Bath and Stonehenge My birthday weekend saw us head north ... Given the freezing temperature (not exaggerating!), the first chore before leaving was to de-ice the car so that we could actually see..... Never had to do that before! Dav poured water over the windscreen, which worked a treat.... although we weren't quick enough with the windscreen wipers and that water then just froze as well!! And so I had a go with the icescraper - an instrument that works a treat but one that hopefully I won't have much to do with after the next couple of years! I [View Full Entry]

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Day 1 - Exeter to Truro Thanks to a fairly low-key welcome to the New Year the night before, we were able to set off fairly early on Thursday morning... well, mid morning anyway... Heading out of Exeter, we doubled back along the south banks of the River Exe towards the mighty English Channel, where our first stop was at a small village called Dawlish. Quite a sweet little town, complete with flowing stream through the centre of town and black swans, this was my first experience with what the English call the 'beach'..... Hmmmm..... not very appealing, let [View Full Entry]

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Christmas! After an early day finishing up at work on Christmas eve (Christmas present enough!) Dav and I jumped on the train for the three and half hour trip up to the big smoke. We spent the Christmas break at Ann and Anna's place in London (our home for the first week and a half in England), with their respective (not respectable..hehe) boyfriends Rogan and Mike. The day was spent in rather a deliciously lesuirely way, sleeping in til mid-morning, followed by a day of eating and drinking and watching Underbelly (thanks Mrs Rogan!) .. and presents ... and [View Full Entry]

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Our first outing in the car... The first weekend after we acquired our new car, we were itching to hit the road and begin the exploring. Top of our list was a day trip to the nearby Dartmoor National Park, a trip made so much easier now we didn't have to rely on public transport. So, with a fully charged camera battery and an itinery promising to showing a selection of Dartmoor higlights, we set off one Sunday mid-morning. The plan was to travel in a clockwise direction, heading through the towns of Princetown, Tavistock, Okehampton, and then back to [View Full Entry]

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After umming and arrring for a few weeks, and plenty of pros and cons lists later, Dav and I decided to buy a car so that we get the most out of our time here. This was particularly the case in Exeter as to get anywhere on a weekend on public transport is just a nightmare - for example, we were looking at heading up to Dartmoor to have a look around, a 30minute drive by car, and it was going to take us FOUR HOURS on the bus!! So, unless we were going to take a week off at a [View Full Entry]

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Life in Exeter As you may have noticed, and/or commented to us, time between blogs has extended somewhat since our travelling has noticibly stalled. This is simply while we allow the bank account to rejuvinate and we try to assimilate into this crazy English countryside... The home... Since arriving in Exeter, and after a short stint in the local backpackers, we were able to find accomodation - renting a room in a townhouse owned by an older couple, Jackie and Des, who's children have grown up and left a few empty rooms. The house is i [View Full Entry]

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After a moderately enjoyable flight (enjoyable due to the few people on board meaning we could stretch out; less enjoyable due to the English couple next to us who got rather intoxicated and had an argument or two, at one stage him trying to drag her out of her chair... i thought that perhaps we might be landing a few hours earlier to boot off a passenger or two!) we arrived at Heathrow at 7pm. And then our first encounter with the 'tube'... Very organised and well signed, the trip accross town (involving a couple of interchanges) was relatively painfree, even [View Full Entry]

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Back into Thailand.. 18 hours travel... Minibus, walk, tuk tuk, walk, minibus, tuk tuk, walk, train, taxi, plane, minibus.... relax...... Relaxing on the beach! We finally arrived at our resort in Koh Samui by mid-morning on Monday 13th October and headed straight to the beach for a well-deserved dip and relax on the shores, followed by a lovely massage! The rest of the day was then spent relaxing, exploring and generally enjoying the beach and airconditioned room! The next day, Dav (aka Mr Action Man), not content to relax too long, hired us a scoo [View Full Entry]

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Kayaking the Nam Song After a very poor first night's sleep (thanks to the outside light not being able to stay on unless the fan turned off... not a chance!) and so then transfering to another, slightly more expensive, but inclusive of air-con, guesthouse, we set out for our daily tour - a kayaking / tubing / caving day trek. After a short trip 20km north of the township, we all piled out of the open-aired taxi and hit the river... for about a 2 minute kayak to the other side of the shores where we left the vessels and [View Full Entry]

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To the border... After hearing some wonderful stories about the beauty that is Laos, and following careful planning of time frames and budgets, Dav and I decided to take a flying 5-day visit into Laos. Unfortunately all flights within a reasonable time frame were booked out, and so, still keen to go, we took perhaps the slightly less comfortable, and only slightly less expensive, route in... Day 1 saw us squeezed into a minivan with 10 others and all our luggage for a 6 hour journey to a small town called Chiang Khong, separated by Laos by the mighty mighty [View Full Entry]

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