It's amazing after a good night’s sleep in a big comfy bed how refreshed you feel waking up to a new day enjoying an English breakfast in the beautiful surroundings of a dining room in a lovely old hotel. The atmosphere is so relaxing and you feel as though you are in an episode from Faulty Towers and Manuel or Basil is about to walk into the room and serve you breakfast.

Looking out the Dining Room window it is still raining a good welcome to the English weather and walking round the outside of the Victoria Hotel you needed to be rugged up as it is bitterly cold the wind goes right through you.

Today is the start of our new adventure with our motorhome, Graham Merchant of Select First Campervans who we bought the motorhome from picked us up from the hotel and drove us to his home where the van is parked. He has a very good scheme for international travellers where you buy a motorhome from him and at the end of your touring holiday you sell it back to him at an agreed price and it only costs you £5,000.00. Where can you hire a motorhome for four or five months for that price?

We were hoping Graham might have offered to take us to Curry’s just out of Canterbury to buy a GPS Satnav, as the small streets and finding road signs is a bit daunting for us.

Graham and Darren (business partner) gave us the run through of how to operate the motorhome, a lot to remember then we signed all the relevant paperwork. Graham gave us a few extras from previous owners so we scored a men’s bike, two camper chairs and most important a little blow heater. Before we could drive the motorhome we went through the operations of the van that were shown to us by Graham.

Linda his wife printed off a map with directions to Curry’s, which they said was easy to get too. Well when you are in a foreign vehicle in wet conditions on unknown roads following a map with really no names that is fun. What looked to be very easy turned out to be a nightmare, but somehow through the stress we managed to find Curry’s and I might say with a little help from bystanders.

The staff at Curry’s were very helpful we have a PAYG UK sim for the mobile, EE 4GEE WIFI Mini (dongle) for internet access and the most important item the GPS Satnav so we know where we are going. We were given a mud map from the chap who sold us the GPS as he said it would take us on the shortest route down small lanes and the camp site is only 10 minutes away. With all items setup to go we are off to ASDA (Walmart) to get our supplies for the motorhome.

Spoke too soon the GPS died at ASDA so we had to rely on the mud map, which as I said before looked very simple. We got lost in the heavy traffic on the small roads but luckily somehow when I pressed the on switch the GPS started and we were able to find the Camping and Caravanning Site in Bekesbourne Lane Canterbury.

The roads here are not like in Australia, they’re like small laneways with no proper signage.

The Camping and Caravanning Site is quite large with sections in a lovely wooded area. We have a hard area with power and water not far from the Showers/toilets and dump area for waste from your motorhomes.

Now the joys of unpacking and finding places to put clothes and food. I think it will be musical chairs till we find the right spot for everything. So nice not to be in a mess.