London to Cornwall

Farewell, London, see you next time!

We left London around 9 in our Volvo (which is an "or similar" to the Audi we had booked. Adrian begrudgingly agreed to take it having a lifelong aversion to Volvos, but it is very comfortable and safe!). We headed for Cornwall, about 420kms.

We're used to long drives in Australia but not the traffic we were about to encounter. We didn't stop at Stonehenge, but the single lane crawl past it allowed for a good photo op (why it is not dual carriageway in just that bit we couldn't work out) . We had a fairly bland lunch stop in a little village called Wincanton, and I took over the driving having given Adrian the get-out-of-London leg.

Our lesson today was to beware Google Map's alternate route (saves 15 mins). On the bright side, it took us down lovely hedgerow-lined country lanes through idyllic villages with thatch roofed cottages and rolling verdant green hills. On the downside, it created a convoy of cars on said country lanes (with no shoulder for passing) and through said villages, creating havoc for all as farmers in large tractors all tried to go about their business while negotiating getting passed all of us!

Over an hour later and much longer than it would have taken in the A30 snarl, we got back on the A30 in time to crawl through the city of Exeter.

8 hours after we left London, we arrived in the lovely city (it has a cathedral) of Truro. That's an average speed of less than 60km/hr. We were exhausted.

The highlight of the day was that we eventually found a lovely tapas restaurant, had a delicious meal and fell into bed by 9!Read more