We got woken up far too early by the guard banging on our door with breakfast. (well, tea or coffee and a cake anyway) Jo couldn't find the light switch and was fumbling around trying to get some light on the situation so she could open the door. We had a while in Euston before the train left again and as usual we used all those minutes up.

When we got onto the station we blearily made our way towards tea and coffee. After this second shot of caffeine we felt better and wandered off in search of a park to waste a bit of time before going to see St Pancras Chambers. As usual things didn't quite go to plan. We didn't have a map and the sign pointed the wrong way out of the tube station. Therefore by the time we got to the park, we only had a few minutes left before we had to leave again. Still, it was nice being in the sun relaxing with Phil and we wrote a couple more postcards.

We got to St Pancras Chambers just in time (as usual). It used to be the Midland Grand Hotel in the time of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (Steam days :-) ) It was a very strange place but was absolutely fascinating. In Jo's opinion this is because, when you got round country houses and things, they have all been restored and are all shiny and polished and like new. St Pancras chambers hasn't been used for many years so the marvellous decoration from when it was a hotel can still be seen in the state it was in when it finished being functional and closed down. This made it a lot more real and easier to relate to. It must have been a very grand place and even now there is still some of that atmosphere left. It is very hard to describe but we urge everyone to go and see it if they can, especially as there is talk of restoring it to how it was and using it as a hotel again. (It's a grade I listed building so they have to restore it back to how it was (although we hope they put guest rooms on the side with a view of St Pancras station, and not just servants quarters and cleaners rooms that were there before)).

After that, we rather foolishly (given the time we'd got) went out to Greenwich on the docklands light railway because we knew there was a good Chinese restaurant there. For the first time Jo really saw what the big problem with the railway and the speed restrictions due to heat was all about. You could (in places) actually see where the rail had been bent out of shape due to the heat. Lunch was very nice, it was an eat all you want Chinese buffet and they had loads of different stuff, especially prawn things and nice hot and sour soup (Very important for Jo) but by now we were seriously running out of time and eventually got to Mamma Mia about 10 minutes late, exceedingly hot and exhausted. Still, it was worth it. The show was very good and Jo got a bit emotional about it. It is all about a Greek girl who is getting married and invites the three men who might possibly be her dad. Her mum doesn't know they are coming until they arrive on the Island. All sorts of romantic entanglements, cross words and happiness emerge from it all, with a surprising ending consisting of my favourite of Abba's songs, I Have a Dream.

After that we had some time to kill before the train we were booked on departed. London, nice as it is most of the time, is not a good place on the hottest day of the year when you haven't much to do. We went down to the embankment in the hope that it might be cooler by the river and sat down in the park full of random statues and talked for a bit. However it eventually got too hot and we went on a quest round the local shops for a bottle of water that was actually cold and hadn't been put on the shelf 5 minutes previous. We found one eventually (and some fizzy stuff for Phil) and headed towards Euston. When we got there we were not really surprised to find that the train was delayed so we wandered off to a local pub recommended by uk.railway, The Head of Steam. It was a nice little pub full of railwayana and reasonably priced drinks. Unfortunately while we were there, our train turned up a bit earlier than the advertised (delayed) time so it came and went without us (oops) We didn't have to wait too long for another one but since it wasn't technically a Coventry train it wasn't going to connect with the replacement bus at Nuneaton. However when we got to Nuneaton, late in the evening which was dark and getting cold, with heavy bags (and we were the only ones to get off) the station master obviously felt sorry for us because rather than make us wait, he put us in a taxi which we managed to persuade to take us all the way to our house rather than to Coventry station.

We arrived home tired and happy and tumbled into our own bed.

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