Leaving late from Edinburgh means arriving late into London City Airport. Unfortunately the car rental services were closed. Another sigh and a bunch of frustration. In the end we had to spend 180 GBP to take a 1.5 hour taxi ride from London City airport to Heathrow airport. But at least the car rental from Heathrow was less expensive than our original booking from City.

Ironically, we could have taken a flight directly from Edinburgh to Heathrow rather than City, but the journey to Frinton is about an hour longer from Heathrow than from City, so we had booked to fly to City. Why hadn’t we changed our flight to Heathrow that morning? That is life! Finally around 7 pm we arrived with Judith, Darren, Alex and his fiancé, Leah, in Walton-on-the-Naze.

This is the first time we had met Leah and she seems to be a nice young woman (she is 20) and we discussed their plans for a cruise in August as well as their current jobs (Alex is an apprentice at a real estate agency and Leah is working as an assistant to older people (eg., assisting them with daily needs in their homes).

We enjoyed the sunset and then visited for a few hours while we ate Thai food., then we were off to our AirBnB on the seashore in Frinton-on-Sea.

The next day we met Judith & Darren for a pub lunch. We then had a serious nap and a long walk along the seashore where I enjoyed taking photos of all of the colourful beach huts. Apparently these little beach shacks that have no water or electricity and it is illegal to sleep in them overnight. Yet they cost a minimum of 20,000 GBP with many listed for sale for between 30,000 to 40,000 GBP.

Judith & Darren came over to our AirBnB around 6:30 pm where we had a salmon dinner prepared by Master Chef David.

The next day we walked around Walton Naze Tower.

The present tower was built in 1720–21 by Trinity House, and was intended to work in conjunction with Walton Hall Tower to guide vessels through the Goldmer Gap. It is now surrounded by protected lands with hiking trails. There are several military bunkers here as this location is strategic as it is less than 90 miles from the Belgium coast, 115 miles from the Netherlands and only 300 miles from France by boat. 

That night we had dinner at The Victory pub with Judith & Darren.

The next day we took a walk along the High Street of Frinton. David and his family had a small trailer here that they visited in the summer when he was young so he was curious to see how things had changed over time. In his childhood he told me every car parked along the High Street would be a Bentley or Rolls Royce. Today not so much. The town still has many lovely, large homes including a number of interesting Art Deco homes, but there are also a lot of average apartments and the like.  David noted that there used to be a law that no pubs were allowed in the town.  Not true any more.  So perhaps it is not quite as exclusive as it used to be or perhaps David’s childhood memories are a bit more rosy than reality.

The night we popped over to Judith & Darren's to have a pre-dinner drink and then we had a nice Turkish dinner in town at Lara.  After our good-byes we packed up and the next morning we had an easy drive to City Airport, dropped off the car and flew back to Barcelona.