Wandering the Blue Ridge

 So this section of the trip has been all about visiting friends, and it has been delightful!

In case you thought we were done visiting you are wrong, we had turned west and now we went a little north to visit old friends in Tazewell VA, Harold and Wanda. We learned from their son Don that Wanda was ill and getting treatment in Virginia Beach, we hope she improves soon.

Harold and Barb share a hug

Harold welcomed us and proudly showed us around his garden and the surrounding district. It’s over 20 years since we met riding motorcycles and it was good to see him again.

We stayed at a local park near Tazewell on a lake with great views. It wet my appetite for more of the hills of Western Virginia (as opposed to West Virginia which is a whole different state, but still with great mountains).

The lake near Tazewell in Cavitt's Creek Park.

We next headed for Roanoke VA which adjoins probably my favorite road in the US, The Blue Ridge Parkway.

We stayed at a great Elks Lodge that had a beautiful building, camping with an electric hookup and a full size swimming pool. The food was excellent, everyone was friendly and we loved it.

Fabulous Elks Lodge in Roanoke

We had lots of time to explore the city of Roanoke and we cruised the Parkway up to Peaks of Otter where we enjoyed lunch overlooking the lake.

Peaks of Otter looking over the Lake

On the way back we used my amazing sense of direction to “Explore in a different direction” and found ourselves in the town of Bedford and noticed signs for the National D Day Museum.

The entrance to the D Day Museum

The connection isn’t immediately obvious with Bedford being well away from any coastline, but their story is of the 20 young men who were part of the 29^th Division who died on D Day.

Dramatic statues
 

Its just a small town in the hills so taking 20 men from it was a blow felt in some way by every house in the community.

Amazing details

We toured the museum and we were impressed by the statuary in the park like atmosphere. It brought back memories of my Dad’s experiences that we only uncovered after his death.

We also sampled the beer at a few local breweries of course! And luckily there were several breweries in Roanoke as well as the good selection at the Lodge. I’m not saying any of that influenced us but the intended 2 day stay stretched to a week and we felt so welcome there. A nice place to stay.

Steam locomotives at the Virginia Transportation Museum

But move on we did.

My next favorite road after the Blue Ridge Parkway (BRP for short) is VA rt 340 that ambles North/South parallel to the BRP and I81. Initially we drove Rt 11 and then got on 340 to Waynesboro and another great Elks Lodge with hook ups.

View across from the BRP

I used to camp just down the road at Sherando Lake for a motorcycle rally over the Labor Day weekend. That’s where I met Harold and his sons David and Don. Mike and took our sons there too. It’s scary to think they are nearly 40 years old now!

On the BRP near Sherando

Barbara is new to this area and I’m sure she got tired of me telling her where I had been, when and who with! Fortunately she has been enjoying the area as much as I have and I think I’ve made her  another fan of the area.

Mad Man Dan's brewery

Naturally breweries were an attraction and especially Wild Man Dan’s which was tucked away in the middle of nowhere but so full of character. We chatted with the owners and marveled that they had dedicated parking for us! Not really! They have a Bed and Breakfast there and the parking signs say BnB Parking. We parked the car next to the sign because our license plate is “BNB CAR”!

Reserved parking just for us!

Another 2 day stay turned into a week before we continued up 340 into Maryland. East lay Baltimore and Annapolis where we lived for 25 years, so lots of catching up to do!

Texas and more

 Maine was our next objective, but how we will get there and what we will see along the way is anyone’s guess!

Tag along, it’ll be fun.

North was an obvious choice of direction! So we did that.

A night or two in St Augustine seemed nice but the trip up I95 to Savannah was a mess with trucks and cars fighting for lanes. Exactly what we hate, and a good reminder to stay off the interstates. We have no deadlines until August now so there is no need for speed.

Nice tree lined streets and little parks everywhere

We have never visited Savannah before and didn’t realize what a pretty city it is. Except for the parking situation.

Some really fancy tombstones

We have always had a “Thing” for cemeteries and the Bonaventure Cemetery was an excellent one, with memorials going back to the foundation of the Colony of Georgia and including prominent people up to the Civil War and beyond.

Old buildings and cobblestone streets on River Street

Savannah was spared from destruction in Sherman’s “March to the Sea”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman%27s_March_to_the_Sea

which split the Confederacy in half. The citizens of Savannah paid the Union forces 25,000 bales of cotton to spare the city and so there are lots of original buildings to wander around.

