London went from fog to freezing in the space of two
days. Lucky we were no longer
camping. We made the most of the first
two days with sightseeing London, starting at Trafalgar Square, then walking
past Downing Street, to Big Ben, looked at the London Eye (too foggy to
consider going on), then past Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace, then
Harrods.
Harrods was wonderful but very easy to get lost, my feet
were sore by the time we left the store.
I was going to have a High Tea with a glass of Champagne but it worked
out at £46
ea. (NZD $172) for an afternoon tea! I
couldn’t do it, so we then walked through Hyde Park back to our base in
Paddington. All up a great day and loads
of famous sights ticked off.
Thursday we slept in then took the tube to Victoria, had
lunch down this wee street full of food stalls, then went to the matinee of
Billy Elliot the Musical – fantastic!!
We had excellent seats and both really enjoyed the experience. After this we meet Daryl’s cousin and friends
at what had to be the smallest pub in London, the Euston Tap, and getting home very late.
Friday was Daryl’s birthday and more importantly Mildred’s
containerisation. We both groaned about
our 6.45am start, Daryl opened his birthday present from me (two Old Guys rule
shirts) and another card sent from NZ, then we caught the tube out to Ruislip,
with no time for breakfast.
As the warehouse guys were very good to us, and it was Daryl’s
birthday AND I don’t think they have ever allowed (or been asked) to have the
owners present for the loading, we stopped on the way to buy a chocolate birthday
cake for their morning tea. It was well
received.
Our container arrived about 1.5 hours late; then it was all
stations go; the entire container was loaded within 30 or so minutes, very
professional and efficient. They first
put the boxes in, built a wall and then Mildred was driven in.
Unlike the way over the loading of Mildred was very
different, for a start no tie downs???
This was a shock to us, but when we see how they did secure our baby we
understood it was a far better system (we will of course leave our final
judgement until we see Mildred safely back in Nelson) with high wooded planks around
the entire wheel circumference, by the wheels about 6 inches high, the rest 4
inches.
Then she was gone and we were off to London Bridge to meet
Sharre, Kelly and Kay for our Dickens Pub Crawl. We were to have lunch at the Borough Market
but the weather (extreme cold – it was snowing up north) dictated our lunch was
at the first pub of the ten pubs on the tour.
Hats off to Kelly, it was a much organised and thoroughly
researched tour with brief walks and one old fashioned London double-decker bus
ride. Kay left us after the 6th
pub, and the rest of us managed to make the 10 (plus 1 extra on the way when
the walk/chill convinced us another pub on the way was beneficial to our
health).
We were back at base camp just prior to 10pm, which wasn’t
bad considering we started at 1pm.
Saturday we toured back to Borough market for our lunch
there, walked past Shakespeare’s Globe and walked across the Millennium Bridge
to St Pauls then we decided a lazy afternoon was in order to thaw our chilled
bones out.
Today is our final day in London, we will catch the Heathrow
Express from Paddington around 5pm and early this morning the clock went back
an hour; so we got a wee sleep in.
Packed our bags (one is bloody enormous – sorry NO PRESENTS for anyone
including ourselves – it’s all for Mildred) and departed to watch the changing of
the Guards – along with what seemed like half of London. We were lucky and got a reasonable spot by
the front fence where we got excellent views of some of the ceremony, but no
views of others.
Now we are having our final lunch, trying to use up our last
of our pounds and biding our time for a few hours. It’s a 25.5 hour flight to Auckland (with 3
hours in Hong Kong), then 3 hours in Auckland before our flight to Nelson. All going to schedule we should arrive home
Tuesday 4pm.
Where the hell has the last 6 months gone?
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