The last days

---

Friday and Saturday

The music festival goes on for another week in Buxton but we only had the first week so we packed up for our penultimate drive across the Derbyshire peak district to Kings Lynn. Today was the only time we have seen any rain for the entire 5 weeks.

Kings Lynn is a very old seaport on the Great Ouse river. It was at one stage one of the Hanseatic trading ports and still has a lot of buildings from that era. In fact it reminded us somewhat of Gdansk (The old Danzig). We went on a walking tour of the old city with a volunteer organised by the local tourist bureau. We had intended to drive down the Norfolk coast but it is the end of our trip and we opted for a more leisurely wander around Kings Lynn and a longer walk along the North bank of the Great Ouse. There is a medium sized tinny that the foot traffic uses as a ferry to cross and we walked a couple of miles upstream to pick up a road bridge to get back. The views of the town are much better from the north side.

That is just about the end of our trip. From Kings Lynn we drove back down to Heathrow with just a brief stop for a coffee in Ely. I had hoped to see an ornately carved portal of the cathedral that I remembered from a previous tip. It showed a complex representation of the final judgement with souls rising out of their graves and floating off to their final destinations. The portal I wanted was barricaded off for restoration work.

There is one more night in London without the car. We are staying at an air conditioned hotel in Hammersmith. We had a walk along the river and chose an Italian restaurant, “ Hands in Pasta” for our final meal. I had the house speciality of half a crayfish in a pasta while Alison had an eggplant dish. We were up on a balcony looking over the rooftops and catching a little cooling breeze that definitely wasn’t making it to the pavement level… They had some great Italian wines. We had intended to use up the last of our pounds but I got overenthusiastic with the wine, blew the budget, and we had to put it on the card. Oh well. It was the last night and it was a memorable meal.

The End.

---