We dropped the rental car of at Heathrow then got the train back into the city to Lauren’s. After 2 months of travel it was good to just chill and watch TV at Lauren’s. We went out for a sunday lunch at the pub with Rachael’s cousin as well, which was good but super expensive. Stuff in London seems to cost about the same in pounds as it would at home in AUD.
On way to Oxford we stopped at Stratford-upon-Avon and saw the church with Shakespeare’s grave while we stopped for lunch. There was a nice canal but that’s about it.
We were staying on the outskirts of Oxford so it would be easier to drive in and out, but the area wasn’t all that nice and there weren’t many places to eat.
The next day we got the bus into the center, and went to Blackwell’s Bookshop while we waited for a tour.
After driving along the wall, we stopped at our next accommodation which was in Penrith. We went to the lake in afternoon for dinner. The pubs would be nice in summer, with lots of outdoor beer gardens along the lake. The lake itself was okay, nothing particularly exciting, although again would be packed in summer.
The next morning we drove back to the Lakes District. On the way we saw a sign to something called Castlerigg Stone Circle, which we went through a extremely tight lane (barely fit one car) to get to.
On our drive south we wanted to go to the beach. Rachael was navigating so took us to what looked like a sandy beach on the map but was actually Lindisfarne causeway, which was a massive salt pan at low tide. After looking it up we thought about driving across to Lindisfarne Castle but it was really foggy and we didn’t really know how fast the tides are so thought it was best not to in a rental car.
We went to Richmond Park in the morning, and the girls had breakfast at a cafe which was packed with cyclists. The park was huge, and it was great weather so we went for a walk. We’d heard there was deer but it’s a huge park and we couldn’t see any. So we went for a drive to look at the lake in the middle and the deer just happened to be there.
Lauren has a car so we thought we would take advantage of it and do a day trip somewhere she hadn’t been yet, so headed to see the White Cliffs of Dover and Dover Castle. I was surprised how quickly we got to more rural areas, as I was expecting heaps of urban sprawl like Brisbane, but London is actually pretty contained.
We decided to ignore the National Trust tourist part and headed further up towards the St Margaret’s Bay end where we hoped there would be less people.
After some sleep, we headed back out to explore some more of London. The beautiful weather from the previous day had ended and we got some of the London weather we were expecting in the form of cold miserable light rain.
First up we went to see Tower of London and Tower Bridge. We were planning to go inside but the tickets were about $50 AUD each, so we thought we’d find something a bit cheaper to do.
Our first stop in our Europe trip was to London to visit Rachael’s sister Lauren. So after a Uber to the bus station, a bus to Brisbane, a long flight to Bangkok, a long boring layover and then an even longer flight to London, we arrived at Heathrow.
Lauren met us at arrivals and then we got our first tube ride to Hammersmith and then a bus to her place. Her place was pretty cool and very stereotypical of what you would expect in London, with a very steep staircase and a cupboard under the stairs.
