The forecast today was much better and so I had planned a trip uptown by train. Rather like the day that Colin and I went to Leicester, I had a full itinerary which started off by us heading to the Docklands to take the Emirates's cable car across the river to the O2 centre. This is such good value at only £3.50 to for a 15 minute journey across the river on the other side with amazing views towards the City and the other way towards the Thames Barrier. We recovered with a cup of coffee (and a teapot of hot water) and a flapjack in the O2 Centre and then it was onwards and upwards taking the Jubilee line to Canary Wharf. Here I planned a route walking around the city to look at the art installations some of which we had visited on Tony Hale’s walk a few weeks earlier. I even managed to get us access into the private building with the impressive glass sculpture which I thought mum would be interested in seeing. A little disappointingly food vans that have been in Cabot Square when we had visited a few weeks ago were nowhere to be seen today so instead we headed over the bridge towards the Museum of London for a snack in their cafe as Ian was not too keen on the spicy offerings in the food vans by the Dock - they did smell good though!
No rest for the wicked - we headed back towards to take the Jubilee line into Central London and managed to get caught in a brief shower that certainly wasn't forecast by the meteorological office. Now we were travelling to the final part of my itinerary at the Grant Museum near Warren Street tube. This is the place that I had planned to take Mum to for quite some time since Colin and I visited on my birthday back in February. I was right Mum was so impressed and despite the fact it is basically just one big room, we were there for well over an hour whilst she had in-depth conversations regarding the chemicals used for preservation of the exhibits!
We were tiring by this time and so started the journey back when Mum received a call from the medical team dealing with her current problems - not exactly bad news but she needs another battery of tests to ascertain exactly the course of treatment required. After such a good day and all the public transport running like clockwork, this was ruined at the last moment when our train broke down at Clapham Junction. We changed platforms but the journey took well over half an hour longer than it should have done and we were pretty tired when we arrived home but it was a great day.
