Swan Song.

22 May 2008

Tomorrow we catch Virgin Flight 23 at 3.10pm for LAX. So, that pretty much ends our few weeks in the UK.

We have sad and heavy hearts as we leave what has been a very comfortable home away from home indeed. J&L have been wonderful hosts. Our room was private and comfortable. We slept like the proverbial logs on our bed. In fact, we have spent rather a lot of time sleeping and resting; exhausted after all our walking!

We have done what we have always felt we would most like to do when visiting somewhere new; stay put and thoroughly explore that corner of the world so that we could say we knew it well. I think we can say we have and we do. It would have been nice to go further afield, but we would probably have been even more exhausted all the time than we were. Also, we would have spent MUCH more. This way we have had, what we consider the perfect holiday, and did it very economically indeed -thanks very much to J&Ls hospitality. As far as we are concerned, the house they had, just at the right time in their sequence of homes, was ideal for the sort of guests we think we probably were. For that we are very grateful. We could not have had such a nice time otherwise.


We walked up to West Malling this morning and posted off a couple of letters marking our last visit to that perfect Kent village. The weather is, again fine, sunny and perfect. I gather it will hold that way tomorrow as we entrain to Heathrow.

As I write this Barbara is sound asleep -it's 2.58pm! The house is quiet and peaceful on a drowsy summer like afternoon.

It's probable I'll post an epilogue after we arrive home in a couple or three days, just to conclude with a quick review of the flight home. We have an awfully long time to fill in at Papeete, so I'm not sure how we'll manage there. The airport is not inviting. Maybe we'll be able get out and take a quick look at the Island, but without visas it seems unlikely. I can read and Barbara has her trusty little radio -to which she is addicted, I may say.





So, that's pretty much bye for now. This is J&B signing off for the last time from Leybourne, West Malling in the County of Kent, England.