After almost 4 months of living la vie Française it was time to return to the motherland. I decided to take the train rather than the plane to avoid the inevitable being sick that follows early morning travel. LA decided to accompany me to London so we boarded the TGV at 14h24 in Montpellier and headed for Paris. About an hour from Paris the train pulled to a 'layby' and the driver announced that there was some sort of 'police intervention'. After 40 minutes of waiting with no information or clue as to what was happening we were on our way again; but now we had our connection time cut from a comfortable 2 hours to under 1h30, and we had to be checked in on the Eurostar at least 30 minutes in advance.

After arriving in Paris I asked an SNCF man how to get to the Gare du Nord and we headed off towards the metro. A brief moment of panic when my bag got stuck in the metro barrier and LA had to prise it open but otherwise a smooth journey to the station. We had only been on the Eurostar for an hour when the driver announced that we were going to make an unscheduled stop at Lille because some passengers had missed the train in Paris and it was the last one of the night! I wasn't impressed with the 25 minute delay and we ended up in London at around 22h15. After a quick super size bag of Burger King chips to celebrate our return to England I caught the train to Peterborough and arrived at midnight to an empty station, sans parents. I forlornly dragged my case in the opposite direction to the crowd who headed for the steps and struggled up the ramp to the exit. When I arrived at the entrance I phoned dad, who it turned out was searching for me with mum by the train. As it turned out when they arrived the doors were closed so they couldn't get onto the platform until the first passengers alighted from my train. They then ran up the steps to my platform while I was at the other end of the station on the ramp. When they eventually found me I had to endure my dad shouting 'I'm going to run!!' and then running not very quickly along the length of the platform looking like a child at Christmas. Still, glad to be home to family, food and fun!