I woke up rather early and by the time I had decided that an early morning walk on a bank holiday in London might have its advantages, particularly if one intended to take pictures, it was already half 8.
Aramis was ready to go, so we set off for Regent’s park. The weather was sunny again, but not as hot and not quite as effortlessly Californian as Easter Sunday. The Londoners were all asleep (or still busy protesting), there were only a few scattered tourists trying to ‘make most of the day.’
I observed some very determined German tourists attempting to break into the Sherlock Holmes Museum. It must have been quite beyond their imagination that it could be closed. Surprising indeed, on an Easter Monday at a quarter to 9. Once they’d given up (or perhaps because I’d glared at them for long enough), Aramis and I took over the spot.
Particularly the beginning of our walk was rather touristy. I’d only intended to walk past 221B Baker Street, but then also chanced upon a Beatles shop.
We entered Regent’s park, which was not particularly busy, and took a nice stroll.
After our walk we said goodbye to central London and returned to the place we’d left Gudrun. This involved some travelling on the Tube and the London Overground again, which Aramis bore with admirable stoicism.
Gudrun had been waiting for us very patiently during our excursion to the centre. Aramis gladly hopped into the car, signalling that he was ready for the next leg of this journey.
He was not half as nervous as I was about the upcoming trip, but then it was not he who had to steer a Gudrun out of London again. A London that, as I had learnt, was packed with people who clearly thought that driving à la Lewis Hamilton on Speed was the only way to roll.
It started well. I drove off and waved goodbye to James with a healthy amount of enthusiasm. So much enthusiasm, in fact, that I forgot about that funny business of driving on the left. Oncoming traffic swiftly reminded me of the fact.
Fortunately, the streets were very quiet. The Londoners must have been taking a well-deserved break from scaring innocent foreign lady drivers out of their wits.
I decided to spend the night in Penrith, in the Lake District. Including some short breaks, the journey took about 6 hours. Everybody seemed to be heading south rather than north, so there was a lot of slow traffic and some long traffic jams on oncoming carriageways.
As I was driving, I saw quite an eclectic selection of British wildlife. Unfortunately more often dead than alive. Like an endless but rather patchy scarf out of feathers and fur they were decorating the shoulders of the road. There were the obligatory rabbits and pheasants, of course, but one of these pelts strangely looked like the remains of a Wallaby. Another one like a chamois. It may have been the Leicester panther. Or the Cambridge tiger. Or maybe Nessie. Who knows.
A minute before my scheduled arrival time, I decided just for the fun of it, to ignore my satnav’s instructions and to take a wrong turn. So far the first (and hopefully the last!) on this trip. This error of judgement caused me to enter a motorway and led to a detour of 20 miles (and a prolonged streak of foul language I shall not reproduce here).
By the time I arrived in Penrith, the trip meter, which I had set to 0 before starting in Switzerland, was now showing almost 1600 km.
The Adventures of Aramis 