Scene One: Seen the Mall - 20 December 2008

Since the New Zealand shopping mall scene is dominated by the Australian Westfield group it seemed only right and proper that we should check out Europe's largest inner city shopping mall which opened a couple of weeks ago just a few train stops from home. Because it is in West London and because they are seeking to take business from Oxford and Regent Streets in the West End, they simply recycled the company name and called the new mall Westfield.

Given the proximity to the well heeled areas of Kensington and Chelsea they have created a luxury retail area with all the big names of everybody who is anybody in the luxury goods market. But, even with that, a mall is a mall is a mall and they seem to look the same whether they are in London, Paris, Milan, Kuala Lumpur, Los Angeles, Auckland or Melbourne.

Since the day had improved, and was quite mild out, we wandered over to Sudbury to climb what we suppose is Sudbury Hill. Surprisingly, at 91m, it is higher than others nearby like Horsenden Hill and Barn Hill both of which we explored very early on in our stay. This one, the nearest, has taken us 7 years to find and climb.