Claire and Terry Hewitt
Hi! This is me and my wife, Claire. We're just(May 2006)in the process of renting out our house in Bedford UK, and setting off travelling for a bit. Yesterday we jacked both our jobs in (Claire's a Nurse, I'm a Train Driver)and hope to be away by the end of June. There's gotta be more to life than working, and we hope to be away off and on for maybe 4-5 years. Claire and Tel
The only concrete plan we have is that we have a flat booked in Goa for 6 months from the 1st November. We'll probably spend a few weeks in Ghana first, at a leprosy rehabilitation centre that her mum's friend runs. As soon as we leave work, our first stop is a bit nearer, a caravan in Snowdonia, Wales for a month. I need a bit of rehab myself to get over being stuck in a train cab for 6 years, and Claire's still recovering from a broken neck three years ago, so we both need to get a bit (ok, a lot) fitter. 4 weeks of walking and maybe a bit of climbing should help. Oh, and we're staying in the grounds of a pub, so now I've got no more random drink and drugs tests I'm sure we'll be getting to know the regulars there...
Anyone who wants to keep in touch with us can either do so through this site, or through our hotmail accounts: claire.hewitt@hotmail.co.uk and terry-hewitt@hotmail.co.uk (notice the dot in Claire's, dash in Terry's)
Travel Blog Posts
November 23rd 2010
Very quick entry this time, and vary late! In March I managed to get Claire to let me travel to India by myself for three weeks. Few days in Kolkata, then popped to Goa to see our friends Giane and Babu. Then Darjeeling for about ten days and back to Kolkata. Flew to Kuala Lumpur, met up with Claire flying in from Australia and then onto the UK for three weeks. Loved Calcutta despite the filth. Loved Darjeeling despite the clouds. Waited there for the weather to lift to see the famous view of the Himalayas. Never got to see it, they lifted the day after I left. Soon after our return to Australia, Claire rolled her car several times in the outback while working as a public health nurse. Suffered over 30 fractures and a ... read more
Settling into Alice!
Published: November 17th 2009Oceania » Australia » Northern Territory » Alice Springs
November 14th 2009
Getting a bit slack with the travelblog entries! Time's flying by, we can't believe we've been living in Alice Springs now for nearly 7 months. Mention Alice to people outside here and you normally get one of two reactions. Either you get told what a shithole it is and how you'll be stabbed, turned mad by flies and burn to a crisp, before finding out that the person you're talking to hasn't even been here. Or the reaction will be one of suprised enthusiasm for the town from someone who actually has taken the trouble to travel here. We've never been somewhere where so many people have turned up for a few weeks to work, and ended up staying for years. We keep wondering whether our enthusiasm will wear out, but it certainly hasn't yet, we ... read more
July 22nd 2009
Our 3 weeks with Clive and Vanessa here has flown by but we managed to pack loads into the time! They left yesterday morning and homesickness hit us like a tonne of bricks. I think it was just that they were going “home” and will be just up the road from all the people we are missing so much, today we are feeling much better again! So the guys arrived on the Wednesday, I had just finished nights that morning so managed to grab a couple of hours kip before driving out to the airport to pick them up. Alice airport is only a domestic one so when you collect people you can walk right through to the gate and see them get off the plane. I have to say we were bouncing around like ... read more
The Cucumber Packer and The Knackered Nurse!
