Seven glorious days catching up with 3 lots of different friends - how we have looked forward to this!

Our " friends week" began with Phil and Linda picking us up at Heathrow and whisking us away to their beautiful home in the little village of Badlesmere Lees near Faversham in Kent . We enjoyed exploring Kent with Linda, and Philip's Yorkshire pudding was legendary. Loved dinner table lively conversations, with now adult daughters Inken and Issie and their partners.

Then it was off to West Earling in London for a catch up with Graham, Rachel and their boys Elliot & Evan and to meet their daughter Ilsa who wasn’t even a twinkle in their eye when we visited last time. We spent a lovely day at Kew Gardens making the most of a warm sunny day. When discussing our trip we mentioned we still needed to purchase waterproof snow pants and asked where we should go to do this. Graham and Rachel kindly lent us theirs, so one less job to do. Thank you so much Graham and Rachel! We'll post back to you from Norway. 

A picturesque train trip took us north to Lincoln for our final friends catch up with Martin & Heike. The weather continued to be kind as we walked the wall around Lincoln Castle and visited the new Magna Carta vault. The Lincoln museum is a must see. It’s free and has an amazing amount of well presented “way of life” history.

Heading to the train station with Martin, Heike and Avan, to catch a train to Edinburgh, I had a mishap. Somehow the pavement came up to meet me - in no uncertain terms. Managing to split my forehead open, I left quite a calling card of blood behind to mark the spot. 

Conveniently this happened outside Lincoln Police Station with three detectives arriving to assist and phone for an ambulance. The ambulance was a car with one operator. We don’t have that option in Australia but it makes sense for an accident of my nature. After ascertaining my spine and bones were OK, I was seated in the car and bandaged then taken to Accident and Emergency to get my head stitched.
 
Four hours later and sporting 5 stitches and a rapidly blackening eye, Martin and Heike very kindly took us to the train station of a neighboring town to finally catch a train to Edinburgh. A kindly ticket office person wrote a note for the train conductor to give permission for us to travel on the original ticket.

A good night’s sleep in Edinburgh and a leisurely renewing of our previous acquaintance of this beautiful city took us up to the departure time of our much awaited Expedition Cruise of Norway Fjords and the Arctic.