words by Williams

Tuesday May 9

The journey down from Shropshire to Newhaven takes more than six hours, although that includes a stop for lunch at Oxford Services. It’s the first time we’ve taken Betsy up the Vicar of Dibley cut on the M40 and she handles the hill fabulously.

I’m a big fan of Waze, apart from the times it sends you off on some rabbit-run ‘shortcut’ which may be great for someone in a Smart car, but not if you’re in a 7.3m long, 2.2m wide motorhome.

Hence we end up taking a back road into Newhaven more suited to something a lot smaller.

To that end, by Sunday I’m in the process of loading an app called CoPilot onto my phone.

It allows you to customise routes to suit the size of your bus, so we’ll see how that goes.

Anyway, taking the back road to Newhaven did mean we were already familiar with the way back to our Britstop for the night having checked out the overnight parking at the DFDS ferry port and deciding it was a little too exposed for our liking.

That’s how we find The Juggs in Kingston, near Lewes. It has a flat car park for starters, (although anyone in a tall outfit would do well to mind the odd low tree branch or two) and the pub is quintessentially country-quirky. 

It was built in the 14th Century I think and was all beams and odd angles. We hadn’t booked in advance, so we were taking a chance by just turning up, but the welcome was friendly, the ale went down well and the food was great. We end up kind of creating something of a seafood tapas of prawns, calamari and an open crab sandwich.

And so to bed…