The mad dash 29 August 2016

We decided to treat ourselves to breaky the next morning in a cafe. While there we took a phone call from home which gave us the bad news. Sally’s mum had suffered a massive stroke and was unlikely to recover. After an hour waiting on the phone we able to change our tickets to fly home the next day, then high tailed it for the railway station to catch a train towards London.
We got off at Redhill and rode up a massive hill after which we managed a good clip back to Deborah’s who offered to put us up at short notice. Along the way we passed Epsom, Kingston on Thames

where there is a gilded statue of Queen Anne and followed the river past the Kew Gardens to Brentford where we picked up the canal path one last time. Some local helped us push the bikes up the stairs over the canal which made life a lot easier. We arrived just after sunset and ate a much needed hot meal before heading off to bed.

Our total distance covered for our trip was 8350 kms, almost Auckland to Singapore, London to Dhaka ( Bangladesh) or Paris to Mayotte. We had covered a few miles, certainly way in excess of what we had planned. Next morning we went into town and bought new bags and shoes ( ours were dirty and would not get through Biosecurity in New Zealand). We packed our bags. Deborah very generously let us leave our bikes and bags at her house to be be recovered sometime next year. They gave us a lift to Terminal 5 where we bid them farewell for the third time this year. We will be eternally grateful to them for helping us out of a large hole.

The flight back through Singapore was largely uneventful, and when we got off the plane we were thoroughly searched in case we had any stray seeds or other risks. None were found as I had been through everything in London with a fine tooth comb.

The whole family were waiting for us and we were given the news that Sally's mum had died just a few hours earlier with her oldest son at her side.

RIP Priscilla

Post Script. Sally and her sister prepared these flowers for the casket. Époustouflante.