Friday 28 June - E here. I am writing for Jack as he seems to have been overcome with tiredness after walking the South Downs Way. Suspect that we walked around 70 km and my feet and I know it was a case of "downs" and "ups". Jack spent most the time out front with dad and even completed extra walks e.g. the Long Man, We were extraordinarily lucky and had good weather for the whole five days of the walk; most appreciated for the last day when we saw the chalk cliffs of the seven sisters (getting smaller due to erosion) and Beachy Head.

Said good-bye to Granny today, which was a bit sad, though did send her home with a very large blister to remind her of travels with us.

Have just had a lovely, lazy day in Eastbourne. I quite like the Regency and Victorian buildings along the waterfront and the sounds of a "Carpenters Revival" band playing at the rotunda on a grey, drizzly Friday night. The large numbers of grey headed people enjoying the sunniest town in England makes me feel quite young!

Rob not quite so enamored of Eastbourne and won't be retiring to here. He walked to the Port and found that there is a lock to go through before you enter the marina. He is slightly amazed by the groynes that occur every 20m or so along the pebble beach to stop it being washed away.

Two days ago we went on a train to Arundel so that we could start our walk on the South Downs Way.

We are staying at B&Bs. Some of then are really good but some are average.

Today we walked 20 km. Tomorrow we are doing 23 km :{(

Here are five good things about the walk: 

1 lots of live stock. 

2 seeing the bluey whitey sea. 

3 walking with dad at the front   

4 relaxing in the B&Bs 

5 seeing lots of hang gliders and paragliders at Devils Dyke

Today I had toast with paddington bear marmalade. After that we headed off to our destination - chaga chaga chaga chaga - till the very next lock - hour after hour. We went through a tunnel and I got to toot the horn. We found a stoat drowning in the water; we had to save it because they are native in Europe. So dad got the boat hook and saved it - how heroic.

E here - since Jack last wrote we have had two days on the Avon River and one of the Severn. We have now just spent a couple of days in Worcester. Such a lovely city. We went to yet another museum or two, Greyfriars house, the Cathedral (and some of us, including Jack, attended evensong) and did some long over-due laundry. England experienced a mini heat wave and we all got out our summer clothes. We are now left with just one more day on the canal.

Today we did the normal thing. But today we got an automatic lock. We weren't allowed to work it so the guy at the house did it for us :{( sad face.
There were two guys fishing. I watched them for a while. They used maggots. They were the colour pink. The guy fishing caught a fish, but it slipped out of his hands.
This afternoon we saw a seal or were we all just imagining? After that I wrote my blog. I wrote three lines in about "for ever too long" said Dad.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday happenings. We went to a Shakespeare place. There was a dress-up place. I dressed up as an little boy with tight clothes. The next day we went to a historic Tudor museum - sorry we have no pictures to show you. We saw a life buoy that said this saves lives - leave this alone... But there was nothing there. Weird really weird. Today we went to a sweet store. They sold all lots of sweets like garlic sweets, fart sweets and cheesy feet. I bought around 10 fart sweets; they tasted like licorice.

Today we did the normal thing - open locks. But then we got to Stratford-Upon-Avon. While we opened the gates in Stratford there were around 20 people watching (awkward). At the end of the day we picked up granny. She brought lots of cakes yummy cakes. We had mushy peas for dinner. They were yummy too.

In the morning I ate a turkey egg. It was really big and really really yummy. We went over an aqueduct. It was really high. We saw moles holes. They were very big and tall. I talked to Mr Nobody on the telephone.