Some rocks and stuff (Friday April 20)

Since we went west on Thursday, we figured we should see what was to the east of us on Friday and decided to head for Stonehenge.  Roger was fantastic.  He and Sheila hooked us up with some passes to get into Stonehenge free of charge, drove us out to Stonehenge and just hung out and read in the car while we did the tour.  The tours are done by audio recording and are very well done and quite interesting.  The sun was out while we walked the path around Stonehenge so it was quite pleasant.

After we finished at Stonehenge Roger suggested we head over to Avebury which has a series of standing stones that you can walk amongst and find somewhere along the way to stop for a bite and a pint. We found a canal side inn that looked promising, but only served sandwiches, so we got some nice pictures, but no lunch.

We arrived in a beautiful small town called Marlborough (apparently where the Middletons went to school). We stopped in a small inn pub called the Sun Inn and I had the best fish and chips I've ever eaten (and possibly ever will). Roger ordered a beer made from fresh hops so had a very distinct (and natural) green colour. It had a unique and delicious taste as well.

After lunch we headed for their to move on to Avebury. Hopefully the camera will still work as we had a little accident (IE dropped it) and its behaving a little oddly. At Avebury we did a tour of a beautifully restored manor house and garden and wandered amongst the stone circle (again while Roger hung back and read in the car). Fortunately the camera is still taking pictures. Unfortunately, the battery died, so we didn't get all the pictures we would have liked, but still got a few good shots.

We ended the night by picking up Sheila and heading to the annual village quiz where we dined on "pickins" while trying to help out with the trivia questions which we failed at miserably,as the questions were based on British history.

London calling (Thursday April 19)

On Thursday morning we woke up in the lovely guest bedroom of Roger and Sheila's house in Hartley Whitney. After a cup of tea, Roger took us to the train station where we caught a train to London's Waterloo station.

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We found a spot for breakfast then promptly got soaked to the bone in a downpour. But the sun did come out again and we took the opportunity to go on the London Eye (a huge Ferris wheel deal that gives amazing views of the city).

We hopped on a sightseeing bus to get to Westminster Abbey but unfortunately only got to see the outside as we had missed the last tour by a couple minutes. Who ends tours at 3:30?!? Them apparently. We needed a pint after this disappointment so headed over to the Red Lion pub. Great traditional atmosphere.

We had made arrangements to meet up with Stuart, Alana's cousin, for supper so we headed over on the bus. This was quite the long and meandering route but we saw a lot of the city and learned some good history. We met up with Stuart and had a pint in a pub so crowded with after work drinkers they were spilling into the street. Ate a yummy supper at Nando then experienced one last pub before heading home on the train.

We made it to London after all! (Wednesday April 18, 2012)

Despite a little nervousness when the board showed our Wednesday morning flight as delayed, we were in the air only 45 minutes after the original departure time.  The flight was pretty uneventful.  Alaina even managed to sleep on the plane!  The food wasn't too bad, considering it's airplane food.

Air Canada served a hot breakfast (Jeff had pancakes with a jam compote and Alaina had the eggs with hashbrowns) and a snack which was basically a small sandwich.  We landed at 9:00 pm and spent the next hour or so winding through customs and baggage claims with no problems and met up with Roger outside the baggage claim area.  We grabbed our bags and headed for the car for the 45 minute drive out to Hartley-Whitney where we stopped for a couple pints at the Horse and Wagon pub in the private members area (Roger is a regular).  It was exactly what we needed and a perfect first English pub experience. 

We closed the pub out (at 11:30) and headed up to Roger and Shelia's place, had a chance to say hi to Shelia and headed to bed.  I found one advantage of having to fly in the morning meant I was better able to adjust to the time difference fell asleep once we got there (I'm sure the pints helped a little...).  We headed into London the next day to do some sight seeing and meet up with Roger and Shelia's son Stuart.

We`re on our way, sort of...

We headed to the Regina airport at 8:30 to catch our 10:15 flight to Toronto.  Unfortunately, while on the plane it was announced that the plane had the tires replaced (as per scheduled
maintenance), but they were unable to find the paperwork to say the tires had been changed and they were unable to leave with out the paperwork.  After 90 minutes of waiting in the plane, they were still unable to find the paperwork so decided to have eveybody deplane and they would redo the tire change and file the paperwork -estimated time of 2 hours.

By this time it was apparent that most people would miss their connections, so everyone that had a connection had their luggage offloaded and was sent to rebook their flights.  After looking for options (Air Canada had another flight to London at 8:20, but it was already overbooked by 4 in executive class and by 19 in economy so not an option) we found the only reasonable option was a flight leaving at 8:55 the next day, arriving at 9 pm.  We took the original flight (delayed by 3.5 hrs) to Toronto -only 20 minutes after we were supposed to have departed - and had Air Canada put us up in the Crowne Plaza over night.  So we've lost a day in London, but at least we got a free hotel room and supper out of it...  Heading for the airport around 6am tomorrow.  Just hope the pilots don't get sick tonight...