Juliette Gordon Low founder of Girls Scouts in the US
was from Savannah

We did our customary “Hop on Hop off” bus tour to get the feel of the place then explored the water front area which is aptly named “River Street”. Some nice beers and seafood helped us get to know the city and I think we will return again sometime.

By the end of the day we were both feeling exhausted from all the walking. We should have done more during the winter… but we say that every year!!

North up the coast again to Myrtle Beach gave us the opportunity to see another old friend from our Maryland/Motorcycle days and we explored some of Barry’s favorite watering spots. Not being particularly “Beachy People” we spent our spare time shopping for RV accessories!

Our tour guide Barry

Barry’s last name is Monaco so he liked our rig!

He liked the RV brand.

It’s beginning to sound like we slogged further and further North but things were fairly close together and next we had an invite to stay at Mike and Holly’s farm in North Carolina.

The faithful Sheep Dog

We were back in Maryland last October for Mike and Holly’s wedding in Frederick and they kindly invited us to stay with them if we found ourselves in the Wilmington area. 

We jumped at the chance!

The curving driveway

Porch overlooking the creek

Their “farm” is a charming little place at the end of a country road and down a winding private driveway which opens up to reveal a beautiful house on a quiet creek with a barn and their collection of animals roaming in the paddocks. So quiet and relaxing with room in the drive for our rig.

Enough room for the rig!

Our great hosts Mike and Holly

We spent several days exploring the area, eating out at their favorite spots, sitting on their pier and annoying the fish with my amateur attempts at fishing! We eventually had to tear ourselves away but thank you Mike and Holly for the great hospitality.

Not much further away but West instead of North had us camping in a nice campground attached to an adventure park outside of Charlotte NC just a couple of miles from Barbara’s cousin Helen and her family who we got to meet.

Helen and Barbara

Friends and neighbors from Maryland also live within about 50 miles so we caught up with Dave and Kathy who we rode Goldwings with. 

Dave, Me, Barbara and Kathy

Then with Heather who is the daughter of our neighbors back in Gambrills. You realize how time has flown when you find that the young girl from back then is now a teacher and mom!

With Heather and her family

So this section of the trip has been all about visiting friends, and it has been delightful!

Still more friends to see along the way but you'll have to wait until the next post to meet them!

Start of a new adventure

 

So that’s where I was and what I was up to until the end of March.

And now where are we?

Well right now I’m sitting in Savannah trying desperately to remember how to put together a blog post!

The beginning is probably the best place to start, then progress from there. So here goes!

Welcome to the blog. We had discussed our summer 2024 trip some time over the winter and came up with what we laughingly described as a “plan”. Of course we are the original No Plan Kids so things were a little loose. Things like where we were going, how we were going to get there and when. Nothing major.

Our motor home - the Monaco, has basically sat for 2 years in indoor storage to protect it from the intense Arizona sun during the summers we were in UK.

The Monaco in Mexico 2 years ago.

Maintenance was due. Overdue if the truth is told, so initially we took it to Norris RV in Casa Grande for them to fix the entry step and step cover, both of which had ceased working over the past year or so. They also resealed the roof which needed doing and while they were doing that I had them replace the bathroom skylight which I had patched 4 or so years ago when we first bought the rig but really needed to be replaced altogether, and doing it when the roof was being done made sense.

I’m not going to list costs because if you can’t afford the price of maintenance you shouldn’t own a motorhome in the first place!

The second thing was the rear tires which where well outdated but it made no sense to replace them and then have them sit for 2 years, so we waited until we were getting ready for our new season. Purcell Tire in Casa Grande were considerably lower in price than anyone else and had fresh tires of the brand we wanted and in stock, so they got the business.

Last thing in Casa Grande was the engine and chassis maintenance. Big diesel engines have a massive oil capacity which is used both for lubrication and also cooling. 11 gallons of oil, new oil filter, new fuel filters, generator oil and filter change and lubrication of all the many grease points on the chassis was accomplished at a local truck/RV shop.

I wonder if the license plates taste like lobster??

We had decided that a return trip to Maine sounded good (Think LOBSTER). But more maintenance was needed on the 4 slide outs, where the seals along the top had fallen apart after 15 years of neglect. I had replaced the side seals about 4 years ago but the top seals require the slide topper awnings to be removed and I’m no longer capable of working off a ladder.

