Simon and Khara have picked us up from the airport. We are on the way to Seven Oaks to have lunch. we picked up Subway and are having a picnic on the lawn of the Seven Oaks estate. After lunch we are going to one of the local farms to pick strawberries and raspberries to take back to their place.

I still can't breath properly and I am starting to get worried as I seem to be getting worse. If it doesn't start to clear soon I will need to see a doctor.

The hotel we will be staying in for the next week has two sections, one is the restaurant and it is centuries old wattle and daubl style building, the new section would be only decades old. It has just been renovated. Our room has a king size bed. A lovely way to sleep of the jet lag. It is the first hotel I have seen with inhouse usb charging for the electronics.

I feel a lot better today so the flu is finally starting to go. We are going touring with Khara over the next week to have a look around this part of England. It is ;ovely and green. It is still hot here and they are having a drought (it hasn't rained in a month) and they are having a heat wave.

White cliffs of Dover

Simon, Khara, Pat and I are here looking accross the passage at France. The others have gone for a walk along the cliffs but I found I could still not move as fast or as long as they were so I have stayed around the restaurant area. It is beautiful here. The port is extremely busy, it is the school hollidays here. A few days later the news reported that the freeway was backed up for miles innto the Port and the ferrys to france and it would take about 12-15 hours to clear. The police were handing out bottles of water to the waiting traffic.

Brighton Pier

Eating fish and chios on the pier. The seagulls here are enormous and are trying to take food out of peoples hands as they eat. The still have brightly coloured carisels and fair booths along the shoreline. Beach.... where is the sand? I only see steep banks of stones and deep blue water. OUCH stones. Definitly a big difference between our beaches and England. Wandering through the narrow streets and looking at all the shops.

I FOUND IT !!!!! Choccy Woccy DooDah.... One of the most amazing chocolate shops that creates massive chocolate sculptured cakes. I have often seen their cakes on tv. Too bad I am allergic to all chocolate except white. The smell inside the shop and the awesome cakes have just made my day.

Portsmouth

Khara, Pat and I have come to Portsmouth to see the National Museum fo the Royal Navy. There is enough history here to sink a battle ship.. pardon the pun. They havea wide range of different boats. All in perfect condition. Pat is finally going to get his English Scones, jam and cream. Just after we left the tea room I realised I had left my ipad on the table (I have been using it as a camera.. all my photos of the trip so far is on that ipad and the fact that it is a lot of money to replace it. I raced back to the tea room and they had found it and were coming to find me. it was really nice of them. We also went on a ferry trip over to tour the submarine that is set up accross the bay. Touring through it is a real eye opener when you realise that it has to hold up to about 100 people and supplys . b***** that I will stay above the waves.

London

The three of us are catching a train up to london to check out the city and the places I have heard about all my life. Piccadilly Circus, Buckingham palace, Thames River , London Eye, Big Ben, Tower Bridge just to name a few. We stayed in town to meet up with Simon to go to the Lyceum Thearter to watch a show. We decided that we would go and have a drink at the Aussie pub down by the River before the show. Let me tell you it is NOTHING, I REPEAT NOTHING like a Aussie pub. The only thing in there was it was hot... no aircon.

Khara and Simon sent Pat and I tickets to the stage show for mothers day and Pats birthday. The show is The Lion King. It was the most thrilling, spectacular thng I have ever watched. The cast doing the show was the same one on the news before we left home that spontaneously started singing one of the songs from the show while on a plane.

Stonehenge

Can you believe it Simon a native of the UK has never been to stonehenge, well we will fix that.. we all toured around the stones. No one is allowed to go inside the stone circle anymore but it is still like a dream to see something this old

We have met Simons parents, we have all gone out for tea in a quaint little pub not far away. The meals here are really tastey. They are such lovely people.

We pick up the car tomorrow and start touring through England, Wales, Scotland. When we picked up the car I went to pay for it and my credit card wouldn't work so we used Pats. They upgraded our car to a SUV