We find that little has changed since last year. A couple of different cafes. Fairfield Hall is still being renovated and looks awful, though it is supposed to be finished before we leave here in mid October.

Stephen is starting to think of activities for the next few days. We leave for France next Tuesday.

In general, we are adjusting well to the time difference. We slept from around 8.30 pm last night until 6.00 this morning. We rested for a while in the afternoon, but have not been too tired.

We went down town to get our English SIM cards, going with Three this time because we can use them without roaming charges in Europe. We have a bit of data, and also have a Vodafone SIM from home which has 100GB of data and can be used in England Europe for $5.00 per day. We also did a fairly large shop for food. We were amused that the young lady at the checkout thought it was a fairly healthy shop, given that we bought a bar of chocolate, a small fruit cake, and some McVities, as well as salads and fruit. We bought mince and have made a pot of spaghetti bolognese which will last us for a few meals.

We came home for lunch, a rest and some Wimbledon, then went for another walk to get our special rail pass that allows us a 30% discount on fares. We also topped up our Oyster cards.

We’ve been very fortunate in the weather so far, it is warm enough for summer clothes during the day and cool enough at night for sleeping.

We left Perth at about 10.30 pm last night and arrived at Gatwick Airport, London at about 12.30 pm today. As England has daylight saving we only go back in time seven hours. The featured image is a distorted version of a photo I took near Burswood, which suits our feelings of disorientation with the familiarity and strangeness of our travel.

We had a very uncomfortable 11 hour journey for the first leg, with no extra space, then a far more comfortable and enjoyable seven hour second leg. It might also be that travelling during the day is nicer. The sun rose as we were waiting to board our connecting flight in Dubai.

Our allocated seats were two next to a window, which they must have changed because it isn’t what we would choose because of being locked in by a third person. Fortunately there were spare seats and our third on the row decided to sit elsewhere. We were able to enjoy having a window and also being able to share the three seats. Much better for napping.

View of mountains with snow as we passed over Turkey. Or in that area anyway.

I think this was taken over Iraq.

We didn’t get photos of the White Cliffs of Dover because of cloud cover. The White Clouds of Dover? We are tired enough to think this is very funny.

We struggled a bit with our baggage and the train, but thanks to the kindness of various men who helped with lifting bags, we managed. Our train, the Gatwick Express, was cancelled due to a derailment, but we found that there were other trains making a first stop at East Croydon and we didn’t actually need it. There were no large baggage racks so all we travellers had to fit our baggage on a normal train. There was a bit of drama as the door wouldn’t open to let us out of the carriage at East Croydon, so I went ahead to the next available door and called out to the guard some distance away to hold the train so Stephen and another man could get our bags off.

We caught a cab from the station to our apartment building, a very short journey for him, but saved us a lot of drama. A young resident was leaving as we arrived and carried the heaviest case up the steps.

Gary has left us some basic food and has done a big cleanup of most of the stuff left here by various visitors. There are new curtains in the living room and the old iMac Stephen used on our first visit here has been restored. Stephen finds it very useful for planning our adventures.