Day 2 London South East to Croydon

It's early morning and we're still in bed, woken by sunshine, bird song and the sound of trickling water - perfect! We're in Fiona and Brian's back garden in Hither Green but you'd never know that we're in busy SE London from the inside of a tent! Oh, we're obviously on a flight path too but living in SW London we're so used to planes coming into Heathrow that we barely notice them.

Went out for a pub meal with Pauline, Kim and Lorraine last night, great fun. Much talk of the Olympics and how Olympic fever and British pride following the Opening Ceremony has engendered more interest in the actual sporting events than we would have imagined. What on earth happened in yesterday's road race???

Plans for today? We're on holiday, so we're pretty chilled, not far to drive to Croydon so we'll probably go for a walk somewhere and Nick can play around with the camcorder. Crystal Palace Park maze?? That could be a very tedious bit of film to watch!

Delicious breakfast of bacon sandwiches - my favourite! Fiona and Brian have been such generous hosts - well done London South East, you have a pair of gems! Nick and Brian are busy setting up the camcorder, have decided that we'll need a detour via the Apple store in Bluewater later in the week to pick up a piece of gadgetry to play back recordings on our iPads. We hadn't anticipated that 'getting to know the geography of our region better' would involve the major shopping centres too!



Realised that Nick hadn't visited the maze at Crystal Palace Park, so set off armed with the aforementioned camcorder in glorious sunshine having packed everything into the car in pretty quick time.

Well budding film makers we're not but we had a laugh interviewing and filming each other on our history of Crystal Palace Park and Girlguiding UK's centenary celebrations and the maze. Whilst we were there the sunshine gave way to a chill wind and ever darkening skies, by the time we'd returned to the car the heavens had begun to open and by the end of the afternoon we'd had thunder, lightning, flash flooding and massive hail stone. Not a tempting prospect for camping!

We arrived to a very warm welcome at Radcliffe from Croydon Leaders and the management team. Judy and Judith helped us to pitch the tent (11 minutes today compared to 20 yesterday), treated us to a wonderful afternoon tea
of summer fruits, meringues and cream and then left us to enjoy the tranquility of this beautiful, hidden spot.

The rain has eased off this evening and it promises to be dry in the morning - hurray!