Area 51: Lyndhurst

He woke me up again which is becoming tiresome and I told him to go away. But yet again we had things to do and places to go and this time it was to meet up with old-timer 'Grandad'.

He lives in a mansion now so we got the gate and door-opening codes right second time and opened his door and there he was, and then the postman gave us his mail which is understandable as we all have the same first initial and surname so how was he to know, really.

Grandad enjoys the 19th century but has a digital camera so while Bud deleted all the pictures he had taken of his own fingers and saved all the pictures of Venice, Germany and all the other places he went to on cruises, Grandad taught me maths. He really can't help it, and this time it was areas and circumferences and we sat in his office and guessed about square inches.

We always have to go somewhere so even though Grandad had already chosen Nomansland, we drove to Lyndhurst, which is never a good thing. Because of the 1-way system of road management in Lyndhurst, it has consistently been voted crappest town to drive through ever, so we got stuck in the jams well before meeting the main triangle of the town. Finding a side street to park in, we walked in and joined the rest of the tourists who were busy outnumbering the locals.

Lyndhurst is a pretty town on a little hill in the middle of the New Forest and while a lot of it is very old and a lot of it is very new, most of the high street seems to have been built between 1905 and 1910. Next time we'll have to go into St Michaels' church, for they have a very good roof.

Now, you don't have to be rich to live in Lyndhurst but it helps. The car shop sells Ferraris and Maseratis and similar models and that's where Grandad got locked in once when the security barriers activated and trapped him. Next to it is an alleyway to Coles Mead recreation ground which is a good park with a Pirate ship and some climbing frames and skatepark and zipline that doesn't zip very well and it was all soggy and muddy and some horses eyed us balefully as we climbed around translating miles into kilometres, something else Grandad was teaching me that day.

I chose 'The Mailman's Arms' pub for lunch which was not necessarily the right one and I had a burger while Grandad was defeated by Nachos. Refreshed, we hit the shops which are geared for the transient tourist trade and full of quaint boxes of cookies with New Forest ponies on the front and twee bottles of beer with names like 'Old Piddler' and numerous other tat that our brains don't even allow us to see like solar-powered dancing Elvises.

But the last one was the best - Lyndhurst Antiques, right on the major road junction that causes so much strife for miles around. I discovered the basement with the coins and gunshells and swords and Nazi memorabilia and we spent so much time marvelling at them, Grandad thought we'd gone and left the shop. We bought 2 bags of coins from the little locked cabinet on the right and will probably have to sort out the whole collection tomorrow as it's getting cumbersome.

But time was running short, so with only passing tuition on naming parts of a ship, penny farthing design challenges and the disadvantages of Imperial units, we dropped him off at his manor and he gave us last years' calendar with its striking images of Angkor Wat.

In swimming, there were only 2 of us so we got lots of attention and Bud did 100 lengths and we ran 2.75 km and no, I didn't translate it into miles.