After checking all our preparations for the Rally one or two more times, we decided a delicious lunch was in order. The owner of the campground had recommended Chipwick for the most award-winning fish & chips in Worthing, so we headed back to that little town. Yesterday we had thought our fish & chips were amazing, but today we realized why Chipwick was award-winning! Absolutely delicious! We knew we were leaving the English seaside after today, and this was definitely the best last meal for us to eat. We were moving camp closer to tomorrow’s Mongol Rally starting line, and we had found a campground not too far away. Well, maybe not a campground per sé, but a pub that allowed camping. What could go wrong? We were even in touch with Dillion and Lisa from Team Innocents Abroad, and we’d get to meet our first Rally team before we even got to the starting line! When we arrived in Boreham Street, we found out why the village got its name: the village literally consists of one street about one kilometer long. We parked and set ourselves up behind the Bull’s Head Pub, and before long Team Innocents Abroad also pulled in to set up camp. After exploring the little village, there was time for dinner and some local Harvey’s beer made right there in Sussex. The bartender tried to convince us to stay one more night because tomorrow was the Boreham Street & Wartling Annual Fair, but unfortunately we knew we had bigger plans for the next morning!
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We had driven to Brighton hoping for a quaint little seaside town, but we had arrived into a bustling coastal city. Brighton seemed cool but wasn’t really our style for a bit of relaxing before the start of the Rally. Luckily, we found a great campground in little Lancing, just seven miles to the west of Brighton, and we did very little driving today. We arrived at the Barn Caravan Park, and happily discovered it was a giant field that we could park and set up our tent wherever we pleased. We had a lot of time to prepare ourselves for this crazy Mongol Rally we were about to start: we repacked the car three or four times, double- and triple-checked all of our camping gear, and used the outlets to charge our computers and all of our electrical gear. We did manage to go hunting for the traditional English fish & chips, which brought us to the Warwick Pub in nearby Worthing. While we were dining, Chase decided that he wouldn’t eat fish & chips again unless he was in coastal England. After lunch we took a stroll down to the Lancing Beach. We had been waiting all day for the time to go down to the beach; English beaches are typically rocky, but if you wait until the lowest of low tides in Lancing you can get down to where the beach is nice and sandy. That sounds like our style! Until we realized that the water at English beaches is cold! We dipped our toes in the water, but neither one of us was brave enough to jump in.
Still trying figure out what time of day it was, though sufficiently helped by the first darkness we had experienced in weeks, we slept in rather later than normal. After a slow start and some personal admin, we made our way to Victoria Coach Station, where we caught the bus to Bristol to see a friend of Charla’s that she met on a crazy night on Lonely Beach on Koh Chang a few years ago. After sitting in London traffic for ages, we crawled out of the city, and the journey took us through some beautiful farm country. While Charla was counting sheep in her dreams, Chase was admiring the landscape filled with them. [We later learned this traffic was not just a Friday night occurrence but that many of the buses were headed in our direction to reach the Glastonbury festival not too far from our destination. Note to selves: Investigate festivals nearby our travels and go to them!] Upon arriving in Bristol over an hour late, we walked around the station to see what we thought might be Samantha’s vehicle just drive off. Since we missed her, we popped into the White Hart, contacted her, and waited to see her again. In true Koh Chang spirit, as soon as we met up with Samantha, we went straight to another pub for some amazing food and drink. Though not the Ting Tong Bar, we loved the Kensington Arms for its cozy atmosphere and wonderful local, organic food. Charla went for the classic fish and chips while Chase ordered the bacon-wrapped monkfish. Delighted with our meals, we went on a bit of a walk around town, ending up on Whiteladies Street at the W.G. Grace Pub, where Chase practiced his skills at balancing a 50p piece on a lemon floating in a bowl of water. The game may sound silly, but it’s quite a challenge (and the proceeds went to charity). Our night ended with a stroll back to Samantha’s flat.
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