We could read the signs as we walked down the street and eavesdrop into other people’s conversations.  People spoke to us and we could instantly return fire.  It was a weird sensation, not having to strain in another language or just accept that some things would have to pass through unknown.  Everything was almost back to normal, although the accent took some getting used to.  We were back in England after many years away, our first country we had travelled in with Tramp that spoke English since December last year.  Now that makes things easier!

We drove off the ferry at Portsmouth and immediately had to switch to the left hand side of the road.  That wouldn’t have been hard for me except the steering wheel was also on the left which means I’m sitting on the curb side of the road and Julie is on the inside.  Never mind, Tramp seemed to handle the change with ease and grace, as always, and we pulled into a camp near the port late at night after coming off the ferry from France.

The next day we drove through towns with classic English names such as Wickham, Bishop’s Waltham and Twyford to the historic town of Winchester, once the capital of England and home to the famous Winchester Cathedral, and then drove up the pretty country roads through the green rolling hills to the home of William Shakespeare, Stratford Upon Avon.

But we weren’t there to visit the Bard, as much as we would have liked to.  Our goal was the Adventure Overland Show at the racecourse in Stratford Upon Avon, about 100 miles northwest of London.  I had been in contact with Gavin who was launching XP Camper in the UK and Europe and he was planning to promote the V2 camper, which we have, to this new market.  Would we like to camp at the racecourse for a couple of days and show off Tramp to an inquisitive and admiring audience of like-minded people?

Absolutely, we said, and there we were parked up in the middle of the racecourse with Gavin, his lovely wife Emma and a couple other vehicles.  We were surrounded by an amazing array of four wheel drive, camping and overlanding vehicles ranging from the standard English fare of Land Rover Defenders kitted out with roof top tents to the monster German Unimog trucks with lots of space and a bad-arse look for those with bottomless pockets.

And amongst all of this action sat Tramp, sparkling in the sunshine, looking unique, fresh and inviting for all those who wanted to climb in and take a look at our cosy home.  Well, there wasn’t much sunshine to be honest, the weather was pretty grim with cold, wind and drizzle but hey, we’re in England and it is late September so get used to it!

We immediately liked the atmosphere of the exhibition and trade show.  Gavin and Emma were great hosts and we had an endless stream of people who were interested in Tramp and the story of our travels.  After dinner we joined the crowd in the beer tent where live music was playing and people were dancing, in some cases only to stay warm.

Looking around the room we could see an interesting crowd of people who had gathered from all walks of life because of their common interests – overlanding.  Anyone with a history of or interest in long distance camping travel was at this event and it was fun to be part of it.

For the next two days, often in cold and drizzly weather, Gavin and I introduced Tramp and the concept of an XP Camper V2 to all comers.  It was exhausting work but fun, I was able to talk from experience of 455 days living and travelling in Tramp while Gavin was able to talk with local expertise, the details of bringing the camper into the UK, putting it on a different truck and how it would meet local market requirements.

On the Sunday I gave a presentation on our travels across three continents as part of the schedule of seminars that were part of the event.  As always, it was fun to talk about our trip, the adventures, the amazing places we went, the trials and tribulations of long distance camping travel. As with the crowd that came around to look at Tramp, some people were dreamers but many of them were in early stages of planning their big adventure so it was fun to share some of our photos, anecdotes, experiences and learnings from our Follow the Sun journey.

We camped again that night in the racetrack with only a few die-hard vehicles still in the enclosure.  It was a cold and frosty morning when we woke up but the sky was blue and the day promised to be a good one.  We headed north through more gorgeous English countryside, the stone houses, narrow lanes, green hills and plump fluffy sheep everywhere.

Gavin and Emma had strongly recommended Snowdonia National Park in North Wales, the complete opposite direction we would have planned to go, but a beautiful park in a remote part of the island sounded perfect for us.  And so we found ourselves stopping for lunch at the little tourist town of Llangollen inside the Welsh border, where all the signs were in both English and Welsh and much of what the locals said to us even in English was hard to pick up.

We followed the narrow winding road, lined with high stone fences that sometimes ran up the rocky mountainside, to the quaint town of Betws y Coed, pronounced anyway you want, the gateway to Snowdonia National Park.  From there we headed further up into the mountains, now all devoid of trees, just steep rocky landscape coated in green grass wherever it could grip on.

National parks in England, like in most of Europe and Canada, are what they called ‘living parks’ which means that inside the park boundaries there are towns, businesses, schools, agriculture, sheep grazing on the slopes, just the normal things you would expect to see everywhere.  It wasn’t clear to us where the ‘normal’ stuff ends and the national park begins but the scenery – particularly above the villages – certainly warranted its national park status.

In one small stone village we spotted a small rusty sign for camping which led us up a drive to an old Welsh farmhouse that allows people to camp in their front paddock.  And so it was, in the middle of the National Park, surrounded by gorgeous steep rocky mountains, we camped amongst the sheep against an ancient stone wall.  As you should in Wales.

The centrepiece of Snowdonia National Park is Mt. Snowdon, at a very modest 1,058 metres (3,500 feet) the highest point in England and Wales.  Against our better instinct we decided to pay the big bucks to do the highly recommended scenic train to the top of the mountain.  Rising above the villages below, the train weaved its way up the mountain, past the stone paddocks of sheep and around the rocky steep mountains.

The wind was howling and about three-quarters of the way up someone decided it was too windy for the train to complete the trip and we slowly made our way back down.  Sure, it was a very pretty trip but a partial refund did little to soothe our regret.

North Wales packs a punch in things to see and we made our way to the coastal town of Caernarfon with its stunning World Heritage 13^th century castle and pretty setting on the water’s edge.  From there we headed south, bisecting the national park, goggling at the classic scenes of stone houses, stone fences, white sheep and steep mountains all around us.  Great stuff.  And to top it off, we camped another night at a farmhouse, backed up against a stone fence, sheep grazing inside our fences.

North Wales had been an unexpected diversion and rewarded us with fabulous scenery and some great experiences.  We now had to head south, take in a few more sites and make our way to where Tramp would be resting while we went back to Australia.