To make me feel even more positive about the trip, when I visited the Woodland Trust website, I saw that they'd posted up three of my photos that I emailed to them a while ago, from the last trip out there, so I was quite pleased about that.
I packed some picnic lunchie type things into the cooler box; water for the dog; poop bags for the dog; camera; phone (just in case) and off we went.
Of course, I didn't have GPS, so ended up going straight past the second sign for Wood Lane and drove for a while before realising that we were a bit wrong, turned around, realised that I should have turned left coming down the road into Wood Lane, so off we went back up the road. Now remember these roads are barely wide enough to take a car, let alone trucks or buses. I was going along very slowly because again I didn't want to miss the turn off, there was an Audi station wagon behind me also travelling quite slowly and in no rush. As we turned one of the bends I saw a huge red construction truck hurtling down the road towards us, he was driving basically in the middle of the road and made no attempt to slow down or move over at all. I slammed on brakes and by extension so did Audi behind me, both of us steering into the deep grass verge on the side of the road. There's a huge ditch there, so you can't drive too deep in, else you'll be in all sorts of problems. If we hadn't veered off the road into the grass verge, I wouldn't be typing this thing now, the truck would have taken us out. He didn't slow down at all and continued up the road at a rate of knots (I reckon he was going about 50mph). Phew!
I was a bit shaken up for a few seconds but nevertheless continued on. The Audio driver behind me was shaking his head like crazy and looking back the way the truck was going, at one point I thought he was going to turn around and give chase.
Anyway we eventually found the Wood Lane turn off and continued down the road. There were no vehicles behind me now and I was still travelling slowly, so as not to miss the entrance to Tyrells Wood, which is hidden amongst trees and bushes. We were almost at the entrance and here comes this chap in a white minivan, driving so fast that when he saw me and realised there was no space to get around, he slammed on breaks and left tyre marks on the road, he was still doing abou 30mph when he screamed past me and very nicely smashed my wing mirror. I stopped immediately. He still drove on about four or five car lengths and only slowed down to a crawl, he wasn't actually going to stop!! I got out of my car to look at the damage and to confront him, he didn't even bother to reverse to see what he'd done, nor did he even make the effort to get out of his car, which is a common decency in my book, oh no, he waited for me to walk up to his car. He greets me and says 'You right?' and I said, 'Well er not really, my wing mirror is smashed.' He just shrugs his shoulders. So I say, 'Now what', he grins awkwardly, shrugs and says 'Tit for tat I suppose' and then drives off. I didn't have time to take his registration. What a bastard.
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| Tyre marks on the road |
Oh well, what can you do hey?
Took the kids into Tyrells and got eaten alive by huge Dinosaur sized mosquitos whilst we were having our picnic. The mozzies aren't as evil as SAfrican ones, they just look nastier ... but they still leave nasty bumps (see below photos of Ewan's legs and arm). We did a bit of off-roading ... i.e. trekking through the ferns and undergrowth to find a short cut ... pretty funny lugging the cooler box over fallen-down trees (not). Anyway it was an okay couple of hours, now I'm bushed, bruised, covered in insect bites, scratches and nettle stings ... ah, the joys of the English countryside!
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| Babes in the Wood |
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| Where's my bone? |
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