Day 6—Westminster Abbey to Maidstone

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We started day as normal. We were 70% packed to go before brekky. Finished packing and left our luggage with the hotel staff who stored it in the luggage room for us.

We then headed off to Westminster Abbey. We made the same mistake as previous. Ended up on the tube, but on the wrong district line train. Small detour and hopped off and on to a circle train. Got to Westminster Abbey about 10.20am and no queue. Straight in and then spent over 2 hours checking everything out.

We were not able to take photos, so sorry. Kind of ironic though, given you can access images of most of the place on-line. The tombs and statues were quite amazing. The kids had a ball, doing a quiz the staff have available for them to undertake. Well worth the effort.

Back on tube to Earl’s Court by just after 1pm.and had Burger King, which was the trade off with the kids for spending so much time in a place full of Dead People. Grabbed our stuff from the hotel and on the tube by close to 2pm.

Got to Victoria, to catch the 2.32pm Southern to Gatwick. There had been a bomb treat at Edgeware (memory on location fuzzy now) so all the southerns had been halted. At about 2.50, 3 southerns all left one after the other. Got to Gatwick about 3.15 so wasn’t too late, as we were expected at 3pm. Then the games started. Phil from the camper place sent us a substitute driver. He only had room for 4 of us, so we split up. I left Tanya and Chris to get the next one, and that way I could get paperwork started. Got to Phil’s at about 4pm after a short wait for the driver. Tanya arrived about 5pm after the next driver couldn’t finder, or the next, or the next, or the next.

We eventually left the depot at 5.45pm and headed for Maidstone. We got the hang of the AA travel notes I had printed off, and the roundabouts which are everywhere, and made good time to Maidstone. We pulled up at the Pine Lodge Touring Park. We checked in to a camp site, which seemed to be in the middle of no where. We asked if there was any eating options nearby, and were given directions to 2 supermarkets. We headed down the road, went right, and right again, and found ourselves in a very upmarket village and a huge Tesco’s. We loaded up on 50 quids worth of supplies to get us well and truly started.

Back to camp, showered in the camper as they wanted extra money for showers, in spite of the absurd site cost. Dinner of Spag Bog and bed.

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