Day 10 - Sunday 22nd May

Being creatures of habit, we arranged for breakfast at the B&B at 8am. Suzy had the granola again but I went for the Traditional English Breakfast option. It was very nice indeed. As I told our hostess later, Australians tend to knock English breakfasts but there was no way anyone could complain about what I had today. Her bacon, egg, sausage etc were perfect. Roy gave much of the credit to the quality of the local butcher they use.

After packing up and checking out, we left the B&B at 9:30pm. The first stop was a nearby town called Lymington where we had agreed to meet Nicky, John and Amelia at 10am. They had decided to have breakfast there rather than at their B&B. I didn't need anything to eat or drink because I had just had a big breakfast and so I took Amelia down to the old part of the town that had cobblestone streets leading down to the port.

The next destination was a town called Beaulieu where there is a motor museum. We didn't go to the museum. Instead, Suzy looked at the shops in the main street while I took photos of the lake, houses and castle.

The main event for today was to meet with Jane and Alan (Sarah's parents) for lunch. They live in Felpham near Bognor Regis. They had suggested that we meet at 1pm at a seaside town called Emsworth which is near Portsmouth and so is part-way between New Forest and Felpham.

We drove into the main street of Emsworth at about 12:45pm and saw Alan standing on the side of the road. We found a parking spot nearby and we all set off towards the water to find somewhere for lunch. We found a tiny cafe just near the wharf and had an enjoyable lunch.

It was a cold, cloudy day with a strong wing that reminded us of the wind on the evening we had arrived at Milford-on-Sea. After lunch, we went for a stroll past the mill pond, through the town and down along the jetty. The mill pond is like a man-made lake about 2m higher than the sea. On the sea side, there is a rock wall with a walkway on top.

The swans and ducks were taking shelter from the wind wherever they could. From time to time, it started to rain and then it would clear and turn into sunshine. The sailing club was running a charity afternoon tea and so we stopped for tea and cake.

At 3:30pm, we said good-bye to Jane and Alan to head back to London. The TomTom took us along the A3 and then to the M25 ring road. It was an easy run and were back at the B&B by about 5:15pm. We had expected there might have been heavy traffic - like you would expect  heading back to Sydney on the F3 on a Sunday afternoon.

We drove the hire car to Nicky and John's for a take-away Lebonese meal.