Our morning tea stop was Stamford.. where you may ask? Well it was certainly the question we were asking, but it turned out to be a real gem of the place. A small English village that largely escaped the impact of the industrial revolution, Stamford has quaint yellow stone cottages and shops and 5 churches in a one mile radius.
Unfortunately morning tea was only 20 minutes and so it was only time for a trip to the loo and a coffee, so we only managed two churches, but they were small and old in their feel, both being built around the 1300’s and the were distinctively High Church Anglican. In the little café where we grabbed our coffee, we even caught up with the emerging mess that is the Australian federal election!!! It is about the first news from home that we have had in three weeks.Back on the bus and we were heading down to Cambridge which was our lunch stop. University town is an interesting concept. The colleges are magnificent regal buildings oozing history. Kings College,
Trinity College and St Catherine’s were among the most impressive. Because of the narrow streets in Cambridge we had to park a bit out of town and Jonathon led us up a winding path that we had to find our way back down. Just as well we have good geography skills. On the way we were warned that we would be accosted by students offering us punt rides on the River Cam… and we sure were accosted. I think about 20 or more students accosted us on our way uptown offering punt rides. Of course we didn’t have time, and we were also warned about the punt wars as different companies sabotage each other’s boats and some people end up in the drink as a result.. now that just isn’t cricket. There were heaps of people in Cambridge and so we made our lunch on a bench and then explored the churches and the market and snapped some pics before heading back to the bus. There is an interesting clock in Cambridge that has a large cricket or locust on it. The idea is that the insect is stealing time from you … and knowing students as well as Liz does, she was not surprised by the symbolism.And so came the last leg back to London and the end of our tour. We had a dream run into London arriving 15 minutes earlier than planned which is unheard of apparently. We bade goodbye to our friends that we had made, especially our New Zealand buddies Tony and Pam and thanked Jonathon and Anto for their work.. and as we had heard at every stop for the last week, we heard the familiar phrase for the last time…. ALL RISE !
Our room at the Hilton Metropole was not ready by the 3pm check in time and so we scored a free breaky voucher for tomorrow!! Yeah! When we hit the room it was quite spacious and comfy and we have a king bed which is a pleasant change from the doubles of the last few nights. We needed to walk up to Paddington to pick up our Metro pass and it is only a kilometer or so from the hotel so we went back into walking mode and made a quick walk there. Once secured we hit the underground and made our way to Gloucester Road station… the only reason for this little detour was to take a photo at the sign!!! Then we went back to Knightsbridge… home of Harrods. What an amazing place that is. A whole floor of souvenirs of Harrods, a massive Egyptian escalator lobby
and shrine to Diana and Dodi and the biggest Christmas shop I have ever seen. It is certainly some experience. We will go back... I just have to decide what to buy, but of course I had to buy something because every girl needs a green Harrod’s bag!
We grabbed a bite to eat at Pret Manger, a fresh sandwich store that sells very yummy reasonably priced sandwiches, and we estimate that dinner cost about one fifth of what it would have had we eaten at Harrods!!!! Then we went to Leicester Square on the tube because I wanted to check out TKTS. It is nothing like Times Square. There are many booths supposedly selling reduced priced tickets but TKTS is right in the idle of Leicester Square. There was nothing we wanted to see but we did find a marked in the pavement that said that Canberra Australia was a mere 10883miles away. So we faced home and waved!!! Actually we were both really too tired and so we headed back to the hotel, again needing to plan the trip carefully due to underground track work again this weekend on the Jubilee and Circle lines.
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