No white Xmas for us!

Depends on just what your definition of a "White Xmas is" - but I would have to say that we didn't have one. Most of the snow in London had disappeared by the time Christmas Day came around - although there were pockets of it remaining and patches of ice everywhere. Probably just as well really, because we had to walk a little way to an East London pub on the Isle of Dogs in the Docklands for our lunch - and it was easier to trudge there than it would have been with snow underfoot. However, we
went to Windsor on the train just a couple of days before and it was still snowed in - we could see why there had been problems at the nearby Heathrow Airport as we could immediately see that the snowfall in this area must have been considerably heavier than what we got in East London. Our time in London is coming to an end now - it has been unfortunately slightly marred by my head cold which is into it's 11th day!!

We have mostly been able to do all we had planned - the most significant things (and I am sure the things we will remember most in times to come) being our long walks in the snow in Greenwich Park and Regents Park, our attendance at the Xmas Pantomine "Jack and the Beanstalk", our Xmas lunch in a Docklands pub, our trip to see Windsor Castle - and we are yet to do our favourite activity when in Britain, feeding squirrels with peanuts in a local park. (We'll do that on our last day after we have packed our bags - which are becoming alarmingly swollen). My biggest disappointment on this trip to Britain - is the lack of bird song in the Winter. I had not thought of this before - but one of my most loved things here in the past has been the songs of the British birds. There are a number of them with canary-like songs and I usually hear them almost as soon as we arrive. But that has usually been in Spring and Summer. We will be soon going down to Hampshire to stay with our friends B&G for a few days - who we have stayed with many times before - and are looking forward to that. Then we are back to sea on P&O Arcadia. We are a little hesitant about this sea voyage - we will be at the mercy of the Atlantic Ocean for 6 days before we reach the Caribbean area - and it has not been looking good on the various "wave height" forecasting websites. We weren't really able to acquire any sea-legs on the way over - because the seas were mostly calm. Methinks this voyage is going to be different.