This is a long post: steel yourself! So the rest of the nearly 2 weeks I was in the UK were about seeing friends and family and some of the country I hadn't seen when I was last there. What a rush! Six hour train from Edinburgh to Birmingham, then a train change and on to Coventry. Yay! Claire was there to meet me. Lots of chatting, brief nap, laundry and back on a train to Basingstoke to the family. Train change at Reading and there they were waiting at the station with hugs galore. Quick stop at the house and on to the Apollo hotel where I stayed for the weekend. How posh! Felt like I was walking more upright and behaved in a proper well-mannered English style.
After a good evening chatting to the family and answering hundreds of questions from the girls (All good K&S - we had kinda lost touch for a while there while you were becoming great humans) a good long peaceful sleep in pure comfort in a king size bed with a down duvet *swoon*. Brekky and then out exploring with Rob & Lorraine.
We started in Windsor and explored the town and the outside of the castle. The £15 entrance fee to the castle seemed rather steep. The Royal Standard was not flying when we arrived, but after walking and having coffee as we left town, having decided to go through to royal London, there it was, flapping in the breeze. So while we were exploring QE2 herself snuck in a back entrance. Even the paparazzi were setting up hoping to catch a glimpse. Maybe they also missed her arrival.
On to London avoiding the normal route R&L use as there was rugby at Twickenham. Still with all the roadworks (sound familiar Saffas?) and general pay-day-before-Christmas-Saturday congestion we got through to Hammersmith and took a tube to Westminster and popped up above ground right underneath Big Ben.
Exploring the parliamentary and royal end of London, which I didn't get to when I visited in 2003, was fascinating. Dang there were a lot of people out to see the sights! Highlights were the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the Royal Guards, St James park, the 'royal mile' down towards Buckingham palace and then back around past the treasury. Plenty of history there. Then a view of the London Eye (the weather was bleak we weren't paying to see the top of the grey clouds we could see the bottom of from the street!) and the London-end of the Thames then back underground and back to Basingstoke for Nando's for dinner - a little taste of SA in the UK.
Sunday was shop shop shop and then a dash out to Stone Henge and back via The Vyne. Again the weather was bleak and really windy and cold at Stone Henge. Crazy how they're just rocks in a circle but so much mystery and myth surrounds them and the folks who walk in a giant circle around them. The Vyne is a beautiful quintessential olde English stately home in the heart of Jane Austen country - something you'd see in a period movie or book adaptation. The image below is of the summerhouse. Darn shame we didn't get there with enough time to look around the house proper.
Excellent home cooked meal and some more chatting and present wrapping and back to the station for the train back to Lemington Spa. The next 2 days were spent on a post-grad workshop for PhD students at the University of Warwick. So much of fun and learning - Thank you Kate, Jane, and Nathalie for the generous welcome and all the arrangements.
Stayed tuned for the next instalment of Travel Tales: Coventry & Stratford-upon-Avon.
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