Yesterday we took trams and buses to visit Down House, which was the family home of Charles and Emma Darwin for most of their married life. They had 10 children altogether, with Emma having her last baby when she was 48 years old. There is a biography of her life which I will look into as she seems to have been a remarkable woman.

Charles Darwin was very fortunate in that he always knew he would inherit wealth and he ackowledged himself that perhaps he didn’t really apply himself at university because he knew he didn’t really need to. Another reason was that he had his own areas of interest and may not have really cared for much of what he was being taught.

After living on The Beagle for five years, travelling to remote places, doing long field trips and studying plant and animal life, he arrived home, married, moved house once, and pretty much stayed put for the rest of his life. He developed stomach problems, probably due to contact with a particularly nasty beetle, which sometimes made it difficult for him to work. And work he did. He walked in the grounds of his house three times a day – doing a particular circut five times in a row before lunch.

He would work in his study in the morning, writing and doing research, then walk, then have lunch, have some time with Emma (she often read to him, but they were in the bedroom away from the children, so may have engaged in other activities, leading to more children). Then I think he went back to work. He was a fond father and pretty relaxed for the times, when fathers tended to be distant and stern. He actually sounds like a rather nice person.

They bought the old house, adding to it over the years as they had more children. The house is now open to the public and run by English Heritage, a sort of rival to the National Trust. However, in this case I think they did a very good job of setting the house up for the public. They had some rooms set up with displays about Darwin’s life and research and some set up as much as possible as they were when the family lived there.

The gardens are still very well looked after, with Darwin’s walk (the Sand Walk), greenhouses, vegetable garden with the same vegetables that were grown in his day. Of course, they had servants to look after them and the butler appeared to be a very good friend to Darwin. They had two cooks over the lifetime of living there, and the second one wasn’t much good, but they don’t appear to have considered getting someone new to replace her.

When doing modifications to the house, Darwin said that he wanted the servants to be comfortably housed as well as the family. He was always an opponent of slavery.

Of course, having wealth meant that he didn’t have to worry about earning a living and could focus on his own areas of interest, which were many and varied. But, he could have been lazy and self indulgent, like many wealthy people.

We set out at about 11.30 and arrived home about 7.00. We had warm weather. It continues to be fairly comfortable in the shade, it’s not really hot, but being in the sun isn’t pleasant for us and we avoid it as much as possible. Our bedroom was hot when we got home and I opened the sliding door as wide as possible and put the little fan on. By the time we went to bed it was reasonably comfortable.

Today we plan to continue our scientific journey with a visit to the Science Museum in London. We are counting down the days until we leave. Thursday we will clean the house and probably have a local outing. On Friday we change all the linen and do a lot of washing before catching the very slow bus to Heathrow. We have a hotel booked nearby where we will stay the night. The Heathrow Shuttle will then take us to Terminal 2 to catch our 9.30 a.m. flight on Saturday.

Yesterday we did our usual Sunday morning thing – speaking with Matt via Facetime. Hidde wasn’t there and Matt definitely makes more effort to speak when he knows it’s up to him. The staff member holding his iPad did help out a little.

This week promises to be quite warm and sunny, with temperatures in the mid to high twenties and nightime lows up to 15 or 16. Our apartment has windows getting lots of morning sun and it really heats up. The circulation system doesn’t work very well and because we have no fly screens opening the sliding doors means we get flies. It’s humid and quite uncomfortable at night even with the sliding door open. I’m really glad to be going home to winter weather. I’m glad about the weather from the point of view of people who live here, of course.

We caught the train and bus and underground to Hampstead Heath, partly because Stephen wanted a bus ride through the Monopoly part of the city and partly because he doesn’t like changing trains at Clapham Junction for some reason. We caught the London Overground to Clapham Junction on the way home and it was very quick. It was still very light when we arrived home at 9.00 pm.

We visited a stately home, Fenton House, near Hampstead Heath first of all. We had set out at about 3.00 p.m. and arrived there about 4.00. I took some photos with my iPhone.

