Thirty odd hours of travel is hard work. After a layover of eight hours in Hong Kong to stretch our legs and savour a bit of local food, we eventually arrived back at the airport only to find our 1am flight had been delayed by a further 2 hours. As you could guess, by this stage we were exhausted and the picture of Mitchell passed out on the departure lounge seats says it all.

We eventually arrived into London at 8.30am Sunday morning (London time) after more than thirty hours of travel, and were greeted by Wendy with the most welcome of welcoming gifts, punnets of strawberries, blackberries and raspberries. Whilst we all tag teamed toilet and bag minding responsibilities, the delicious berries were devoured.

We eventually made our way in to London Victoria then on to Piccadilly Circus, arriving at what we thought were our apartments, though there was some confusion about the address leaving us with a couple of possibilities. At this point we realised we had only a vague address of the apartments on our booking slip, and nothing else. No phone number, no email address, nothing. No way of contacting someone to let them know we were her and no way of getting in.

A long wait was looming so we prepared ourselves with a seat at the bakery a few doors down to contemplate life without accommodation, at least in the short term.

After a healthy serving of the bakery's finest including a very satisfying chocolate croissant, Wendy and I set about trying to get ourselves sorted. Having tried and failed with Google to find some way of contacting the managers of the apartments, the only thing left to do was to stand on the street and wait.

Fortune eventually favoured us when a cleaner emerged onto the street and shortly thereafter we were in the hands of a 'concierge' who escorted us around the corner albeit to a completely different building.

With our bags safely deposited into the building, we headed out into a summer Sunday in London. Though a little tired, we convinced ourselves that riding a bike might be nice, so we jumped on to one of the Santander bike share bikes and made our way out to Putney, our home town from 2005-2006, eventually enjoying a beautiful afternoon tea with the Salisburys, our ex next door neighbours from Erpingham Road. Cucumber sandwiches, cake, scones, jam and cream plus the obligatory cup of tea and champagne to finish off were just the tonic for four weary travellers, Mitchell having passed out on the couch pretty soon after arriving.

Given our state of tiredness, we reacquainted ourselves with the number 22 bus, and wound our way back through the familiar streets of London's south west, eventually arriving back into Piccadilly Circus around 8pm, bed by this time well overdue.