After dropping the bike off in Southampton we caught the train to Cambridge where we were staying with a friend for a couple of days. Cambridge was a very interesting and quite expensive town, all the lovely old college buildings to see, but when we were there it was end of term and graduation time, so all the colleges were closed to tourists and the place was packed with parents and students, we did get to look around one college on our last day before catching the train down to London where we would spend the week before flying to Canada. Cambridge too like so many places in England has a long and interesting history and sometimes it all gets quite confusing with who came when and who did what to who!
Down in London we stayed in a small room in a type of guest house, it was very hard to find affordable accommodation, everything was booked out, we wondered if it was because of the Wimbledon tennis. We were in Leyton just to the east of London which gave us good access to the city. We wanted to see some more of the sights we had missed last time and also to catch up with another friend we had met in Mongolia, also my niece. London this time turned on better weather for us and we enjoyed our time walking around the city and parks. When we leave England this time we have worked out that we have been in the UK for over three months, in this time we have seen everything from snow and wind to quite hot days ( by English standards ), we have seen amazing buildings and history, met a lot of interesting and amazing people and
enjoyed some great hospitality, we will most certainly miss England, but there is one thing we won't miss and that is solitude, until you experience it I don't think you can understand it, you just can't get away from people and have a quite spot to yourself, and to be fare, it's not just England, a lot of Europe is like this, but we noticed it most in England. It is amazing that everyone gets along as well as they do and I think it is a credit to the people that they do and that the country is so hospitable with some many people to deal with. So with great fondness we say good-bye to Europe as we cross the Atlantic and take on a new frontier as so many others have before us.