A company named Talin have an outstanding reputation for excellent work and also specialize in slide outs. The have developed a “Guardian Plate” to address a common problem in the slide floor where water gets in and rots the plywood.

They aren’t in Casa Grande, not even in Arizona. They are way over in the East Coast in Florida about 2200 miles away!

Obviously the directions were not going to follow a straight line between Casa Grande and Maine!!

Our initial thinking was to make an appointment with Talin (They are very busy people and you need an appointment way in advance). We called them in January and made an appointment for mid April. Then came my vertigo thing and with doctors etc we weren’t able to leave early so it looked like 7 LONG days of pounding across the country on the I-10 Interstate, which neither of us liked the sound of.

After some consideration we blew off my annual wellness exam, which was the last one and the problem, after all I had just seen an endless stream of doctors, had blood drawn multiple times and had X Rays, MRI etc etc and nothing except vertigo had been diagnosed. I was mostly recovered from the vertigo too so we canceled the wellness visit and left April 3^rd headed East.

It is an almost perfectly straight line to Jacksonville FL from Casa Grande and all on I-10, not our favorite way to drive. What could we do to make it more bearable?

An old thing in RV’ing is “The Rule of Twos” which suggests drive 2 hours and take a break, drive less than 200 miles a day, get to your destination by 2pm and stay 2 nights. We have followed that pretty much all our Rving life and it works for relaxed travelling.

We sat with the big Rand McNally Road Atlas (Remember them? Thanks to Barbara Whaley for ours!). We divided the trip into 200 mile segments and adjusted them to suit places we have been before and liked.

After putting the rig on an RV site at the park with power, water and sewer we got everything running and charging while we loaded up the fridge, transferred our clothes from the house, cleaned the tanks, filled the water tank and got the whole show ready for departure on April 3^rd.

Not being 100% sure of my driving ability after all the problems I’d had, we planned a fairly short first day on the road and stopped at the Wilcox AZ Elks Lodge where there is a big RV area with full hook ups and a very friendly Lodge.

After that we stopped in Las Cruces NM, a Walmart in Odessa TX and an RV park in Sweetwater TX before stopping for a couple of days in Haslet TX, near Fort Worth.

Side trip to Dallas and Dealey Plaza

Why Haslet?? Well that’s where our friends Paul and Karen are living now after they left Sundance a couple of years ago to be nearer their kids and grandkids.

We soon got caught up with all the news and by complete coincidence it happened to be exactly in the zone of totality for the solar eclipse! I swear we didn’t plan that, it just happened and we were very fortunate that the RV park they live in had a last minute cancellation just as we were getting near!

Solar Eclipse any minute now

Goofy glasses.

We all had goofy glasses on looking at the eclipse then we toured around the Fort Worth area sightseeing and eating at all the best places. Life on the road can be tough!!

Paul and Karen getting goofy

Eventually we had to tear ourselves away and keep heading East. Marshall TX, Vicksburg MS, Hattiesburg AL at Elks Lodges and commercial parks led us to a longer stay at the Escapees Rainbow Plantation in Foley AL near Mobile on the Gulf Coast.

Gorgeous Sunset over Mobile Bay

We spent some time in this same park back in 2017 after being chased out of Florida by Hurricane Irma. 

https://banbrv.blogspot.com/2017/09/back-to-usa.html

This trip was much less fraught and allowed us to tour the coast, eat some delicious seafood and chill out for a couple of days.

What else is there but seafood??

Next came Elks Lodges in Tallahassee and Zephyrhills near Tampa FL. This later was handy for Talin and also our old Escapee friends Peter and Donna! More parties and dinners out, all aided and abetted by MORE Escapees friends Larry and Marilyn! We had just the best time with this group of like minded people and time just flew by.

Donna and Peter

Larry and Marilyn et al.

Talin took our rig and plugged it into power to keep the fridge running and the batteries charged, then they walked the work we wanted to ensure they understood what we needed. Then we left it in their hands for the 4 days they needed to get it done.

That’s right, we unhooked the car and left the rig with them for 4 days.

UUHH? Where would we go?

Well to more friends! Fred and Judy - from back in our motorcycles days - live in Sebring where they had a spare bedroom waiting for us in addition to the great welcome they gave us.

Fred and Judy

Naturally more dinners out, tours of their park, the town, the Elks Lodge all followed and again time flew by.

But we still had 1 night left before we picked up the rig so we got a room in a Holiday Inn at Bonita Springs another 100 miles South near Naples FL so we could visit with our Casa Grande friends Al and Marie, who have moved closer to their son Drew after Marie suffered some medical problems.

