Pania and Patariki come "Home"

Tuesday July 13th
Today was the start of the travels. Finally I got to be taken out on the open road. Everything was gathered up and packed. Alan set the Tom Tom, for the shortest route, not the fastest! Not a great move as it turned out. I expected to get to the M25 pretty quickly, but no, we were taken on an inner road, the north circular, that was full of road works and one almighty tailback. Ka Pai was sitting up on the dashboard and he had plenty of time to look around. It wasn’t the flashest part of London to be driving through either. Some of the houses looked ready for demolition.

The plan was to head for Ipswich, but to visit Paycocks, a national Trust property in Coggeshall on the way. Once on the motorway it was pretty straightforward and they turned off Whitam and went into the village. A kind man leaving the car park gave them a parking ticket that still had time left on it. They locked me and left me and headed into the village to find coffee.

Ka Pai continues...
What a lovely little place this was. Silly big people forgot to grab their cameras so had to walk back to Hemi and get them. There was a lovely building with 1300AD on the front so they photographed that before returning to Hemi to carry on in the direction of Coggeshall. Mary has been trying to visit Paycocks since 1993. I heard her comment to Alan that it would probably be closed and that they should have checked the National Trust website. After negotiating some tight turns and narrow streets full of lovely colourful 16th and 17th century houses they finally got to pull up closely enough for Alan to get out and read the opening times to discover it is open Wed to Sun and today is Tuesday. So having failed to get there in 1993, 2001, 2003, 2007 she can add 2010 to the list. (Alan did get there in 2001 so he wasn’t worried)

So it was back onto the A12 and some very confident driving without the need of the Tom Tom to Martlesham Heath. Pania and Patariki were getting quite excited by this time as they were going “home”. In 2001 Mary, Alan Pania and Patariki lived in Ipswich for the year and the next few days are going to spent with Mike and Kathy Brierley, the couple they exchanged houses with.

Mike and Kathy were their usual welcoming selves happy to just let everything go with the flow. A bit of rest and sorting out will be needed over the next two days. Tomorrow Mary and Alan are going to investigate all the things sorted in cupboards and on shelves in Hemi and see what needs to be stored or bought for camping.

Mary has finally got a prepaid mobile phone up and running, so she spent some time updating all her phone numbers and then went off to bed for a much needed early night.