First Day to London

Off to London!!

So Thursday morning, we got ready and walked up to the bus stop at Morrison's (3/4 mile) to catch the X1 bus to Kettering train station. We got on this bus at 9:30 and arrived at 9:48, barely enough time for us to print our tickets and get to the platform for the 9:59 departure. (some nail biting involved)

Now, an aside to all of this expedition is that, on Tuesday night, Abigail well and truly sprained her ankle running around outside. Wednesday, we took it easy, giving her lots of ibuprofen, and putting on ice packs. Anyway, we couldn't really cancel the trip because Bill had purchased the train tickets online Tuesday (bigger discounts purchasing early), as well as tickets for the London Eye (very expensive) and we were not about to waste that money. So he had to piggyback her up to the bus stop, and around the train station.

We boarded the train - it was PACKED!! We had to walk around a few coaches before we finally figured out our reserved seats were in coach C. Of course when we got there, other people had sat down in them, so we had to nicely ask them to move. For the most part, they did with apologies, except for one older woman who then began a politely toned diatribe on "the old days" not being like that (having reserved seats purchased ahead of time and making people move out of them). Someone gave up their seat for her, but she of course couldn't get past the "old days". Anyway, it is no easy task to travel with 3 little ones, so no one should begrudge us reserving seats. In fact, it seems as though a lot of smart people reserve seats, and folks would do well to do so.

Arriving in London, we got off at St. Pancras, the train stop for all the East Midlands trains, and got on the Tube for a ride to Waterloo station - near the London Eye. Upon reaching there, we stopped in at Burger King for lunch. I can't believe it - here I am in London and where am I eating????? Ah, what we do for our kids!!

We then walked out to the London Eye and took a truly spectacular ride around this wheel to view London. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day - we could see for miles. Abby is pictured above with Buckingham palace above and slightly to the left of her head, and there is also a shot of Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey (with slight glare from the glass).

After the London Eye, we sprawled out on the grass of the nearby park for some soft-serve ice cream cones. We then strolled down the riverside walk, looking at all the street performers, many of which were living statues of one kind or another. Then it was over the Hungerford Bridge to the West bank sights. (us pictured on the bridge)

A few blockes later, we arrived at Trafalgar Square. There was a huge festival going on there, with a giant TV screen showing the Olympics behind the column. We decided against going in the National Gallery - lots of famous paintings in there - for time's sake.

About this time, some rain started, clouds rolling in. Until then it had been beautifully sunny and warm. Out came our handy rain jackets and umbrella as we headed down Whitehall.

You can see here the clouds as we approached Big Ben and parliament. The passes to get into Parliament were all out for the day, so we headed across the street to go in Westminster Abbey. This was quite an incredible thing - amazing ceilings, tons of marble on all these tombs - medieval painted tiles, incredible thing after incredible thing. I did not see the no photography sign posted, so this picture was taken before the lady came over and stopped me.

We spent a couple hours in there and walking around the grounds of this very amazing structure. The kids were fascinated by the many tombs - the marble likenesses posed just so on top of all these tombs.

After Westmister Abbey, we caught the nearest tube to go to the Natural History Museum. We ate there in the family cafeteria-style restaurant before hitting the dinosaur display. We briefly detoured to the Creepy Crawlies, then went over to the dinosaur section - at the mechanized T-rex, Abby asked, "Is this real?" Fortunately, she was convinced that it wasn't, so no nightmares resulted. Then it was a rapid tour through mammals and into the huge elephant/whale hall before leaving.

It Then it was once again back to the Tube for our connection at St. Pancras train station. Once there, we approached the men at the trains with our tickets. They looked at them and told us they were for the 7:25, not the 7:00 like we thought. We were puzzled by this, but took their word for it, and went to sit down. A little later, when we went back to check the board about the train, we started realizing that we MUST have been on the 7:00 because of our seat reservations. When Bill took the tickets over to a different man to ask him, he said yes, we did have seats on the 7:00, but that the top of our ticket said super saver, which was why the other guys thought we were on a different train. He told us to get on the 7:25 anyway and go up to coach B. All of those seats were reserved, but happily, no one was taking them and the train was pretty empty, so we helped ourselves; it ended up working out OK afterall.

