Another trip to London...

Trips to London that include a visit to one of the main museums / theatre etc. have become a fairly regular occurance for me of late (see here and here). The ease with which I can do this by train is definitely one of the advantages of living here in Cambridge. This trip was actually to meet up with my brother on his way back from a business meeting. But while I was going anyway I thought I'd make a bit more of a day of it and went down in time to spend a while wandering round the London Aquarium. Unfortunately this is not free like the Science and Natural History Museums. But it was definitely money well spent. Amazing variety of sea creatures from all over the globe of all shapes and sizes, including this 'boxfish' which was definitely 1 of the odder things I saw swimming about:
Anyway, left there to find out that the downpour of rain that much of England suffered this morning had played havoc with the rail network and to cut a long story short my brother having got to his meeting near Swindon fine by train was having immense difficulty getting back again. In the end having wandered aimlessly for an hour or 2 past Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square etc. I sat and had a pint and some food watching the British Open golf in a pub near Leicester Square, and then gradually realising my brother wasn't going to make it in time to meet I made my way back to Kings Cross and the train home. So main purpose of the day didn't happen, but at least I enjoyed the aquarium! I've just heard that having tried to leave Swindon at around 2 my brother made it back into London at 9.30 ish. We don't seem well enough equipped as a country to deal with the sudden freak weather we've been experiencing - the rail network seems to be in complete disarray, Kings Cross was absolutely jammed with people (lots of them very irrate!) because all kinds of train services up to Yorkshire and the North-East were suffering major delays because of flooding around Grantham in Lincolnshire.

And it's on that cheery note that I'm going to sign off for the week to go off camping at the New Wine North conference near Newark, yes camping - in spite of this mad weather just described! Wondering whether we're being a bit daft! Looking forward to it though, we're meeting and camping with a load of friends from our church in Liverpool so it will be really good to have time to catch up with them as well as enjoying the New Wine conference itself. Hoping to pick up a copy of the new Harry Potter book on route to enjoy during the week as well. Just hope the weather isn't too awful and we don't get flooded out in the tent!