After another lovely breakfast and a long chat over many cups of Yorkshire tea, we bid a fond farewell to Nether Poppleton and the Hinchcliffes. Miles returned the car at a suburb of York whilst Kyra manipulated her way around York railway station, bought a couple of books for the lads to keep going, lost the tickets, then found them(luckily) in the chaos. The train came like clockwork, on time, seats were waiting for us and almost exactly 2 hours later we found ourselves at Kings Cross. It was full, so managing the cases were our only challenge.

We caught our first London taxi to the hotel, really only about a 5 minutes drive from the station - rather a squish with 5 of us and our bags on our laps or between our legs - JUST fitted!

The hotel in Montague Street (yes, like Romeo and Juliet Claire!) is literally 1 minute from Russell Square just behind the British Museum so when we have a spare moment we could pop in there for a few hours. The two rooms are close together, but I had forgotten that even though it isn't that warm outside we later found it was about 30 degrees inside (no the radiators aren't on and we later slept with the windows open, but it's not quite of the same standard that Miles is used to!)

As we were unpacking and changing into our walking gear, Dana (as of Rob and Dana) rang and said they were sitting in Russell Square! We had been in touch earlier and we knew Rob has been in hospital for quite some time and would now either be in hospital or in rehabilitation and we were due to contact them to find out where we could visit. So we popped ourselves up to the Square where he was in a wheelchair with Dana. Rob had suffered earlier in the year with limited movement and, unrelated to his Parkinsons, it seems he has disintegration of the spine, a major operation earlier in the year and now has no movement in his legs (he is in a wheelchair) and is fed through a tube in the stomach (which really, we didn't need to see, but he proudly lifted his shirt to show us…) He is going for an assessment on Friday to see if he can be transferred to rehabilitation to learn to walk again and finally return home. Anyway, lovely to see them and felt so sorry for his (and Dana's) circumstances. He would very much like to show us his new house near Kingston, but it seems he won't be there to show us, perhaps next visit?

We then were led by Miles on the walking tour he had prepared. Firstly to Covent Garden, then Trafalgar Square, down to Big Ben and the houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey (unfortunately closed to sightseeing this day - although it was expensive at GB18 per adult) - we had only done York Minster yesterday so perhaps best to leave a day between so much history? Then up through St James Park, past the Palace through Green Park (with a refreshment of an English dairy ice cream) past the Ritz, along Regent Street (so much lovely shopping there for Claire and me - and Rory was very keen to go into Banana Republic - on sale) Onwards and onwards to finally come home - phew, throbbing feet!

A couple of phone calls, arranging cars for later in the trip, and then off to dinner which we hadn't really planned for. We tried booking for a couple of restaurants, one could only fit us in at 8:30 which I thought was too late - we may be all asleep by then! We did find a mediocre Indian closeby so will be better prepared for future meals.

Bed was welcome, but hot!