I found this tiny beach along a really wiggly road between Alghero and Bosa on the West coast. No showers. [View Full Entry]

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Here's the view from Tim's parents' house in Fuilla, in the very south of France (practically in Spain). We spent a lot of time on this terrace, mainly eating tasty food and drinking Muscat de Rivesaltes. This is an aperitif wine, so obviously it's very uncouth to be drinking it by the bottle, but the beauty of staying in a house in a tiny village is that there were no French people to see and disapprove! It was very sunny and lovely here, in contrast to the floods and gloominess back in Angleterre. [View Full Entry]

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I joined Lara for a tour round Sicily. We went to see the theatre and temple at Segesta, then onto the town of Erice, high up on a mountain with a lovely view of the North-East of the island. The next day we set off south to Agrigento, where we walked down the valley of the temples in the sunshine! From there, we went to Taormina and Giardini Naxos and even took a trip up Mt Etna in a jeep, but Lara was too scared of dropping me into the crater so I didn't have my photo taken there! Later in [View Full Entry]

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Lara took me on a trip to the Aeolian Islands. We went on a boat to the island of Lipari first, and then went to Vulcano. This not very imaginatively named island has a volcano which we walked all the way up... you could see into the crater, but there were vents at the top that smelt really horrible. The view of the other islands was really nice from the top though, and the sun even started to shine as we were walking down the volcano! [View Full Entry]

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I am on honeymoon! No, I have not got married that was Laura. I just decided to tag along! We have been touring Namibia which has been fun. We started in the capital Windhoek before heading north to Waterberg Plateau. After that it was off to Etosha for some wildlife spotting. We saw lots and of animals including lions and rhino. We took note of Tanja's advice and stayed in the car at all times hence the fact that none of us got eaten! Our next big wildlife spotting was at Cape Cross where we saw 200,000 seals! It was amazing [View Full Entry]

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Here I am in Lyon, which before I arrived had allegedly been having a beautiful heatwave. As you can see, this didn't last, but we still had a great time eating plenty of nice food. The old town is apparently the top place in Europe for restaurants per square mile. Eating out is very cheap here, which is good because you'll need lots of energy to climb the steps up to the Basilica (which Steph, having read too much Harry Potter, decided to call the Basilisk). My legs are too short for such an epic climb, so I was carried. Lucky [View Full Entry]

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The post docs decided to retreat to the Leicestershire countryside and I decided to retreat with them. Here are photos of me exploring the grounds. [View Full Entry]

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While everyone else in the lab was freezing cold in Cambridge, I was sunning myself in Lanzarote with Charlie. The weather was even better than predicted, but I did get a little bit too warm when I went to visit the Timanfaya National Park and ended up on the volcano grill! The ground is very hot in that area and a barbeque set up over a hole is hot enough to cook chicken (and me). I also went to the Jameos del Agua caves, created by the outside layer of a lava flow hardening into rock while the molten lava in [View Full Entry]

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This was my first time in South Africa and I was really excited about visiting the lions, but first I had to survive the dangers of Jo'burg! When I finally arrived at the safari (after scary Jo'burg) we went lion spotting and evil Sarah hung me out of the jeep to get a real close picture of me with them. He was looking very hungry!!! Next we went to Drakensburg, the world heritage site, and up the Sani pass in a 4 wheel drive jeep. After 4 hours we finally got to the South African border and entered into the kingdom [View Full Entry]

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We are in Lesotho having just crossed from South Africa. We have visited some local tribe people in one of their summer homes, they seemed very nice and we had some home made beer and bread. Now back to the jeep and down the Sani pass again. [View Full Entry]

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