Today we are bound for Switzerland. Our first stop is the town of Montreux on the shore of lake Geneva. It’s a lovely afternoon.

The lake is quite choppy.

The famous statue of Freddie Mercury.

Lovely old market hall.

Like most Swiss resort towns, Montreux has a casino. You can wander in and watch the gamblers playing roulette and blackjack.

We’re not here for gambling however. British rock band Queen did a lot of their recording here, and there’s a Queen Experience exhibition in the casino.

There’s lots of memorabilia, and a tiny theatre where you can watch a film about the band.

You can even have a go at mixing a Queen track yourself. Here’s Val in the studio.

After all that excitement we were hungry and thirsty, and we found a splendid pub for dinner.

Tomorrow is looking like a wet day, but we’ll try to get out and about nonetheless.

We’re off to visit Emily as we haven’t seen her since April. First stop is Brockham in Surrey to collect Colin. We stayed at a super little b&b overlooking the village green.

We had a lovely dinner at one of the village pubs.

And a few beers at the Tap House.

The next morning the three of us set off for Fareham in Hampshire. We met Emily and caught a bus to nearby Gosport, where we caught a ferry.

The boat takes us across the water to Portsmouth.

From Portsmouth we walked around the coast to Southsea. There’s a really good museum here which tells the story of the allied landings in Normandy in 1944. This landing craft took part in the invasion. It still carries its Swiss made anti aircraft guns, visible pointing skywards at the far end of the vessel.

A long beach leads towards Southsea pier. I was surprised at how few people were around on such a nice day.

We had ice creams on the pier and headed back to Fareham by taxi. We enjoyed a night out with a Chinese buffet and a few beers. A very nice couple of days.