A bright red beetle

Reading, I really like you. I wish you were a bit more amiable about renting us somewhere to live though. I guess we'll just have to wait until we have found ourselves jobs and try again.

We decided that we should just put the whole rental hunt on hold and see other parts of the country in case we had to alter our entire plans. So we left the cramped little icky B&B we had been staying in and got another rental car. 

The B&B was well located, close to the Thames Path, so nice riverside walks and about 1km to the town centre or maybe 2km in the opposite direction to Caversham and the best pub ! Baron of Cadogan - go there. It's a Wetherspoons pub and they have a great menu for meat eaters and non meat eaters. So great that we had dinner one night, breakfast the next day and then dinner again ! Why would you go out for breakfast when you are staying in a B&B ? Because the selection was rubbish and hardly appetising. We won't go into the other negatives like the stained linen, broken shower, bathroom door that wouldn't shut and security light outside the window which was more like a strobe light - I'm saving all that for TripAdvisor. 

We collected the car. A nice red beetle ! Very cute, but not quite as easy to get all our stuff in as the last one was. But we did it. We have been through a part of a number of counties today. Berkshire (where we started), Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and finally Kent. 

As we left Berkshire we went here, no time to go in or look at the gardens this time though. Did you know filming has started for Series 5 ?

In Surrey we found Jane Austen's house in Chawton, where she lived for the last 10 years of her life with her mother, sister and a friend. It is lovely, and without the hordes of people in Bath visiting her home there.

Then on to Royal Tunbridge Wells for the night. I had never had it on my list of places to go but now that we are here I think I will have to make a return trip with more time. We chose it because it is close to Hever Castle which we'd like to visit and some places in Kent which have family associations. But there are heaps of things to do and see; castles, gardens, coastal towns, cathedrals...

We enjoyed a nice dinner at a local restaurant and are now relaxing watching the opening of the Commonwealth Games. The B&B we are staying in tonight is at least a 300% improvement on the last one. Superb host, great room, the promise of an amazing breakfast. We'll definitely be back here.