September 2 - 3

The flight left on time, Tat in window seat and me in the middle. Over Ukraine we experienced forty minutes of extreme turbulence – it must have been fairly serious as when it was over the cabin crew director specifically thanked the flight crew and the passengers responded with a spontaneous round of applause.

When we landed we jumped on the courtesy bus and went to pick up the car (a Ford Focus) and set off. Just because we could Tat decided to take a spin through central London to find Fysh’s place and then around St Paul’s. Then we hit the road for Cambridge: it was about 8am.

We took a quick tour along the backs and then it was on to Ely where we took some time to explore the fabulous cathedral.

Peterborough cathedral was next and here we also bought some provisions, before setting off for Lincoln. Here our luck ran out as we arrived just as the cathedral door was being locked for the day.

As I bit into my dinner of a ham and salad roll half a tooth fell off into my mouth. Fortunately it wasn’t sensitive so I didn’t bother getting anyone to look at it until I returned to Melbourne. Talk about lucky.

The hotel, the first of our £10/night Travelodge rooms, was very ordinary. Despite having booked a family room for two people, there was only one set of bed linen. Luckily it was warm enough for me to use the doona (oops, duvet) cover as a cover. BBC news on the telly in the morning told us that the next few days, when we would be moving north, would be wet. At least it was still warm.