It’s a relatively short post from me this morning; my Friday in London (including my intended dinner at Roast last night) was derailed by a minor medical issue for which I needed to seek treatment yesterday: and while the NHS is excellent, and while Australians can receive basic treatment in the UK at NHS facilities for no charge (thanks to an agreement between our governments), the flipside is that most of a day was spent just waiting at the Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith…

…for what turned out to be a straightforward ten-minute consultation.

If that’s the worst travel story to emerge from this trip, so be it…last time I was in London I did something to the meniscus in my left knee, and spent the entire week in agony every time I tried walking anywhere, so one could say I’ve gotten off lightly this time around in relative terms.

But the airline I chose to travel to the UK with did me what increasingly appears to have been an inadvertent favour a few weeks after I booked my ticket back in November: it delayed my return flight to Australia next month by 24 hours, and while that means an extra night in the Heathrow Airport hotel I’d booked to make a 9am departure reasonably straightforward, it buys me an extra day on which I can head back into central London and do whatever I missed out on doing yesterday.

And I have a couple of other things to tell about my week thus far, which I may still post once I’m on the road.

But today brings adventure and challenge: I’m shortly packing up my stuff and returning to Heathrow to pick up a hire car, then coming back to Chiswick to pick up my luggage before hitting the road for the first time this trip, with tonight’s stop being Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent.

Uncle Google suggests the Heathrow to Chiswick drive is a very straightforward one indeed; we’ll see…and it doesn’t appear all that much more taxing to get out of London if I manage to pull that one off, either.

Famous last words?

If people never hear from me again on this site, take it as a given I’m missing in action somewhere, although I seriously don’t think that’s likely.

Either way…watch this space 🙂