Afterwards, we walked through one of the Hampstead Heath paths to Parliament Hill, which has a view of London. It’s partly blocked by some bushes. Being a weekend there were heaps of people there, having picnics, swimming and generally behaving as if the hot weather had arrived.

I spent yesterday in bed. In the morning the problem was the cough, but I was taking cough medicine and avoiding dairy products, and the cough is now a minor problem. Then my nose started and hasn’t stopped since.

Stephen went out yesterday in the late afternoon to visit the local museum. He wants to get the paper this morning and also has a mission to get something to stop the nose. Plus more boxes of tissues.

Our photos are backed up on hard drives, but also on Google photos and Flickr. Google photos likes to do small compilations and modifications, and the featured photo is a then and now of Stephen, courtesty of Google Assistant, wearing exactly the same jacket. I think the first photo is from about eight or nine years ago when we were in Canberra for the National Folk Festival. I make this deduction both on the background to the photo and the type of camera used, a Sony NEX 5.

We have beento the Canberra Folk Festival three times now, we flew the first couple of time, but the last time we went with our caravan. The second photo was taken a few days ago in Hastings on Stephen’s iPhone 8.

Stephen noted a couple of differences – that the resemblence with sister Lesley is stronger and he has a bit of a stoop in the latest photo. He wasn’t wearing a backpack in the older photo which may have helped with standing straighter.

Yesterday we went out for breakfast at a fairly pleasant cafe/bakery and felt once again rather thwarted. I had hoped for really comfortable seating with a long table, we ended up sitting at two different small round tables. There were no specific breakfast options so we had toast and jam. At least I was able to have a very nice coffee. Stephen opted for coffee as well. And, I was able to do yesterday’s blog.

We went back to our AirBNB and packed up our things. Our hostess was there and gave us a little later time, until 4.15 p.m. Stephen had a couple of museums to visit and I wanted to take a lift to one of the hills. There were two, but by the time we spent roaming around West Hill we felt that we didn’t need to go to the other one. There was light cloud, some mist, and some sunshine and it was very beautiful. The Hastings Castle is a ruin, and seemed a bit expensive to us, and I just took photos of the outside.

We had lunch at the West Hill Cafe, which looks like a fairly traditional tea rooms, but had French staff. We could enjoy the views from the large windows. I took some video of the scenery as it seemed the best way to show the panorama, with gulls flying and a breeze. We enjoyed the herring gull sound all the time at Hastings, even in our room.

We picked up our bags and went to the station waiting room until our train arrived. We had a comfortable four seater area with a table. Although passengers came and went at the various stations we were able to maintain our spot. I was reading part of the time, but we also enjoyed the views as we went through the countryside. At first we were by the sea as the train went towards Eastbourne, then headed inland towards Croydon. We arrived home very tired and feeling very happy with our little holiday by the sea. I was particularly happy to come home by train and not have to drive.

Yesterday the cough that has lingered since we had colds a few weeks ago became much worse. I woke up this morning with my voice mostly gone and feeling very congested, with difficulty breathing. This improved once I Croydon GP Hub, with no appointment necessary. It is an alternative to going to Emergency with lesser ailments and open 7 days a week.

I was seen by a nurse after about a 20 minute wait.   She took medical details and checked vital signs, then I was seen by a GP. She confirmed that I didn’t actually have a chest infection. She said to go to Emergency if I had any chest pain and difficulty breathing and precribed lots of fluids and no dairy products or bananas. The experience as a whole was very good, I felt they took me seriously, and I was treated with courtesy. It was also free, even though we are visitors here.

I’ve had a restful day. Stephen went and did the shopping on his own. It is probably going to be our last big shop before we leave here.

Following is a slideshow from our visit to West Hill. The lift has been in operation for 120 years and cost a mere 2 pounds for a return journey. In fact, we walked down the hill afterwards, it wasn’t far, but would quite tough to climb up. With the slideshow it’s best to take it to full screen mode and enable HD for best quality.