5 February 2016 (Friday) - Geo-London

I woke at 4am and lay awake, finally dozing off ten minutes before my alarm then woke me. Over brekkie I posted yesterday's blog entry. I tried to do so last night and gave up (in a temper) after twenty minutes. Our internet connection simply doesn't work in the evenings.
It works fine most mornings, and over brekkie I had a look-see on-line. There were all the racist and small-minded nastiness posts on social media from "Britain First". Whilst it is common knowledge that all these asylum seekers are coming over here and living high on the hog at our expense, and using tax-payers' money to fund their twenty wives and hundreds of children (none of whom speak English) I defy those posting these lies to quote one case of which they personally have any knowledge (as opposed to the lies that they have read or heard about third-hand).

I then checked my on-line leccie and gas bill. A couple of days ago I was over five hundred pounds in credit with them. Now I've given them a meter reading I am only fifty quid in the black. Four hundred and fifty pounds for five months leccie and gas... is that good? I have no idea.

We settled "Furry Face TM" ("Daddies Little Angel TM" was coming to see to him later) and went to the railway station. Last week I'd confirmed the price of train tickets; today they were four pounds more than I'd been quoted. But I didn't make a fuss.
Three of us set off for London for a geo-outing, meeting Aleta at Maidstone. There was a minor hiccup as we got near Bromley. There was apparently an unexploded bomb near Victoria. But we were only delayed for ten minutes. And as we made our way to the tube we met four more of our number. And so eight of us arrived at our planned meeting point at Temple tube station only a few minutes later than planned.
There was then an embarrassing episode. We stood about waiting for the rest of our group to arrive. After a while I had a plan to go get the nearby geocache to save some time whilst we waited for everyone else to arrive. I turned the corner to find everyone else *had* arrived and had been waiting for us.

Thirteen of us then geo-wandered around London. Our plan was to follow the London Rainbow series of geocaches picking up a few others on the way. We had to tweak this plan somewhat when it became apparentl that we weren't getting along quite as fast as we might have been going. But despite staying focussed and not wandering here and there we still logged twenty six geo-finds each including my milestone #6000.
I must admit I was a little disheartened when the rain came at mid-day (some six hours earlier than forecast) but it didn't last for long. And as the rain stopped we found a wonderful little street with no end of rather good food outlets. I scoffed a very good baguette. And as I scoffed it we found the pub in which The Goons (Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe et al) used to drink. As as we walked round we also found the house where Lawrence of Arabia lived, and we even found the Vulgarian embassy (from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang). Dave said it was the Albanian embassy, but I wasn't having any of it.

Once at Pimlico we had done the first leg of our day. We found the nearest tube station (Covent Garden) and then took the tube up to Camden. After a little walk we were soon in the market. We found what we needed for our treasure hunt, and I found a stall selling mulled wine. Only one glass, but it made for a rather good treat.

We then had the only real disaster of the day (and it wasn't *that* bad really). Our GPS told us we were quite some way from our next target in Abbey Road. So we took the bus. Or (to be precise) half of us took the bus. When half of us were on the driver closed the door on the rest of our party. So they followed on the next bus. in retrospect we should all have walked. the bus merely wasted twenty minutes of our time taking us to a point equally far away from our destination. Admitedly the bus took us to Abbey Road. However it took us to the wrong end of Abbey Road. And Abbey Road is a *long* road.
But it didn't take *that* long to walk to the Abbey Road studios. and just there is a web-cam. There are about a dozen geo-web-cams in all of the UK. And this one made for my six thousandth geo-find.

Another bus ride and tube ride had us at Paddington station. I had a much-deserved bottle of "bitter and twisted", then we went and found the bronze statue of Paddington Bear.
By now time was getting on so we made a couple more geo-finds then said our goodbyes and made our various ways home.

It was as well that "Daddies Little Angel TM" had seen to "Furry Face TM" as we were rather late home. But I still ran him round the roads quickly. "er indoors TM" got some fish and chips and we sat down for a rather good bit of tea.

I took quite a few photos whilst we were out. I put them on-line and looked at them for a while.

I've had a *really* good day out today...

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