John Linton We belatedly celebrated Catherine's birthday last night at a highly rated London restaurant (Alain Ducasse) and she and her mother chatted up a storm from the time we arrived until the time we said goodbye. I was a delightful dinner and Annette was so pleased to spend time with her 'long lost' daughter of all of six weeks. We got to the restaurant by taking the tube to Hyde Park Gate and then walking up Park Lane.....by a miracle missing the sporadic showers of quite heavy rain. London's tube system remains remarkable for getting to anywhere from anywhere very, very cheaply but last night it was jammed solid with Arsenal fans returning from the Emirates game and people going to Leicester Square and Piccadilly for a night out. The journey was stifling and hot and a mistake - we took a cab back to our hotel.
Taking a tube to Heathrow to pick up our rental car became a non-starter after our previous night's experience so we took a taxi from the hotel to the airport pick up point.....carefully selecting the only London cabbie who didn't know where AVIS pick up point was. As he said - "I bin aht to 'eafrow more times than a sparrer 'as fevvers but never seen it guv". So we pressed on and Annette spotted the Avis drop off point sign in enough time for our driver to wrench the cab in a left hand turn from the centre lane and we arrived without further incident. So we completed the formalities in a blink of an eye and were on our way down the M4 within a few minutes of paying off our relieved taxi driver.
It was warm and sunny when we left but within 20 or 30 minutes it had turned gray and rained in bursts heavily enough once to slow the traffic from its 70/80/90 mph to around 20 mph for a few minutes. Otherwise UK motorways are a great way to go long distances very quickly and, for the most part, very safely. We had no idea where we were going to spend the night so Annette was juggling three different guide books and developed a 'short list'. We pulled off the motorway at random and equally randomly picked a B road to find a place for a cup of coffee and, as you do in tens of thousands of places in the UK we immediately came upon an old coaching inn called the Pheasant which, of course, was serving the traditional Sunday roast lunch so - what could we do? We had a delightful lunch over which we picked and booked a place to stay within easy driving distance of the wetlands we intend to visit tomorrow.
We used sat/nav to get us to the very pretty Cotswold village of Bibury but I could have got there blindfold (metaphorically) as it was only 40 miles from our lunch place and very simple to get to. We checked in to a very nice, and miracle of miracles in a UK hotel (with the standard ivied walls and gables and lead light windows beside a river straight from 'central casting'), a spacious room with every appointment and then explored the beautiful village and its surrounds until the rain returned and put an end to any further out door activities. Our room has a comfortable four poster bed (by no means always the case) and wifi by using BT's openzone UK wide network which is very useful - you get 24 elapsed hours of internet access for a prepayment of ten pounds which will allow me to complete any internet based work for the possible remainder of my trip. No dongle/no download limits (not that I need them).
It's now blowing the forecast gale (winds over 80 mph) along with drenching rain so we might go and have a Macallans or two downstairs in one on the lounges in front of a log fire - amazing for a day that started out over 20C and clear skies.
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