Wednesday Nov. 7th Bangkok
We had a late breakfast as we will eat later on the plane .
The car took us to the airport for our 13 hour flight to London.
The flight was good but long and we had to set our clocks back 7 hours. It was clear for a fair distance of the trip as we could see the snow on the top of the Himalayas, the terrain over Afghanhastan which is very rugged. As night fell we could see the lights over Moscow and we landed at Heathrow about 7:45pm. John & Diana were there to meet us which was really nice and it was nice to be able to talk to someone else. By the time we got to bed we had been up for 24 hours.

Thursday Nov. 8th
It is cold and overcast but the sun is trying to shine.
Our excursion for the day is a trip to Hampton Court and we met up with a re-enactment of some of the folks who lived here back in the 1600s -- namely King Henry V111, Lady Jane Seymore, Sir Thomas Seymore (Jane's brother) who waited on the king and the Dowager (lady-in-waiting to Lady Jane and the Grandmother to Queen Anne Bolyn). There were many school children there as well getting hands on instruction about there history hands on style. The kids were good believe it or not.
We got swept up in the excitement of Lady Jane refusing to accept a gift from King Henry and henry not being too happy about this at all.
In the afternoon we meet Henry again and he took the men in the group to the Privy Council for advice as Queen Anne has been accused of embarrassing her King and Country. The women in the group were asked by the Dowager for advice as she didn't know if she should betray her family and possibly lose here status in society if she sides with Lady Jane . Well we all know what happened to Anne and that Lady Jane becomes the next queen but they weren't that far in history. Henry later declared that Anne would be tried and if found guilty and that Jane would be the next queen as Lady Jane wanted to leave the palace without the kings permission.
We had so much fun being part of all the drama even though it meant running around the palace. We had a great tour of the palace and when we got outside again it was still overcast but not raining. We went back to John & Diana's for a great dinner, good conversation and then I fell asleep on the couch.

Friday Nov. 9th
It is cool and raining but the sun is trying to shine.
After breakfast we took off to Mark & Spencers to see if we could get a jacket for Eric and I have been looking for a camel hair coat for several years -- found one for me.
We had lunch out and then we packed up to go to Guildford to get our rental -- a white Ford Cougar. We said our goodbyes and were off to see the Browns (Eric's brother & family) . Alan, Allison and Holly live nearby in Pyrford and we were very happy to see them again.
We had an early night as we are still on Bangkok time.

Saturday Nov. 10th
Today we went to the theatre in Richmond with Alan and Allison to see the musical "Radio Land" which was really good. We even understood the jokes --lots of laughs and music from the 40s just as the war was starting.
Holly joined us for supper which was nice and had a good evening.

Sunday Nov. 11th
Rememberance Day
It is a gorgeous crisp fall morning and will be great for our drive north. We left about 10:30am with our destination Grasmere for the night. The drive through the countryside was beautiful and I thoroughly enjoyed the drive. We got to Grasmere about 4:30 pm and it is already dark. Will explore tomorrow if the weather is good.

Monday Nov. 12th
It is pouring rain and we stopped in Gretna Green for lunch and got to Margaret's about 3:30pm for the duration of our trip. Now we will spend time with the rest of the family here and then back home on Thursday Nov. 22nd.
Will talk to you after that so bye for now.

Judy and Eric