But I'm spending my last pound on this post, so I hope you all appreciate it. Turns out that for whatever reason, English ATMs don't recognise my account is a chequing account. Thus i've been forced to a variety of expensive methods for getting cash... I can get cash at money change places, provided I buy foreign currency first, and then convert it back to pounds. As you can imagine, this proves expensive.

A real quick update, I don't have time for many colourful details. After I said goodbye to Bree I took a much delayed flight to London. Discovered I could not obtain cash from machines, cashed up from a moneychanger who regarded me with kind pity at just how badly she was compelled to screw me. Got the train to Paddington station, found my hostel, and crashed out.

Got up an hour or two later and rang Tash. It was nice to speak to her again. We arranged to meet the next day in Kensington Gardens. Got some food, went back to my room and watched some television.

The next day - a Sunday - I tried to visit the Charing Cross bookshops, but they were all closed. Walked around kensington Gardens, nursing my bum foot, then went to meet Tash at the peter pan statue. We got coffee, talked, then went and looked at really touristy buildings by the Thames. Then back to our hostels, and later we went to a cool English pub to have beers, and I nearly left my bag behind again.

Next day: British Museum, which left all other museums for shame, and the Darwin exhibit at the Natural History Museum. We saw a play that night - I forget the name, but it was cool if a little overly portentious towards the end.

Then, the next day, off camping! We made it to Oxford and walked around there for a while. Found the camp site - horrible weather that night, terrible sleep - up early the next morning and saw the Uffington White Horse, which was interesting if not spectacular. Then off to Bath; wandered around the town, saw the baths, of course, which as it turns out you truly cannot bathe in. The next day we took a monstrously long drive to Hay on Wye in Wales to see the bookshops. I was driving, Tash was navigating, and I tried to get comfortable with England's roundabouts, which are ubiquitous and tend to shoot off at constantly suprising angles which Tash had to keep pointing out to me (generally speaking, Tash proved an awesomely competent traveller, while I proved an equally awesomely incompetent one, viz. particularly putting up tents and orienting myself.)

Hay on Wye was a little underwhelming and I found no valuable books, although I had a nice conversation with a natural history bookseller and spent about thirty seconds considering moving to Hay on Wye and opening a bookshop. The next day was Stratford on Avon; unfortunately by then Tash and I were getting on each others' nerves quite a bit so we went our seperate ways while I tried to get money, or arrange some accomodation, both of which I was unsuccesful at. That night we saw A Winter's Tale by the Royal Shakespeare Co, which was a really wonderful production.

The next day, back to Sheffield, I dropped off Tash and said goodbye to her, then took off north. I hadn't planned to be on my own at this point and was a little unprepared, though I still had the car so wasn't too worried. I saw Robin hood's Bay, which was the most spectacular landscape I've ever seen, and hunted unsuccesfully for ammonite fossils. Then went to Whitby, where I hoped to obtain a bed, but in a Mary-and-Joseph fashion this proved completely impossible at the last minute on Easter Saturday, so I tried to find a place where I could get fish and chips with a credit card (harder than you'd think), then had a beer and went looking for a place to stay for the night.

I found what I was looking for - the most boring, slightly prosperous town, with a pub and a payphone. I found a quiet cul-de-sac to spend the night in the back of the car, had a couple of beers, and felt just about as lonely as you can feel. It was too early to ring anyone back home. I had one of those nadir travelling moments where you wonder why you ever wanted to spend money to do this to yourself, when you could just as easily be home and comfortable. Eventually I went off to sleep in the car.

Unfortunately the car proved hyper-secure - it kept identifying me as an intruder and setting off the alarm whenever I rolled over, so it made for a pretty ordinary night's sleep.

The next morning I made some phone calls and felt a little better. I headed for York, where I am now, in a lovely bed and breakfast for two nights (more difficulties as they didn't take credit cards, but we worked it out with the help of a nieghbouring establishment).

I've walked around town a bit but haven't really done anything here yet; I think I want to go sleep. It's been a while since I've had a bed, and my room here is lovely.

Right now I'm a bit too metaphorically and physically North for my liking, but it's all good. I miss home, and hope I can figure out some way to get cash tomorrow, as it turns out there are still a real lot of things you can't put on credit. Anyway, more soon, hopefully.