Breakfast with Al and Marie

It was onIy was only 200 miles back to Talin after that!

We were sorry to have to leave everyone behind. It has been wonderful seeing you all and hopefully it won't be quite so long until we meet up again, Love Ya’ll.

This meant that the first stage of our “Plan” was over and we had to proceed with the second stage. Maine was our next objective, but how we will get there and what we will see along the way is anyone’s guess!

Tag along, it’ll be fun.

Yuma and more

 

Once back in Casa Grande we soon settled into our winter regime.

Plans, dreams. We all have them and so far our dreams have mostly come true but lately they have been a little disturbed.

Well settled in our winter quarters and with the rig serviced ready for the start of our 2024 adventures we looked forward to a week in Yuma with our friends from the San Diego RV group we belong to the “Shanty Shakers”.

A bunch of friendly RV’ers who have the knack for making a “rally” a good time for all, with fellowship and great pot luck dinners etc., it’s hard NOT to have a good time with this crowd!

Packing the rig again felt odd and exciting. Anticipation of a fun time and a little anxiety after the rig has basically sat for 2 years while we were in UK added to the spice. New tires, new skylight, a service on the engine, flush and disinfect the water system. Start the fridge cooling, get the rig hooked up to power to charge the batteries. All this at Sundance before we left.

We finally hooked up the “Toad”, made final checks to make sure the jacks were up, tv antenna down, tow chains in place, lights working, steps in. Alls good, off we went.

Its about 180 miles to Yuma. All Interstate so we got back to our comfy cruise speed of 65mph and set the cruise control. Everything seemed to be working fine, temperatures good, batteries charging, engine running smooth and powerful.

3 hours or so and we pulled into Westwing Golf and RV resort and were guided to a nice but kind of tight space at the back of the park not far from the rest of the Shanty Shakers.

It was so much fun meeting old and new friends and visiting some of our favorite stores and restaurants.

We were looking forward to a whole week there but on the Saturday as I was sitting in the rig before lunch I started feeling dizzy.

I’d had this back in October and it cleared up after a few days. It seemed to clear away, then later in the day it hit me hard.

I was so dizzy I couldn’t even open up my eyes. The room was spinning sideways and end over end at the same time and it didn’t go away.

We called 911 and when the ambulance arrived it took 5 people to get me down the steps and out of the rig.

At the Emergency Room they took blood and did a CAT scan. The drugs they gave me slowed the spinning down a little but I couldn’t sit up.

After a couple of hours they told me they had no room in the Yuma hospital and I had to go to another one. My choices were Las Vegas, Phoenix or Tucson! Plus they could not find a road ambulance to take me so I would have to be life flighted out.

I asked why I couldn’t go to Casa Grande and was told that they didn’t have a Neurology dept. It hit me that they thought I was having a stroke!

After a long delay due to fog, I was put on a plane and flown to Phoenix where I spent 2 nights in the ER because they had no beds in the main hospital.

Tests, CAT scans, MRI’s and multiple doctors later they told me it wasn’t a stroke, most likely an inner ear problem. They tried tilting my head back at an angle and twisting it side to side saying that it would be a miracle cure or wouldn’t work at all. They didn’t seem to hold up much hope of it working and it didn’t!

Meanwhile Barbara was in Yuma with an RV she couldn’t drive and the Ford Edge.

When we were going to Europe for the summer 6 years ago we had invested in insurance that would get us home if we had a medical emergency. We renewed it when we went to England 2 years ago luckily.

Lucky because the life flight may cost $50,000!

Lucky because the insurance will cover any out of pocket expenses for that.

Lucky because it covers recovery of an RV and tow car to our home!

They sent a licensed, bonded driver to collect the rig, drove it back to Casa Grande, filled the tank up and put it in the storage lot for us! Barbara drove the Edge the 180 miles back on her own.

Eventually I got out of the hospital still barely able to walk. Over the next 8 weeks I saw more doctors than I have in the last 8 years!

The problem was my inner ear caused by crystals, that the brain uses to judge where your head is moving, dropping out of suspension.

The tilting of my head that they did in the Phoenix hospital WAS the solution but they hadn’t been doing it right (!). A balance specialist did do it right and so did a Vestibular Physiotherapist (One who specializes in balance problems).

The technique is called the Eppley Maneuver and the tilting and twisting shakes the crystals up like shaking a snow globe!

