We travelled back to London after swapping cars in Ipswich. We are now driving a bright, red Astra for the remainder of our holiday. The return to London was for one reason only - to drop Chris at Heathrow for his departure to Canada for a month before he returns home in late October.

Our GPS was set for the A roads for the trip as the M roads are often congested and can be very boring as well. We happily drove through the small villages of Sudbury and Halstead before stopping at Braintree for morning tea. All of these towns had tea rooms, flower baskets and of course, pretty churches. The pubs are often some of the prettiest buildings in town.

After morning tea we continued through Rayne and eventually joined the M25 for the final approach to London. This ring road is often congested but not today. We were at our hotel by 4pm and only 9km from Heathrow for Chris's departure in the morning. We settled in to the bar of the hotel, had a drink, checked email and prepared for the opening ceremony of the Rugby World Cup. We turned the TV in the bar to ITV and relaxed.

We were joined in the bar by a couple who, like Chris, were flying out to Canada in the morning. They told us that the French Rugby Team was staying in their hotel - the Marriot - which was directly across the road from our Travelodge. For the briefest moment we were tempted to go over and check them out, but as it was already 7pm we decided to watch the opening ceremony instead. The ceremony only went for 30 minutes, featured past players including Jonnie Wilkinson and also featured Prince Harry who then officially opened the RWC.

The first game was played at Twickenham between England and Fiji, both teams are in Pool A with Wales, Uruguay and Australia. The game started at 8pm and was won by England 35 to 11. Fiji played well but tired towards the middle of the second half as we expected they would.

Saturday morning was time to bid farewell to Chris. We have travelled together for the last 2 weeks and he is now off to Canada and USA for 4 weeks before returning home. We dropped him at Heathrow at 8:30 and the set off for Wales.

We couldn't resist the temptation of breakfast at Windsor - something we did on the first morning we were with Stacey, Brett and the kids - it was much quieter this time! We sent a message to Stacey telling her where we were but that something was missing. She replied - "3 noisy kids and 2 tired parents?? Haha! Don't worry I found them here!" We even sent a photo with Grams posing with 'Queen Elsa' AKA - Queen Victoria.

After breakfast we headed to Cardiff for the next 5 nights so that we can see some Rugby - bring it on!