Thursday 6 April

Today I had lots of free time till 5pm when I was meeting up with another friend who lives in London who I haven’t seen for a while.  So I had a nice relaxing morning at “home” and then set off for Turnpike Lane the Tube station I used to live near in search of the flat I lived in back in 87/88.

When I exited the station nothing looked familiar, it was really weird.  Obviously the park across the road and all the shops had always been there because they looked old, but I don’t remember them and I used to walk past that every day on the way to work and home again, guess it was just always dark!

As I walked towards Alison Road, somethings did look familiar, like the church on the corner of my road and the building that used to be my local pub, but now it’s a shop, shame!!!

Luckily the house I used to live in was still standing and looked familiar and I had flashbacks of lugging all my groceries and laundry up the hill all the way home.

Back on the main road I recognised the place I bought stuff like pots and pans and a jug etc, at least that was still there.

And I used to live above a shop just like this one for about a week when I first moved to London (top floor, a lot of stairs).

The grand old abandoned hotel was still there, but it doesn’t look any more utilised than back in the 80s.

As I still had a couple of hours to fill in before meeting my friend I decided to catch a bus back to the city so I could see everything I’d always been missing by travelling underground.  Luckily I didn’t have to wait too long for a bus that took me all the way to London Bridge.  I got to walk across London Bridge and saw Tower Bridge and the Monument.

I met my friend and we walked along the Thames so I could get a great view of Tower Bridge and actually walk across it!

  
We walked past the Tower of London, waited for an Uber to take us to a pub called Boot and Flogger where we had dinner.  It was a really lovely day and fabulous to have such a great walk and a catch up with my friend.