Beginners Luck

It’s Glastonbury ticket day. Clearly last year was beginners luck because this year I don’t get a sniff and again they are all gone inside thirty minutes.

I also don’t manage to obtain any train tickets to London or rather I’m not prepared to pay £61 return each. So we hop in the car and drive down for a fraction of the cost. We park at Watford Junction and get the Overground into central London. This plan looked fine on paper until this turned out to be the slow train to Euston, it took forever.

From there it’s a short walk to the Royal National Hotel where out Australian visitor is staying. This is the daughter of someone L once met and has penpalled with ever since. Naturally we quickly show her the most important sights e.g. a traditional English pub, the Admiralty on Trafalgar Square. A Fullers pub no less with the full range of ales.

She arrives with gifts for us and the Australia cap she hands me seems to be a serious present that is unrelated to the defeat of the England rugby team last night by the Aussies. All the same, I don’t think today is a safe day to wear it.

What next? We are rather terrible at being tourists but today we rather rashly decide to try out the London Eye for which the queues are shorter than we expected. It’s also not quite as expensive as I expected but then when you realise it's sponsored by Coca-Cola, you’d think they’d be able to offer the experience for free but nope. £23 a head. It rotates slowly showing you some of the sights of London without tipping you on your head, it’s slow but marginally quicker than the train in from Watford Junction.

After that we wind our way back to her hotel and then head off home. We get back, rather late, to two much neglected dogs but it’s been an interesting day and a surprisingly touristy one.

(Sunday 4^th October)