Monday October 4th
Everything today was planned around the Tube strike. I listened to the radio and found that 10 of the 12 tube lines were affected and that there were bits of services running but certainly not the Central line to Ruislip. However we could hear the overland trains rumbling past so that was a good sign. Hamish came over about 10am and took us to the South Ruislip station. i gave him the left over milk and custard out of the fridge. At the traffic lights a woman tapped on our window to tell us we had milk on the roof! He had managed to drive quite a way with a bottle of milk and a tub of custard on the roof of the car without it falling off. This had included going over judder bars so it was quite a feat. He jumped out and removed them and dropped us off. We literally walked right onto a train going to Marylebone station and as it had very few stops the journey took less than half an hour.
When we got out of the station we were looking at the map to decide which way we would walk to Victoria Station when a helpful local man came and asked us if he could help. We told him where we were planning to walk and he was horrified. So I said is it going to take longer than 2 hours and he said no about 1 hour. I said that was nothing so he suggested the Edgware road to Marble Arch. It was a great walk in a part of town that Alan was very familiar with having lived near there in the 60’s. Of course it has changed a lot and is very multicultural now. We got down by Marble Arch and sat and ate our lunch and just watched what was going on. We then walked over to the Australian Memorial in Huye Park which we have never looked at closely. It is across the way from the NZ memorial which is stunning.
We then decided to walk through Hyde Park rather than down Park Lane and walked over towards the Serpentine.
London was pretty much deserted. I think people had just stayed home and the tourists had decided to do other things today. The buses were not full and the tourist tour buses were very light as well. Mind you it was a very grey day again and not at all good for sightseeing and photos. We carried on past Buckingham Palace finally down to Victoria Station. We bought some papers for on the coach trip and also found Wetherspoons with wifi. I checked the album charts and found the Central Band CD, Reach for the Skies has gone into the charts at No 4. Everyone was excited when the Squadroniares CD made it to No5 after 3 weeks earlier this year. This is now the highest placing ever for a military band. It could go to No 1. Not sure how many copies I would have to buy to help that happen.
We gave ourselves a good hour to find the bus station and the departure terminal. It was all very easy and we were surprised at how busy it is and how many people use National Express. the M ticket on teh phone worked brilliantly, I just showed the driver the text.We got on and all seemed to be going really well except it took about ¾ hour to drive out of London at snail’s pace. But you get to have a look at different part. I was quite surprised that we were on the M4 rather than the M3 and even more surprised when we turned off to go to Heathrow. I thought I had avoided the route that goes to Heathrow as that adds an hour to the trip. Then the driver rang up someone on the phone and we heard him telling them he had a puncture on the rear right outside wheel. When he got off the phone he said I guess you all know I have a problem so I have pulled in here and they will send another coach. So we got off and got a snack and had a walk. It took about half an hour for another coach to turn up and they transferred al the bags and off we went. It was now 5.30pm.
The arrival time at Ringwood had been 5.45 so of course I had already rung Andy to alert him that we would be late and that I would ring at Winchester. The driver suddenly decided to leave the motorway and shot off through Basingstoke on the A33 which took us by surprise but we think he must have been avoiding a tail back on the m25 as the traffic was heavy due the tube strike. He actually made good progress on this road and finally got us back onto M3. We arrived at Ringwood at about 7.15. Liz and Andy had set out and run into a deviation but had driven through regardless and managed to get Ringwood but we had to come back the long way as they were closing the road to resurface it. So we finally made it back to Barton where we all had dinner together and had a good laugh about the adventures on the National Express.
Tomorrow we will find out what the story is with the van and set out on our adventures again. Not sure where but we have a few options we could take.
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