Manchester

Surprisingly, our first bus breakdown happened not in South America, but in England. Forty-five minutes from Manchester, the bus crawled to a stop on the shoulder of the motorway and refused to start again. To make things worse, this bus seemingly contained half of England’s loud, crazy and obnoxious population. We were stuck at the side of the road for a couple of hours before our replacement bus arrived.

Making the most of the situation, we pulled out the peanut butter and jam and made dinner. Peanut butter and jam sandwiches come in handy often while travelling! We also drafted a few blog posts under the street lights.

We eventually arrived in Manchester and checked into our hostel in the bohemian Northern Quarter of town. We went online the next day and found we had a problem. To cut a long story short, for a couple of reasons we had to apply for a tourist visa to India from London. After a long and painful application process Sal’s visa was approved quickly, but bizarrely Craig had to write a letter from himself, saying he wouldn’t work in India.

The Indian High Commission was still holding our passports when we were due to leave the UK for Continental Europe. It didn’t help that, despite having had our passports for 3 weeks, they refused to give us any timelines for when the visa would be ready. They also seem to take a public holiday almost every week, further slowing progress. We were stranded in the UK for an unknown period of time. We changed all of the buses we’d booked in Europe (luckily Megabus allows changes) and made plans for staying in the UK.

One thing we’re learning about travel is that it can be quite tiring to be making decisions constantly in unique situations. It’s not that you don’t have to make decisions back home, but the routine of daily life means you don’t have to make decisions about every little thing, such as where you’re sleeping tomorrow and how to get around. Getting away from routine is one of the exciting things about travel, but it’s also one of its challenges. The visa problem was most annoying because we had to make lots of decisions about what to do next with no idea how long the visa would take. We were feeling frustrated for a while, but found finally making a decision (any decision) made us feel much better.

Thankfully, we were able to stay with Craig’s uncle and cousin for a few extra days in Manchester. Craig’s cousin Kate had just had a bad accident in Croatia and was recovering at home from a fractured pelvis. It was nice to have time to see them and they really helped us out with a place to stay. Thanks guys!

We had quite rainy days in Manchester so we headed for the city’s museums. We went to what we thought was a museum of cities and urban living, only to find it has recently changed into a football museum. Not quite so interesting to us. We also took a look at the John Rylands Library, an impressive building in Victorian Gothic style. Another day we visited the Museum of Science and Industry which was fascinating. Manchester was at the centre of the industrial revolution and the museum explained this history well. It also had a big hall full of early steam and gas engines.

We received good news just before leaving Manchester – Craig’s visa had been approved! We can pick up our passports after the weekend and have booked a couple of nights in Brighton, on the southern coast in the meantime. So we only had to delay crossing the Channel by about four days. We now feel luckier than ever to be travelling on our New Zealand passports - India and Vietnam are the only countries we need advance visas for on our whole trip.

To end, here are a few more photos from Manchester. It was good to see a real “working” English city, other than London and the touristy towns we saw earlier. Amsterdam is our first stop in Continental Europe which we’re really excited about. But for now we’ll enjoy a couple of days at the English seaside.

Comments from WordPress

• Lesley 2012-08-30T23:41:34Z

  Nice reflections about travel in general and also the places you’ve been. Looking forward to hearing of your adventures in Europe. Lxx

Written by Craig Drayton and Sally Robertson