Farewell London

Time to move on! Up at 7am to get organised with bag packing and checking out of what has been a lovely home for us in Putney for the last week. Ian and Lauren went into London to collect our hire car – it took them longer than expected to get there as there was issues with the underground so they ended up catching the overground from Putney to Waterloo and the underground from there. And then it took them awhile to find the place as it was located in an underground carpark but eventually they got there, got the car and made it back to Putney. We have a bigger than expected car this time – a Hyundai i80 van so lots of room for all our bags, which is just as well after our shopping day yesterday! – lots of room for us as well, the girls are very comfortable without a suitcase between them and there is even a third row of seats in the very back if they want more room. Got out of London fairly easily, driving through Richmond en route so that I could show the girls the area I was born and lived in but didn’t end up going to Richmond Lock as we wanted to keep moving. Our destination today was Windsor Castle and then we were spending the night with Ian’s second cousin Katie in Fleet. On our way to Windsor Castle we got held up on the M4, there had been an accident a bit further up the road and traffic was at a complete standstill. We sat here for about 45min and then suddenly traffic started moving again and there was no sign of the cause of the hold up at all. Ate our sandwiches in the car and got to Windsor about 2:30pm. Wandered through town and up to the castle. Had a great look around Windsor Castel – it is still a working castle so very sumptuously decorated and walking through the State Apartments gave us a good feel for how the Royal family lives when they are in residence here. There were some lovely photos of Harry and Meghan who had wedding photos taken here and Meghan’s wedding dress was on display in one of the rooms, so we were able to have a close up look at it.
The Christmas lights were all on in Windsor town after we left the castle and they looked beautiful. From Windsor we headed to Fleet arriving at 5:30pm. We weren’t due to be at Katie’s until 6:30pm as she had been spending the day at the beach

with her 2 girls (as you do in England in December!!) so we went into the local pub for a drink. Got to Katie’s just after 6:30pm. Her girls Mara & Eva (age 8 & 9) were very excited to see us and it was wonderful to see them, especially to catch up with Katie who we haven’t seen since she came to visit us in Mandurah when Brianna was about 18months old. Had dinner at home and sat up chatting until about 10:30 then headed to bed.