Londinium: Brass rubbing, Thames path walking and shopping

It was weird to be waking up in my own bed yesterday, and strangely part of me wished I was in a far away place with unknown adventures to be embarked on ahead of me. That lacking, I got up and did the gigantic mountain of washing up which has been accumulating because the dishwasher is broken, oh it's good to be home.

I had a look through my "brown sign symbols completed" and my "brown sign symbols not completed" lists and was immediately drawn to a praying knight in armour denoting brass rubbing in my "brown signs not completed" list. I really felt like some brass rubbing so I looked up where I could do it. I find it quite telling when certain types of attractions have their own brown sign symbol when you wouldn't even think they were popular enough to have visitors let alone a lot of them, like heavy horse centres for example, but I think it indicates so much about Britain's history and what is important in that history. Brass rubbing is just one of these types of attraction, so I wanted in.

Caving and flying (in more ways than one)

The main event today was caving. I know I know, I've already done a cave, but sadly I don't mean caving as in going underground and chatting to a miner about his work, I mean caving as in giving up, throwing the towel in, getting too hacked off for words and coming home. Technically I was supposed to be coming home on Friday for my pal Lau's big 3 0, but I was tipped over the edge this morning and it all got too much.

I did end up having a dorm to myself again, in fact I got the whole hostel to myself. I took the chance to talk all night on the phone and not do very much blogging or planning. Thus when I woke up this morning at 6.30 I had to get stuff done.

Rutland waterless activies

When I got up yesterday I had a bath, for an hour. Sounds odd but I seriously needed one, I have been showering you understand but a bath is a very different experience to a shower, so I lay in it for a long time and went wrinkly, then I was happy. Having it in a carpeted avocado suited bathroom is quite a weird experience though I have to say. I had a nice breakfast, but held back on yet another full cooked breakfast, just poached eggs this time. I thought this choice would be a small one, it wasn't, I think the eggs were laid by incredible chicken hulks, such are the gorgeous eggs you get in the country.

Waterways museum and hiding in hides

After Friday's day of rest I felt about a billion times better both in body and mind, and as I consequently had less trouble using my right leg I thought some gentle brown signing was in order. I would have liked to head up as north as Hull and do some industrial port attractions but on the way was diverted by a sign for a waterways museum which had the bonus of being located in a town called Goole.

The museum was the Yorkshire Waterways Museum and was an excellent little free museum hidden in the vast uninvitingness of a canalside industrial estate.

Mills and extremely painful country walks

As much as the Peaks are beautiful and full of things to do I thought I better branch out and head for Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire borders area. I've got quite a few brown sign types done now so I actually (shock horror) did some research into what there was to do around the area. I first headed for a wildlife park but in my eagerness I arrived like a right keeno an hour before opening time so had to sacrifice that one and head off on the rest of my brown signed day.