Dorking was a weird one. En route to Heathrow from Gatwick, we’d decided to pull off the M25 to miss the rush hour and hopefully find a good value fry up. We were wiped. I’d not slept on the plane and after a 6am start at the delightful Cynthia and Mike’s house on Vancouver Island, 9am BST felt like the end of a very long day – the day before, in fact. I pulled into the first car park I could find and we were greeted instantly by a chalk board boasting “Full English, £5.95″. Excellent. That’s what I call serendipity. Jetlag is new to me – whilst Joe was in a shop I found myself standing in the blazing sunlight on Dorking High Street watching Monday morning happen to everyone but me, as if through some sort of broken lens, finding that it took immense effort to produce even a single fully formed thought. Bizarrely, we kept seeing things we’d seen in Canada – quite unEnglish things – an advert for Ice Cream sandwiches, a bottle of Clamato juice, which is the main constituent of Canada’s favourite cocktail and then, as we left Dorking, a vineyard. Yes, a vineyard. You have to imagine the extra strangeness these things acquired under the circumstances, especially as our visit to Dorking was a completely spontaneous decision.
Anyway. Dorking, don’t be put off by the name, it’s lovely.
And so to Italy. Italy was gorgeous. I’ll have more to say about Italy in my next post but in the meantime here’s my first installment of photographic highlights;
(five countries in three weeks and he’s banging on about Dorking!?)
Mantova
Mantova
Mantova
Mantova
Bianzano
Bianzano
Bianzano (not quite successfully focused, I know, but a lucky moment none the less!)
