Cousins

Campsites in London are rare but very conveniently for us there is one in Abbey Wood. It's just a short walk down to local shops and the mainline station to central London.

It also happens to be just 1.1 miles walking route (according to TomTom on my iPhone) from Ray & Nina. So on our first full day in London we walked round to see them in the afternoon. They dropped us off back at the van (photo above) and later Denise picked us up and took us to eat with her and Roy. Ray & Nina joined us later and gave us a lift back in the evening.

The next day the plan was to get a bus to visit Pat & Sylvia. We should have got the local bus that would have dropped us off outside their house. Instead we ended up on a bus to Bexleyheath clocktower and had to walk down The Broadway. I didn't mind this as it meant re-familiarising myself with Bexleyheath. For any readers who don't know: this was were I lived before moving to Yorkshire in 1980.

In those days they didn't have tables and chairs outside cafes. I'm not sure they even had cafes.

Pat and Sylvia took us out to lunch (shame there are no photos) and then dropped us off at Bexleyheath station so we could get a train to Wallie's

At Lewisham (unrecognisable) we caught a 47 bus to go to Surrey Quays but a phone call told us Wallie had been taken to Guy's hospital. We stayed on the bus to London Bridge and went to enquire at Guy's reception. They had no knowledge of his admission and more phone calls established he was just on his way to St Thomas's

Guy's was my local hospital from ages 1 - 6 and as a child I was familiar with the ear, nose and throat department. It was in one of these older buildings, the new ones above didn't exist.