Physio slowly improved my balance and I could at last start to function normally.

Just a occassionally I still get a little dizzy if I bend down while turning my head or in complete darkness when I can’t see a horizontal surface. The spells don’t last more than a couple of seconds.

So that’s where I was and what I was up to until the end of March.

The last bit

 

Getting over depression at the "Ken Dodd" exhibition in Liverpool
Ken was a great comedian from Liverpool

Guilty conscience speaking here.

I left the summer trip unfinished. My apologies.

What happened? After this ramble there is the blog post I wrote but didn't publish.

Why? The last 2 years have been amazing, we loved the little motorhome and it had everything we wanted. When it came time to sell we expected another loving owner to snap it up at a reasonable price and we would return to the US happy.

What actually happened? We left ourselves 6 weeks to advertise it and sell it which we thought would be plenty. To get a ballpark value for it we visited a dealer and asked them for an offer. It was very low, which to an extent we expected from a dealer. At least we now had a rock bottom selling price and anything above that was for the better.

How did it go? Well the advert was placed on Facebook Marketplace and we immediately got a call from a very Irish guy who definitely wanted it for his own use and would be happy to pay our full asking price. His brother was in our area and would call us the following day. Next day another very Irish guy called saying he was the brother but his name wasn't what the first guy told us. When I asked about that he said he was the first guys OTHER brother! Could he come see it. we OK'd that but then he said it would be all cash and he offered us half of what we were asking. 

We weren't interested and he got belligerent, I finally just hung up on him.

Next day we got another phone call from another Irishman who wanted it so him and his mother could do some touring, he really liked the pictures and would pay our full asking price. Then he asked if I'd been contacted but the first Irish guy. ???? When I said I had he asked me not to mention his name if the first guy called back again!

Naturally this latest Irishman was going to arrive the next day to look at it and would have cash. But only half of the asking price.

Starting to sound familiar?

We just hung up on subsequent Irish callers!

A few people came and looked, one had to sell his van before he could buy ours, another found some rotten wood that we had never noticed. Another was definitely buying it and would get the deal done when he got back from vacation.

It all fell thru. We stayed with my sister for a week and house sat while she went on a cruise and her kitchen got rebuilt. A few days before we left we went round to the dealer and accepted his offer.

We were pretty crushed for a while. We had considered storing it again and going back again in 2024 to take it across into Europe for another summer, but when we added up the cost of airfares, safety inspections, taxes, insurance etc it would have cost about the same as we would lose just selling it to the dealer.

When we sat back and looked at it from an economic standpoint we did well. What we lost wasn't too bad considering we had it 10 months and used it every day. Last time we did something similar back in 2017 we had a crappy motorhome that broke down all the time. We cut our trip short just to get rid of the thing. After that we worked out that it cost us about $1000 a month for the use of the MH.

This time we had 10 months of fun, saw everything we wanted to see and more and when we added up the cost it came to...... About $1000 a month!

If we had tried to do the same renting a MH it would cost about $1000 A WEEK! Renting a car and staying in hotels would have been about $2000 a week, and we wouldn't have found all the great pubs to camp in either!

So looking back at it 3 months later we realize that we did really well and enjoyed the whole thing. It didn't cost us too much and we are thrilled that we got to do it.

Now back to that blog post I failed to publish, please read on.

We came close to keeping the MH for another year.

Leaving Edinburg.

Beware that you need to buy tickets a year in advance otherwise you wont get in

So what do you do when you have achieved all your ambitions and seen/done everything you wanted to see?

We were puzzled too! We sat and looked at the map book and at the “Wiggly Line” the sketch of our route so far.

We decided that seeing how we’d come up the East coastal route we would go back down on the West coastal route!

Once a fishing port Whitehaven is now a pleasure boating place.

We crossed back into England and followed the coast thru the western edge of the Lake District with the mountains on one side and the Irish Sea on the other.

One place I used to drive thru twice a week when I worked in nearby Barrow in Furness in the early 70’s was the town of Ulverston.

A quiet little town with a famous son, Stan Laurel of the Laurel and Hardy comedy duo was born here and they have a very amusing statue of them in the center of the town.

Stan (left) was born in Ulverston.

We had intended to hug the coast all the way down to the Wirral but the busy major seaside towns of Morecombe and Blackpool were in our way, so we bypassed the traffic and ended up on the motorway.

