Visiting the UK & France - April-May 2019

Best two places Len - Betws y Coed, and going to the top of Blackpool Tower to stand on the glass floor Carol - York, and the Bath Kennel Club show Linda - Glasgow (Thornliebank), and Arras Diane - Castlerigg Stone Circle, and Arras Best meal Len - Roast lunch at Melbourne Carol - Baked camembert entree at Tarrant Monkton Linda - Roast lunch at Melbourne Diane - Mussels at Oban (Oyster Inn) Best accommodation In general, the best places were all small country Inns.  You can assume that this means that getting to them requires navigating B roads with four numbers (eg, B9003, B8063 etc). In no particular order - a case could be put for any of these being at the top: Kames Hotel, Kames, south west Scotland on the Bute peninsula Milfield Inn, Milfield, somewhere in Northumberland Tarrant Monkton, somewhere in Dorset, south west of Salisbury  Honorable mentions to Hoops Inn, Horns Cross, Devon, near Clovelly, and The Oyster Inn, Oban, Scotland. Funniest mome...

Saturday afternoon - Taxi due to pick up at 2:30pm, plane departs 9:10pm The taxi to the airport turned up a little early, so the confirmation text gave us enough time to get our luggage and be read when he arrived.  His name is Simon - Carol has his card - and he was great.  Get his number if you are going to London. We ended up at the airport a bit early for check-in, so we settled down with a couple of bottles of water, some chips and onion rings (one of each - they were our seat permission items), and shot off to the checkin counter about 15 minutes before it was due to open.  We were second in the queue, and expected to get through quickly. Not so. It seems that Len's re-entry visa was not quite right.  It took about 30 minutes to sort out, and included a call to Australia House on a Saturday evening.  We are pleased that someone was there to answer!! Once that was fixed up, and Carol had the boarding passes firmly in hand, we joined the queue for ...

With packing nearly settled for everyone, we had breakfast and then checked out, leaving the luggage (all ten pieces.  Don't ask.) in the hotel Luggage Room. Then we went for a walk to see Westminster Abbey.  We were pretty confident that we would not have time to go in (the queues that we had already seen there were mind boggling), so we were heading off just to have a look. Linda got her pic with a couple of proper Bobbies. We were right about the queues at the Abbey... At this point, Len and Carol returned to the hotel, and Diane and Linda continued up the road.  This is because London is insufficiently populated with public conveniences.  On the way back from a handy Pret-A-Manger, Diane and Linda stopped by this little park and saw several squirrels scampering through the trees. Then Linda and Diane walked back to the hotel, past Great Smith Street (ROFL), and saw that the crowd at Westminster Abbey was now officially horrendous. ...

**photos from the Thames cruise to follow** We were all a bit tired after the unusually late evening last night. After breakfast Len, Linda and Diane headed off to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard. On the way we saw a Busker with a Chow. At the Palace, it took a little while to get a good position at the foot of the Queen Victoria memorial, and then we settled down to wait.  When we thought it was over, we started weaving our way through the teeming crowd, down The Mall. Then we saw a bit that we had nearly missed!  Clearly, we weren't the only ones who thought it was over, the police had to clear the roadway ahead of the last guard. After they had gone past we crossed The Mall and walked through St James Park. Then down the Birdcage Walk to Westminster Bridge.  On the way we saw another busker doing well courtesy of their dog - this time a St Bernard! Then Linda finally got her pic ...

After a buffet breakfast at the hotel, Len, Linda and Diane got tickets for the London Eye.  Well, they joined a queue to buy tickets, and then got in the queue to get on the actual Eye, and then got in an Eye Pod (rofl).  It was warm and sunny, and the view was fantastic. Looking up from the queue... Looking forward in the queue! In the pod. The park next to the Eye forecourt The lake in St James Park is in the middle - Buckingham Palace at the top. Still in the pod. Front of the old County Hall Building (the hotel is at the back). After the Eye everyone went to get the hop-on-hop-off bus.  It was a moderately miserable experience getting on.  There was no control over the number of people getting on, and chaos reigned inside.  Carol and Len got seats, but Diane and Linda had to stand, and since none of us could hear commentary, it was mostly scenic without any context. By the time we got to Trafalgar Square we were a...