(us at St. Pancras train station)

Random Notes On Our Move to England

Things we did that were smart:

A few days before we left, we ordered British Pounds from our bank. Most airports, banks, etc, charge around 3% and we got a slightly better fee % than that. Not only this, but it was one less thing to do at the airport upon arrival and we immediately had pounds ready for taxi and food..

We ordered (from Amazon) some plug adapters for our electronics - camera battery charger, laptop, camcorder - (these already run on both 110/240 volts, so you don’t need a converter) so we were all ready to go without having to go to a store for that. We also bought Joseph a UK Nintendo DS cord (around $4). These were all cheap, and all our electronics are good to go.

We bought a Family Rail Pass. This pass saves you 30% at least on adult train tickets and up to 60% on child fares. We used this the first day of our arrival, and also today when ordering the train tickets for London.

I packed some trail mix and Cliff bars even though I knew we were getting food on the plane. As it turned out, these came in handy during our long morning and afternoon of travels north from London.

Neck pillow - I should have bought this years ago - I would have been much more comfortable on all those plane rides.

I packed our wonderful bath sheets (huge towels) and that was a nice little luxury to have right away.

Things I would Do Differently:

They always say to pack a change of clothes in your carry-ons, but I didn’t do this. Abby and Philip were the only ones with changes. We could have packed slightly better to include changes of clothes, although toiletries are a bit more of a hassle with the 3 oz rule. Still, I will probably do this from now on.

Observations on Corby:

The bus system seems to be very great so far. If you consider the cost of owning a vehicle - payments or maintenance if it’s older, insurance, gas, and general maintenance stuff like oil changes - then paying L1.50 to ride around the town for a day seems to be a pretty good deal. You would probably spend more than that in just gas going around to the different stores. Today I hopped on with my week-long pass right up from our home (1 min walking) rode for about 12 min up to Towne Centre, got off and shopped at TK Maxx for the mirrors I wanted, hopped back on the bus and rode another 12 minutes or so back to the stop with my purchases. I also saw several people getting on with babies in strollers and there is a place on the bus especially for them. There are stops in seemingly every neighborhood so wherever one would live, there would undoubtedly be one close by.

Almost all the buildings in this area are made of brick. Some are stone, but most are brick. Some modern structures are not, and are glass or concrete etc, but as you ride around the housing developments, they are all brick. Here at Brooke Weston, things seem to be made of concrete block.

EVERY intersection in Corby is a roundabout. The only stoplights are for busy pedestrian areas to cross the street.

The weather is very changeable. Sunday it went from light rain to sun about a dozen times throughout the day. Some days it is light rain in the morning, and sunshine in late morning and afternoon. The sunshine will be interspersed with clouds here and there. The cloud systems seem to blow through very fast. It is very handy to have a light rain jacket with you and just take it on and off as needed. So the raininess is not a constant thing, but just something that happens here and there.

Corby is opening a direct train to London on December 10th. Right now we will be taking the bus down to Kettering first, then catching the train. The Corby train will take 50 minutes to London.

Corby already has a large Swimming Pool and kids’ swim playground that we plan to visit maybe today. They are currently under construction for the Corby Cube - which will be an 50M Olympic size pool and sports complex.

Out To Explore Corby

So this morning (Monday), the kids and I took a trip up to Morrison’s (yes, yet another, but my first) and got a bigger order. We hauled this back in all our backpacks and such, which isn’t too bad. Bikes with the buggy should make that a lot easier down the road. After lunch, we went out to the bus stop very close to our bungalow and bought 7 day megarider tickets, which get us on any Corby buses, as well as the buses running to Kettering. Kettering is where we will catch the train to London; we have two days planned for sight-seeing this week. We rode up to Towne Centre to acquaint ourselves with the shops. Towne Centre was very much like an outdoor mall, with two levels. We went through a few stores to see what they were like, and went into a couple cell phone stores to get their booklets on phones and calling plans. Right now it looks like I will get an iPhone (free with monthly plan) and will have minutes, texts, and wireless internet access. We have to look at it a little closer first though. We will also be keeping the Orange phone that Blue Wave bought us - which is a Top Up & Go type.

Then we went up to the second level where the Corby library was and registered for cards and got in some much-needed internet use. Online we bought our train tickets for both Thursday and Saturday trips to London. I also checked out every book on London that I found in the library!

