Just catching you up on what we’ve been up to the past few days.
Wednesday
We got tickets for the open top bus tour around London and it happened to rain fairly heavily all day. Of course. It took us through lots of Monopoly places (Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Bond Street, Oxford Street, Fleet Street, Strand, Marylebone, Mayfair, Park Lane – I’m sure there were more), past the Houses of Parliament, Hyde Park, St Pauls Cathedral, over London Bridge, the Tower Bridge to the Tower of London. We spent a couple of hours there, saw the Crown Jewels, instruments of torture (that was fun), an exhibition on Henry VIII and his armour/weapons etc. Then we headed up the Thames by ferry to Greenwich, where we met up with Rosanne and Jon Brand - Rosy auditioned me for the radio station back in 1995 and we worked together at the AFP for the past 2 years. They live in a townhouse right owned by one the members of the Hollies right at the Greenwich pier. Rosy took us through the Royal Naval College, the Royal Observatory and the Royal Park Greenwich. It’s a beautiful place and if we were to live in London, Greenwich would probably be the place. Macca’s for dinner – at least the kids liked it.
Rosy took this typical Lovett family portrait at the Royal Naval College – Anna at her best:
This is Anna and Jack straddling the Greenwich Meridian – one foot each in the Western and Eastern Hemispheres:
Thursday
We went for a big walk through Hyde Park, stopping at the Italian Gardens, the Peter Pan statue down the Serpentine via the Diana memorial fountain, watched some soldiers being trained to do show jumping (yes, with horses), through the rose garden (which is absolutely stunning), then through Green Park to Buckingham Palace (just in time to see the changing of the guard), then round to Westminster Abbey. We had planned to go in, but they charge £30 for a family just to go inside, so we ended up giving it a miss and moving on to the Houses of Parliament. Pretty worn out by this stage, so hopped on the Tube back to Paddington and had a nice dinner at an Italian place near the hotel.
Friday
Packed up, then while Carolyn took the kids to a park I headed off to Marble Arch (about 30 minutes walk) to collect the car. After a while I realised that I couldn’t find the place so I called them and discovered that it wasn’t at Marble Arch at all, but actually 2 blocks from our hotel. Happy.
Got the car (VW Passat) back to the hotel and packed it (glad we organised a wagon – oops, must call it an Estate!) then headed off toward Lincolnshire. Carolyn nearly had a fit when we drove past the Abbey Road studios and the crossing from the cover of Abbey Road. The rest of us had a good laugh. Had a lovely drive out of London past Peterborough and through lost of small congested towns (I probably won’t follow directions from Google maps again) to Manby in Lincolnshire, where we had a meeting with the school principal. The school looks ideal for the kids and we think they’ll thrive there. Rushed off from there to look at a house at Saltfleet – a converted granary, it’s fully furnished, so all we’d need to provide is sheets and pillows. There are other people interested in it, so we’re hoping we get it. Back to the school to continue the tour, then back to Saltfleet to settle in to the Crown Inn for the next week. They have karaoke on Friday nights - it’s very loud and the singing just gets worse as the night (and beer) goes on, but thankfully all those years of the kids going to sleep while we have band practice paid off and they went to sleep in a couple of minutes.
Saturday
In to Louth (the nearest town of significant size) to put in our application for the house and to have a look around. It’s quite a nice little town with a typical charming English town centre. We then headed North up the coast to Cleethorpes, just south of Grimsby. It’s a holiday town and was so busy we couldn’t find anywhere to park, so turned around and headed back to Saltfleet. We found a sign “To the Sea” so headed up there. At the end of the road we got out and walked up to the gate to find that the sea is about 2km further out – to get to it you have to walk across a lovely grassed area which was used for bombing training for the RAF in WWII, so is riddled with unexploded bombs, at least that’s what the signs say. There are lots of old RAF bases in the area, which were used as the launching areas for the Battle of Britain squadrons.
We headed south of Saltfleet to try to get to the beach, but ran out of time. More accurately, it got close to kick-off time for the FA Cup final, so we had to go back to the pub. The owner thought he’d do a promotion, so did up a sign saying that beer was £1 per pint off till the first goal. He was relieved when Everton scored the quickest ever cup final goal – after just 25 seconds.
We went in to Louth for dinner at a the Whyte Swanne Inn (established 1612) and I had the biggest roast dinner I’ve ever had.
Sunday
Up a bit later today then in to Louth to check out Hubbard’s Hills, a lovely park on the river which seemed to have attracted all of Louth this morning. 16 degrees and they’re out there in shorts (some of them even had the hankies tied at the corners for hats) thinking it’s hot. Back to the pub for a sleep in the afternoon, then we got ready to go to church. Thought we’d get an early dinner as church starts at 6pm, but do you think anywhere would be open serving food at 5? Of course not, so we ended up having Mars bars. We went to church at King’s Church Saltfleetby, which is pastured by the husband of the school principal. They meet in an old Anglican church building (it took them over a year to get council approval to use the building for a church!) and there were about 30 people there tonight as some are away for the half-term school break. The pastor spoke about how to know when God is leading you and I think he covered everything we’ve learned over the past year with getting here. It was very encouraging and confirmed for us again that we’re doing what God wants us to do. Still keen to find out how that is going to look!
This week, we’ll be organising school uniforms for the kids and hopefully signing a lease for the house in Saltfleet (we’re praying that we’ll get a quick answer from the landlord), possibly going up to York for a day and working out where to stay after this week – the Crown Inn is nice enough, but we’re keen to go somewhere else till we get the house.
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