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Erika meets Rob, Kate and Felix

Posted on 2012/11/04 11:24:17 (November 2012).

[Saturday 3rd November 2012]
We decided to take Erika on her first trip out of London today, to visit Rob, Kate and Felix in Reading. It also seemed like a good opportunity to do a sort of partial trial run for taking Erika to Abergavenny to meet Vera and Robin, to see how she responded to being on the train for a longer time than she had been so far. She was pretty good in both directions, but I was a bit miffed at First Great Western who have over the years squeezed more and more seats into their carriages, and unlike the suburban trains around London (and even the tube) there doesn't seem to be anywhere you can sit down with a space beside you for the buggy. So we ended up standing in the end of the carriage the whole time.

Shortly after arriving in Reading we met up with Rob and Felix which was rather a special moment. We've known each other for 17 years (!) and it was hard to imagine back then we'd one day be walking through the streets of Reading with buggies with kids in. I also realised how remiss we'd been for not making the effort to go out to Reading to meet Rob and co before now - we hadn't seen Felix since we met up in St. Ives over two years ago. Unsurprisingly he'd changed a huge amount since then!

We stopped off at Wagamama to pick up some takeaway for lunch, and then headed to Rob, Kate and Felix's house where we spent the afternoon, which was rather lovely.

We headed back to London as it was starting to get dark, stopping off briefly at Paddington station to do a bit of shopping and take a picture with Erika and Paddington Bear.

After a quick dinner of spaghetting bolognese, we headed back out again in the evening to watch the fireworks display at Battersea Park. As always we didn't pay to get in, and instead just stood the other side of Chelsea bridge from there, which was a pretty good vantage point.