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Published: April 8th 2017
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The last few days have brought glorious weather to England, for which we are eternally grateful - days so far have been 17-19 degrees and sunny. But before that - a word on Frankfurt airport -its HUGE. We had to change planes there with a 1 hr 40 min switch-over between landing at one gate and taking off for London at another. Fine, right? WRONG! We ended up late getting off one plane, partially due to some disobedient passenger standing up when she should have been in her seat, leading to the us taxi-ing down the runway with pissed off cabin crew shouting into the intercom "SIT DOWN NOW!!!" ...so by the time we disembarked we had about 30 minutes before boarding the next flight....which just happened to be so far from the gate we landed at that we were speed walking about 2kms AND we still had to get a skytrain from one terminal to another, keep going another kilometre, go through security AGAIN, before making it to our departure gate with literally 2 mins to spare!
ANYWAY...OUr first day was fairly quiet..kindly picked up and spending our first couple of nights with Mum's childhood friend, we sorted out
the essentials (sim cards, chargers etc) then slothed for the rest of day, steadfastly not sleeping. The evening was spent listening to music and drinking Prosecco (well, Eileen and me, not Evie). Normality resumes..
On Thursday 6th,.....
PAUSE! Evie here. I have a small story to tell. I had had a shower the night before and I couldn't turn the hot water off. So Malcom went and turned all of the hot water off at the main and forgot to turn it on in the morning. I brushed my teeth and made a comment about how cold the water was so when mum went to brush her teeth she turned on the hot to make it a bit warmer. The tap made a sound that can only be described as an uncomfortable groan from someone who doesn't want to get up and mum LOST IT!! She was giggling herself silly. Mum explained to me why she was laughing and fell into the wall and then almost collapsed on the ground all while giggling very loudly and heavily. Right, I'm done. Back to mum......... I had arranged a hire car - only to discover that the intended vehicle was a
Nissan X Trail (never driven anything that big in my life) - negotiated down to a Mitsubishi ASX, which is really similar to my car at home and has Satnav - hurrah - so then we headed down to Hurley and met up with My Uncle John and Aunt Tina, spending a few hours with them, having coffee and then lunch at what I have discovered is called a Gastro Pub (no, not a place where the food is so bad it gives you a really unpleasant 24 hours) - but a renovated pub which serves fine dining attractively presented with many unusual accompaniments which a guaranteed 50% of the population haven't heard of... serious swank. After a lovely lunch we met John and Tina's dog, Molly and then headed off to Windsor Castle. Here Evie was almost delirious with the scale and history. We stood in St George Chapel, Over the remains of Henry V111, we saw the opulent State Apartments and the incredible detail of Princess Mary's Dollhouse. Really great day.
Friday 7th saw us head off to Stonehenge, walking instead of taking the shuttle bus from the entry point so we can get a good idea
of the size and scale, as well as having a good old fashioned English countryside stroll. Sad you can't get right up and personal with the stones now, but magnificent all the same. We left , heading south, stopping off for a quick pub lunch at the Red Rover, and made it to my Cousin Harriet's in Findon Village, near Brighton in the late afternoon, where we stay for the next 2 nights. We experienced a real Village Pub on a friday night, packed with people who all know each other, dogs, kids, pints of lager and no big TVs with sport. My kinda place.
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Mum, Grandma
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All looks and sounds like you're having a great time super about the weather .Really enjoying the blogs and photo's keep them coming. It is such a shame that you can't get up close and personal at Stone Henge however loved seeing John and Tina and the dog.