In London, we stay overnight with an old friend of mine from home on some very dubious sheets of his, then spend the morning admiring/being insanely jealous at the pomp and ceremony of the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace.

It’s just as we’re admiring Westminster Abbey and Big Ben in the afternoon that the air is suddenly filled with sirens and the roads jammed once more with police and emergency services after a fresh bomb scare, and Kylz and I decide for the second time in four days that perhaps London just isn’t the place for us.

Now, in Australia one is used to sweating up a storm, but it’s not quite what I was expecting of London. Hefting our not inconsiderable packs (girls never can travel light), we make a mad dash for a bus that is leaving in approximately three minutes from a station that is approximately three miles away.

At last, praising the miracle that is air conditioning, we fall into the bus in a heap, but our relief is shortlived when Kylie suddenly spots a blotchy red rash on my forearms and promptly diagnoses me with meningitis. Just as she is dashing down the aisle to inform the driver that we’d be making un unscheduled stop at the emergency ward, it dawns on me that my ‘deadly rash’ is nothing more sinister than the red of my shoulder bag rubbing off on my skin.

And so to Cambridge.