Church

Our morning venture out was curtailed by my sudden onslaught of nausea. We would have had to walk, and I was breaking out in cold sweat, shaking, and feeling like puking. This passed after about an hour and then I was totally fine - very WEIRD!!!! Anyway, after lunch we went out to King’s Wood, a nearby nature reserve. I stopped in the reserve with the kids to eat our snacks while Bill went up the road to see if the church was where we thought it was on the map. When we met back up, he was on the phone with the pastor, who decided he was going to come pick us up for their evening service.

At the evening service, Pastor Pavitt gave a message from Acts - nine basics that Peter taught. It was as if he were giving a statement of faith in that message. The entire time, I couldn’t help but feel that the Lord had led us pretty much right to that place. This church uses and defends the KJV, and he preached out very strongly against things going on in English churches - like TULIP (Calvinism), other religions, etc. I can’t believe we have found a place like this on our first try. He said that Pastor Tooley of Kettering Baptist is another church of like faith. This is the church we had researched on the web that we knew was of like faith. Not only that, but Tooley comes over to Lifegate’s Wed night service to be an encouragement, and those who can from Lifegate go over to Tooley’s service in Kettering on Thursday nights. Both of these churches are very small struggling works (we were half the congregation). Our visiting was a tremendous encouragement to this pastor, as he repeatedly mentioned.

The pastor mentioned a few statistics in his message - there are only 5 English national pastors of like faith in all of England, and additionally there are about 40 missionary pastors, mostly Americans. England, which used to be a center of world missions, is now in need of missionaries itself. 58,000,000 people and so few gospel-preaching churches! These facts confirmed what we had found on the web. It seemed to us that most of the good churches in England were actually run by American church planters, and this is indeed the case.

Another interesting thing that occurred: Bill asked the pastor where he had received training, and during that conversation, the pastor mentioned that recently he had been studying at a seminary in Ireland. Bill immediately said “Emmanuel?” The Pastor said “Yes!” and said he knew Dr. Strauss, and so they chatted about that mutual acquaintance for a while.

Although I think we will at least visit over at Kettering Baptist, this church could well be the church we settle at. Before coming here during those couple months, I just always had a feeling about church over here - that we would somehow be helping out a small, struggling church. I’ve had a very particular burden and the events of these past months and days just seem to be intensifying how I think the Lord is leading us. We will see......

On To Brooke Weston

Next morning we again had a great breakfast, then got ready to leave. We took a hackney carriage taxi piled with all our stuff up here to Brooke Weston. We unloaded and Bill went to find someone to let us in the bungalow. We then spent the day basically unpacking and settling in and determining what we needed. Bill took a walk with Joseph and Abby up to Morrison’s (about ½ mile walk) to get some basic groceries.

The bungalow is very small (compact) with 3 bedrooms, one bathroom, and a separate toilet room. I guess having a separate room for a toilet is pretty common over here. It was obvious to us that someone had shopped for basics for the house. Right away, I recognized the George brand common to Walmart - towels, etc. This was very thoughtful and much appreciated. It also seems very utilitarian, as the walls are all cream, and the carpet is all beige and there are no decorations. Of course I will have nothing until our stuff is shipped, so utilitarian it will stay. We also will only be in here for a few months, so there is no reason to really do anything about that. The one thing killing me right now is that there is no internet here in the bungalow, a serious cramp in my life.

Next day we decided to brave the elements and went out to see what catching the Corby bus would be like. We were told about an ASDA Walmart on the north side of Corby and decided to go up there, use the internet at McDonalds, then pick up some basics for the house. The Corby bus was very easy to catch up by Morrison’s, and all-day passes for our family cost 3.80 pounds. We stayed on the bus, and sure enough, it stopped right there at ASDA. After using the internet
for a brief time, we did our shopping at ASDA. Instead of blue (US Walmarts), everything is bright green. This was the equivalent of a supercenter and had a pretty extensive food section. I finally got my blowdryer, a 2200W ionic BaByliss for 16 pounds. Our bus back stopped at Town Centre, where I noticed a TK Maxx - no kidding, tons of other shops, a huge Costa Coffee shop, and the department store T J Hughes in a large shopping complex called Willow Place. We will go up to Town Centre sometime in the next few days to look at all that stuff. The Corby Swimming Pool is also there and we’ll take a look at that too. We then switched buses to get line 6 coming back to Great Oakley and snagged a timetable, which looks incredibly helpful.

