Visiting Dave's Family

First off as we closed off our last post, Friday was a quiet day, it rained all day here in London so as planned, it was laundry day. We decided to order a "proper" English Breakfast on Friday with bacon, sausage, eggs, hash browns, tomatoes, beans, toast and coffee.  A wonderful and filling breakfast to get us through the day. Now off to the Laundromat or Launderette as they are known here, where we took the time to clean up things after almost two weeks of travels.  I guess we got hungry!!!

 

Yesterday (Saturday) was our planned visit to my family in Bournemouth. The plan was to get a car and drive there but the prices here in London are quite high, so we started to look for other options. Train to Bournemouth is also costly so we decided on taking a Coach Bus.  It was supposed to be about 2 1/2 hours by bus. Apparently this is one of the most popular weekends for travel here in Britain, being the beginning of quarter term with schools out, the bus trip took nearly 4 hours and the air conditioning on the bus wasn't working despite the driver telling us it was on while he sat in his soaking wet shirt. 

Now a bit of family history here on my side. During World War II, my grandfather Henry on my Mom's side was a very young boy here in London along with his brother Edward (Uncle Ted). With the bombs dropping down on London, Henry and Edward were to be sent to Canada with many other young British children for safety.  Somehow my grandfather and uncle got separated and Uncle Ted did not end up traveling to Canada. It was many, many years until they were reunited again, when I was a boy of around 9 or 10. June showed us a picture she has of their first visit to Canada with Uncle Ted way back in time.

So our visit was to once again meet my cousins, mainly June and Rowland, their daughter Lisa and her companion Mike. Cousin Mary was also there with her daughter and Mike's daughter, granddaughter and one of his son's also came to visit with their families. We thank them for dropping in. Other than June, Rowland and Lisa, I had never met any of the others.

 

Lisa and Mike have a lovely home, fed us very well and we enjoyed our time there, even though it was shorter than planned.  Next time we promise to stay in the area of Southern England for at least a few days instead of a few hours. The country in the south is beautiful.

Rowland and Mary picked us up at the station after waiting for over an hour for us to finally arrive, then June and Rowland drove us back to the bus station that evening.  Rowland is a great driver who taught me how to drive the round-a-bouts about 14 years ago and I am still grateful. There are rules to these that they don't tell you about when you rent a car here.

Our journey home took us to Portsmouth for a 20 minute stop over, what a fantastic area this is.
We finally arrived back in Bexleyheath just past midnight after another 4 hour trip home. A long journey for a short visit, but we were both so very happy to see everyone again.