Of course we stayed back at Arrowe Brooke Farm which has become our go to spot.

We both felt tremendously deflated. We had achieved all our ambitions and seen the places we had wanted to see. It was the end of August and we had timed things to allow 6 weeks to sell the motorhome before we flew out.

To give ourselves a lift we called our friends Graham and Ellaine who live near Lincoln and invited ourselves over to visit them for the August Bank Holiday weekend.

We had lunch in another great pub in Lincoln

Barb and Graham at the car show

Gracious hosts as always, they welcome us and proceeded to entertain us each day with car shows and visits to a spectrum of venues in the area. 

Before we knew it we were heading back to Arrowe Brooke Farm.

Liverpool docks, now a recreation area.

We stopped at a couple of large motorhome dealers to get an idea of what the dealers might offer and to our surprise they all came up with exactly the same low offer. There must be some kind of national pricing guide like Kelly Blue Book in the US as all the dealers came up with the same price, including one who made us an offer sight unseen!

We put ads on Facebook Marketplace and on a Swift Owners Club website and waited for the offers to roll in.

Now a really depressing time started. We had all kinds of flakes and chancers calling making ridiculous promises and crazy offers. One messed us around for over a month and we even drove 100 miles for him to see it.

Leasowe Castle on the Wirral

Superb interiors, the castle is now a Hotel.

During this time we went to my sister’s house to house sit while she was on a cruise. She had it all worked out because she had scheduled the rebuild of the kitchen while she was away! Good move Jackie! But thanks for putting up with us.

Living in the rubble while Jackie cruises

We put the rig in storage and rented a car so we could empty the rig and still get around. Eventually all leads on the sale of the rig fell thru and with a week left before we left we sold it to a dealer on the Wirral.

A side trip to the seaside resort of Colwyn Bay in Wales.

Looking at it rationally we had the use of the rig for 2 summers. If we had tried to do the same thing with rental cars and hotels it would have cost way more than we paid for the rig.

In addition we bought it in peak demand (Spring) and sold it in the low demand period (Autumn). We could have stored it for the winter and come back next spring to get the maximum price but we would have had to pay for another set of air fares, a rental car, hotels, insurance, road taxes, safety inspection and any repairs needed for that, plus winter storage.

We calculated that to come to about $6,000. If we added that to the offer the dealer had made we came up with about what we hoped to sell it for in the spring. So while we didn’t come away from it with a lot, it ended up costing us about the same per month as the one we bought 6 years ago when we toured Europe, and this rig was 100 times better than the previous one and it didn’t break down all the time and leak when it rained!

We came to terms with everything and packed our suitcases.

Dinners with friends and relatives filled several days then we left Jackie’s after a final roast dinner with my 2 sisters, a visit Sally and the grandkids and another with Barbara’s brother and sister in law and went off to spend a few days exploring Manchester.

Sally and Alan live on a canal boat.
The swans come pecking at the hull when they want feeding.
They are VERY insistent

Manchester is or was a big manufacturing center abut 40 miles from the Wirral, we were due to fly from there to London and on to Phoenix, and in all the years we lived in England neither of us had ever been there!

Today Manchester has become quite a trendy place and it was full of little restaurants and bars. We did the usual Hop on Hop off bus tour first to find out what we should see and decided to try the Museum of Science and Industry.

That turned out to be a bust! There used to be 3 separate halls but when we got there we found the Air and Space hall had closed years before and a second hall was shut for rebuilding, leaving just the textile hall.

That was quite interesting as it showed the incredible wealth the city had accumulated by importing cotton and exporting woven cloth and manufactured goods as one stop in what is know as “The Cotton Triangle”.

For those that don’t already know, that was the system whereby slaves were bought in Africa, transported to the US and sold. The profits bought cotton which was shipped to Liverpool and Manchester where it was turned into cloth which was shipped to Africa and sold, with the profits buying more slaves.

The rich got richer, especially as they also controlled the factories and shipping companies.

A sad time for mankind but thankfully one that has mostly been eradicated now.

We had some great meals and visited a few nice real ale pubs. Sally had decided to visit our place in Arizona while we were still in UK and we would cross at the airport so we managed a couple of hours at her hotel.

Before we could blink we were getting a taxi to the airport at 6am for the flight to London and the onward segment to Phoenix were we were picked up by our friend Ed and dropped at our place in Casa Grande.

And that as they say was it!

The final complete "Wiggly Line" that everyone seemed to enjoy!