Yet another long-winded update

England

London

We spent practically the entire day on Saturday in travelling from Paris to London. We went through some interesting parts of France through WWI battlefields and on to Calais where we once again crossed the English Chanel. After landing in Dover we were making very good time and had even caught a ferry that was 2 hours earlier than the one we had originally book, but this all went out of the window when we reached the outskirts of London as one of the major roads was closed (not sure why) and this caused complete chaos getting into our part of London.

We made the most of the opportunity to get a good nights sleep and have a little sleep-in the next morning until about 8:30 (which was a very significant sleep in compared to every day we had spent on the tour).

We then meet up with a Tasmanian friend from way back who has been living in England for the last couple of years, Maryanne. Maryanne took us to a really nice ice-cream place (can’t remember what it is called) before we started on the days sightseeing.

We first of all went along to St Paul’s Cathedral – as it was Sunday we considered going to a service, but decided against it as we had a lot still to do.

We then went to Baker Street to visit the home of the (fictional) great detective, Sherlock Holmes. There was some confusion on my behalf about where the detective’s offices actually were, but we eventually found it with some help from some friendly locals.

After visiting Sherlock we had to say goodbye to Maryanne and we headed off to Madame Tussauds where we made some new friends.

Madame Tussauds was good, but is the most over priced attraction we have been to on the trip.

We stopped by Paddington Station on our way home to go bear hunting, but were sadly quite unsuccessful. On our way home it started to snow and it didn’t stop until the next day so when we ventured out of our hotel the next morning everything was sparkling white.

We then started the second stage of our trip- we will now be using the rail system to get us everywhere we want to go around the UK for the next 9 days.

Newcastle

We made it up to Newcasle… eventually.

While most of the UK was being held up by the snow or snow induced problems, we were not affected by the snow at all, but then our train had ”technical problems.” First the train service was interrupted while the crew investigate a cracked window (I think it was a passenger window, but it may have actually been the windscreen), and then the train had a rather serious issue – whenever the driver tried to accelerate for some reason the brakes also activated. But as I say, we did eventually get to Newcastle.

As it was dark, raining/snowing, and we were having trouble figuring out the buses we caught a taxi to the hotel – unfortunately it wasn’t one of those attractive black cabs that you see all over London, but it got us where we wanted to go. We stayed the night in a rather dodgy and very cheap hotel, but we had a good night’s sleep and a nice hot shower in the morning so it wasn’t too bad. In fact I think I had the best night’s sleep I have had since I left Aussie.

The next morning we took a bus into the train station where we checked our luggage into the luggage minding service and walked over to see the Castle Keep – the new castle that gave Newcastle its name. The Castle Keep was built during the Roman Age, but was then rebuilt (the new castle) in Medieval times. Not all of the Medieval structures are still standing, but the Black Gate and the Castle Keep are still standing and well worth visiting.

From the roof of the Castle Keep you get some great views of the rest of Newcastle which seems to be a rather boring industrial city.

The railway goes right past the Castle Keep.

The interior of the Castle was been well looked after as well

The King’s Private Chamber

The King’s Most Private Chamber.

After our castle explorations we went back to the train station, rescued our bags, and caught a train to … Scotland! But that’s a story for another time so you will have to tune in for the next installation.