Styles Lodge - 2 Nights

Upon arrival our hostess was wonderful to us. She offered to make us dinner there that night, which we were glad to do. This lodge was a very large old home renovated and our rooms were very nice. The kids were enthralled by the two horses they had in the back pasture, as well as the next door neighbor’s dog and 2 puppies. We all sank into sleep VERY early that night - 9:30 or so, which, that being 4:30 ET is quite amazing. The kids were still sleeping when we woke up around 10:30 the next morning, which anyone who knows us well knows is earth-shattering! We were served a full breakfast to order - wonderful! We chilled out in the rooms for a while, then decided to go out for a walk late afternoon and get food in the nearby town for dinner.

The road immediately out from the lodge had no sidewalk and plenty of traffic, so we were being very careful with the kids. At one part of the road, Philip, holding Bill’s hand stepped into the grassy side, and fell into some stinging nettles. He lost his shoe, so Bill had to fish that out and got stung all on his arm. So both Bill and Philip had these stinging bumps up and down their arm. We watched them carefully as they swelled up, but then decided they were in no immediate danger. So on we went, soon hitting a nice safe sidewalk, and walking into the town center. There were a variety of restaurants, all of which were closed until 6pm. The only thing open was a fish and chips place. We first went to the pharmacy and bought some cream recommended for stinging nettle and smeared that on Philip and Bill. Then it was lots of fried food for dinner. It appeared as though there was an award winning Thai restaurant in Rothwell, but we just couldn’t wait until 6 to eat. After walking home, we sat in the garden while the kids ran around and waited for our baggage - that came around 7:30pm.

The Flight Over

The Flight Over:

So we arrived at Boston Logan plenty early for our 6:30pm flight to JFK. Then of course that flight was delayed. We had plenty of time to buy dinner and neck pillows. When we arrived at JFK (late), we then learned that we had to change terminals. This came as quite a blow, since we were lugging 8 carryons and three kids. Joseph and Abby each had a backpack and were carrying one other thing. Philip was supposed to be carrying his backpack, but it never quite worked that way. So Bill and I bore the brunt of that. We had to go OUTSIDE the one terminal, walk down a 1/4 mile sidewalk to a different building, then go up an elevator, walk a few hallways, then down another elevator, etc, before finally arriving at the international terminal. We raced around looking for Virgin Atlantic, and luckily decided to ask the people at the check-in counter if we OK to just go to boarding. They then took our boarding passes and must have logged us in as “there”, then told us to go through security. We were very nervous at this point, but they were expecting us at the gate, and they were holding that plane. We had to go through all the passport checking and stuff, and finally got on the plane.

Once on this huge plane, we were again delayed due to an electrical failure. Philip conked right out, but Joseph and Abby got right into the movies offered. They served a not too bad dinner - although it was so late that I hardly felt like eating. The kids also got nice dinners. I couldn’t keep my eyes open and finally succumbed to sleep, using my handy neck pillow and the eye mask that they provided. It was restless sleep at best. Bill slept not at all, and Joseph and Abby only a little.

When we arrived at Heathrow, we were bumped right through to the beginning of the customs line by a nice lady, bless her. The kids were cranky, and I think she felt bad for us. After that, we went to baggage where we heard our names paged and discovered that our bags had (of course) not arrived. Now this is somewhat inconvenient - not having clothes, toiletries, etc, but it ended up being a huge relief because this meant we did not have to lug 10 additional HUGE bags out to the taxi area, or around the train station. Our taxi took us to St. Pancras train station where we ate lunch, then boarded a train. There was absolutely nowhere to put luggage on that train, so I don’t know what we would have done if we had actually had those bags! We ended up having to change trains at Leicester to get on the train stopping at Kettering, and almost left Joseph’s violin on the train - some nice person noticed it and rushed it out to us before the train left!! Then at Kettering we caught another taxi to Styles Lodge in Rothwell.

Notes for future travel:

It might be worth the extra money (especially for a family with young children) to get a direct flight out of the US, therefore starting at the international terminal and eliminating the switch. A flight from Boston to Ireland and then on to England might work out OK, but from now on, I am going to try my best to start at the international terminal in Boston.