Published: June 15th 2009Oceania » Australia » Northern Territory » Alice Springs
June 15th 2009
How time flies eh?! 7 weeks without a Blog!….Sorry! Well we are both still alive and kicking, just! This working for a living deal is not really agreeing with us! Well after an hour wandering round town and a couple of interviews well more like chats really, Tel found himself with a choice of a couple of jobs. He’s been into the thought of doing something that pays him but with no real responsibility, well not the “peoples lives” variety of responsibility anyway! So he has landed himself a job as a cucumber packer, not really just cucumbers but that’s his self appointed title anyway! He’s working for a wholesale fruit and veg place in Alice, they basically buy stock from Adelaide in pallets, pack it into saleable packs and distribute it to all the outlying ... read more
April 26th 2009
Meet Gloria, our gorgeous new neighbour. She lives on the bush outside and is an Australian Golden Orb Weaving spider. She's a pretty clever spider, her massive web is yellow colour to attract bees to it and she can change the darkness of her silk to suit local conditions. If the weather gets too windy, she can release some of the structure so the web doesn't get blown away. So that birds don't fly through it she's strung an extra few threads (about as thick as fishing line) in front of it and left some insect carcasses prominently on display to make it more visable, although one of her cousins in Queensland was filmed killing a bird by chomping down into its head. Fishermen in New Guinea actually use webs from a similar sort of spider ... read more
April 2nd 2009
Well, we finally made it….We are back in Oz!! After much stress, collecting together a ton of papers and information, having x-rays, medicals, blood tests, police checks, paying out almost 1000 quid and waiting the longest 6 weeks of our lives, we were finally granted a visa to come and work and live here! We arrived in Melbourne on the 25th March and, as we landed after 9 in the evening, decided to stay the night in the city before making our way down to Koo Wee Rup the following morning to see Tony, Val and Beau. And for our reunion with Tilly!! We have managed to catch up with most people in Melbourne in the last week, (sorry to have missed you Harley and Betty!) and, as always, had a ball relaxing with Tony and ... read more
Waiting for Alice
Published: February 7th 2009Europe » United Kingdom » England » Greater London » Crystal Palace
February 7th 2009
Well, its probably time for another blog although we're not actually doing a lot of travelling at the moment. Hopefully we're soon going to be moving to Alice Springs to live for a while and at the moment we're catching up with friends and family in the UK while we wait to hear about jobs and visas. We're hoping to be off in a few weeks, and although we're going to have to work in Australia it will still feel very different to our old life working in the UK. One bit of travelling we did do was with Claire's best mate Jemma up to a cottage in Derbyshire for a few days, catching our first snow in the UK for three years. Travelling around the world its easy to forget about whats on your doorstep, ... read more
December 14th 2008
Didn't want to mention in the last blog that the day after we arrived back in the UK from Hong Kong we were straight off again, this time back to Goa on a package deal for a couple of weeks. Didn't want to mention it because we were going over to suprise Giane and Babu, our friends that live there, just on the off chance that their internet connection decided to work and they read the blog and it forewarned them! Been a bit spoilt flying scheduled flights everywhere for the last three years, eleven hours cramped up on a charter flight wasn't one of our best experiences since starting travelling, it obviously wasn't too comfortable for our fellow passengers either, we saw two collapse on the flight and the flight attendent later told us there ... read more
November 28th 2008
Not having spent a winter in the UK for a couple of years and struggling to reacclimatise to the cold and damp, we headed off to Hong Kong for a week to warm up! My mum Janet wanted to come away with us somewhere, hardly seeing us recently since we've been travelling for two and a half years, and after a bit of a debate we thought that Hong Kong would be somewhere that she would enjoy. It was to be her first experience of Asia, in fact her first trip outside Europe. We wanted to take her somewhere that was as "different" as possible to anywhere she'd been before, but still easy to get around with little hassle. Claire and I had been there before a few years ago, but only on a four day ... read more
October 10th 2008
And so to Malaysia……….! We arrived in Malaysia on Wednesday evening and after a night sleeping over in Kuala Lumpur we took a short flight east to Kota Bharu and then a “speed” boat out to the Perinthian Islands. Our plan was to stay 2 or 3 days and then head south to some other islands down the coast…..hmmm…..well its 8 days later and we are still here! We are staying on Small Island (Pulau Kecil) on Coral Bay in a 30 ringget (4 pound) a night beach hut. We have our own bathroom and a good fan and step off the balcony onto the white sand beach! We have spent the last week doing nothing more energetic than snorkeling over the coral watching the fish and turtles and lying on the beach or in the ... read more
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