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Published: November 9th 2010
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LEGOLAND!!
Just before we took off on the roller-coaster We got back to the UK and immediately set our minds to advertising and hopefully selling Lentil. As much as we loved the van during our travels, it was imperative we Lentil found a new owner as we were soon to be heading off to India. Also, our travel budget determined that Lentil should be sold for roughly what we bought it for. This process was happily broken up by Phoebe's 8th birthday which we celebrated with Andrew, Alex, Niamh and Carrig. The following day we took Phoebe to Legoland as her birthday present. None of us knew much about Legoland, other than it was supposed to heaps of fun, and as Phoebe is such a big lego fan we figured if anything surrounding her with lego all day would be her idea of paradise.
Kids paradise it certainly was! Not only does Legoland have some VERY impressive lego structures, it also has rides galore. The whole place was set in the grounds of a former wilderness park and it took us all day to get around to all the different 'lands': knights land, pirate land, Egyptian land,imagination land, mini land. Phoebe was very brave and went on all the
Road Rebel Phoebe
Beep beep, move out of my way! scariest rides, from the rollercoaster, to the log flume, to a Raiders of the Lost Ark themed laser guns ride. She even went to traffic school where she could drive a little Fiat car after a 5 minute introduction to road rules. Needless to say she drove through every red light, gave way to no one and mostly drove on the right (as in the wrong) side of the road (although she can be forgiven for that as we had been driving on the right side of the road for the last 8 weeks in Europe).
More fun was still to come as we headed to North Wales to catch up with the cousins who gave Phoebe a birthday party and then followed it up with a sleep over that night. She was in Seventh Heaven! It also gave us a chance to catch up with everyone one last time and celebrate our engagement with the family. The only thing that did dampen our spirits however was that we had some people lined up to come a look at Lentil (and hopefully take the van off our hands) but unfortunately they were no-shows, and then any other interest in
Cousin Horsey Races
L-R: Bethan and Daniel, Phoebe and Aron, Anabelle and Matthew the van dried up at pretty much the same time. We were starting to become seriously worried as the leaving date for India was now less than one week away! We had seriously considered that should all our luck run out we might need to consider flogging off Lentil for a bargain basement price as it was beginning to look like the only alternative was trading in with a scammy dealer (and even the dealers were showing little or no interest).
But luck, it seemed, was still with us, as once we had left Wales and headed back to Surrey we met up with Adam, an ageing hippy who liked going to music festivals. Adam was getting a bit tired of tents and was in the market for a campervan, and more specifically at about 6ft high, one that he could stand up properly in. This was hardly one of our considerations when we bought Lentil (both of us being on the smaller side of 6ft, but was a big consideration for Adam who was sold as soon as he climbed in and walked around at ease. He gave us a 10% deposit that night and said he'd be
On Blackfriars Bridge
and in the distance you can see the London Eye, Westminster Abbey and Big Ben back the following night with the balance. It was a perfect everybody wins situation! We were SO happy and SO relieved to have sold the van at a good price, and Adam was happy to finally find a campervan that met all his needs at a good price. We celebrated that night with a bottle of champagne (and Phoebe had an orange juice). When the next evening rolled around we gave Lentil a once over, said our last goodbyes and handed over the keys. Phoebe was a bit sad, and Nick and I were too momentarily, until we looked at the nice pile of cash that was to fund the next leg of our trip!
After we had packed up all our things, sent a few boxes back home and had everything in order, we decided to treat ourselves to a show in London. We went to see a stage favourite, Oliver! which is based on the book Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. We sat in the very, very back row, in the balcony (you can't get any more back row than that!) but it didn't matter as the show was captivating and fantastic no matter where you were
Happy Halloween!
Alex's expertly carved pumpkin (not me, the other Alex!) sitting. Phoebe was completely transfixed the whole time, and even forgot to eat the lollies that we'd bought. The acting, singing and dancing was first rate and we were so glad we got an opportunity to catch a show before we left London. After the show we walked out and were confronted with the actor Michael Gambon's face, with the caption, “Michael Gambon is a one of Britain's Living Treasures”. Nick laughed and said to Phoebe “Hey, there's Dumbledore” as Michael Gambon was actually in the last couple of Harry Potter movies as the Principle of Hogwarts, the wise wizard Dumbledore (and Phoebe has been rather obsessed with the books this year). But then, low and behold, THERE was Dumbledore right in front of us! In fact, he was actually sitting out the front of a cafe with some friends! We were a bit star struck for a moment and Phoebe couldn't quite equate wise old Dumbledore to the old man drinking coffee (do wizards drink coffee??), but it was most definitely him. We decided to respect his coffee break and not pester him for an autograph or anything cheesy like that, so on we went over Blackfriars Bridge down
Our Last Good-bye
L-R: Andrew (trying to subtly strangle) Phoebe, Niamh, Carrig and Alex to Southbank to Sushi Train to get some dinner before going home.
The day we were to head off to catch our 9.30 pm flight to Delhi was the 31st of October....Halloween! I was rather surprised at how the English seem to have taken to the idea of Halloween, as decorations were up and carved pumpkins were outside people's houses. But then Alex explained to me that Halloween was an old Celtic pagan custom that had been Christianised as 'All Saint's Day' and therefore was taken rather seriously in Ireland (where she was from). Alex had gone all out with the decorations at the front door and Niamh and Carrig were looking forward that night to handing out lollies to the trick or treat-ers that were most definitely expected. Alex had even bought two big pumpkins for carving, bought out her carving set and handed a pumpkin to me with instructions to get to work. I was quite out of my depth, having never carved a pumpkin before in my life, and having never thought I would, but after a few clicks on Google Image I came up with a spooky cat design and set to work. Amazingly, it's actually not that hard to carve a pumpkin and in time two pumpkins were being proudly displayed out the front of the Winter's door.
We set off that evening with Andrew driving us to Heathrow. All was right and good in the world at that point. We were packed, everything was sent off, Lentil had been sold, Phoebe had turned 8 and we had got to see a show in London. We were well and truly ready to leave and looking forward to four weeks in India...the last leg of our big trip!
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christine giles
non-member comment
india
remember u said india was one of the best thing i had done.uni cplleges r great to stay.Go to a community abroad in the country too.Engineering has given them water etc.Hyderabad.. architecture is a great centre.Travel by train too .u see so much.THird class despite the croudsxxac