Inspirado - Jude & Glynn Harris

Hello! Welcome to Jude and Glynn's travel blog. We're a pair of newlyweds freshly back from a wonderful year spent traversing the globe and about to embark on our newest adventure - emigrating to New Zealand!

About us: Glynn's 34, a Batman fanatic and graphic novel afficionado, a Warehouse Supervisor when he has to be and a general all-round nice guy. Jude is 33, a hardened gig and festival goer, a Lecturer dabbling in IT, Literacy and German and a general all-round nice girl.

We met in 2004 over the internet and were married in Feb 2006. We've so far been to Japan, Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Chile, Easter Island, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina not to mention a couple of locations in the UK and Germany but I guess it's just not enough! We loved New Zealand so much, we're leaving the grim old UK to try and settle there permanently - provided they let us back in!!

So, throwing caution to the wind we have sold everything (yes, EVERYTHING!) in readiness. We've sold our cars, house and virtually all our possessions and quit our jobs. With nothing more than a few boxes tucked away at a storage depot and just the contents of our packs to our names, phase 2 of our new lives is about to begin...

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Joined on: April 17th 2006
Last Login: November 22nd 2008

Blog Entries: 326
Photos: 2307
Recommends 2

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Status: BLOGGER

Blogs & Travel Journals

by Inspirado, order by Date newest first.

By Inspirado
October 27th 2008

Spring-ing Into Action

Oceania » New Zealand » North Island » Auckland

Karioitahi Beach
Picture perfect :-)

Well, I'm not sure if anyone out there is still reading these blogs except for Glynn's folks (hello Mary, hello Keith!) but for those of you who are, here's the latest news from Kiwiland! It's been busy in the Harris household of late with some new friends and new adventures to enjoy. About 2 weeks ago, we had our second ever visitor to stay, a girl called Ali from Germany. Ali is a friend of my most excellent German friend Andrea and stayed with us for a few days before heading off to explore the rest of New Zealand for a [View Full Entry]

By Inspirado
October 10th 2008

The Auntie and the Hogg

Oceania » New Zealand » North Island

Hunua Falls
Glynn and I visited the falls before the recent rains and it was less than half the width of it here!

Well here we are, just nine months in to our new lives in New Zealand and we have already had our very first visitors. Jude's auntie Margaret and her partner Kevin (his surname is Hogg, hence the name of the blog!) popped by for a 10-day visit to sample life in this neck of the woods. For those of you who don't know Jude's family, Margaret is the sister of Jude's step-dad, Edmond, and Kevin is the dad of UK Radio 1 DJ Joel (one half of JK & Joel). There, that's about the extent I'll ever get to name-drop a [View Full Entry]

By Inspirado
September 21st 2008

Awhitu and the Beach of Shells

Oceania » New Zealand » North Island » Auckland

Awhitu Regional Park
Glynn wonders how long it would take to swim to Takanini.

Spring is here! Yes, it's official and my God are we glad to see it. It's been the wettest winter on record here in Auckland but now that the sun is shining again, it's time to dig out the shorts and t-shirts, dust off the picnic set and get outdoors again. The sea was calling so the only question was - which bit of coast to explore today? We've been lucky enough to visit many corners of Auckland both on the north and south shores but today I had a hankering to head west for a change. Typically the west coast [View Full Entry]

By Inspirado
August 18th 2008

We've Moved.....Again!

Oceania » New Zealand » North Island » Auckland

We live here!

Just a quickie folks to let you all know that glynn and I have once again moved house. The Beach Road house proved to be a little inhospitable over winter so we are now in our third property in 7 months! The good news this time though is that the house is very lovely indeed and I can't see any reason we'll be moving again unless the time comes that we can buy a place of our own. For now though, we'll settle for living in Conifer Grove, a posher suburb of South Auckland that's basically just the other side of [View Full Entry]

By Inspirado
August 13th 2008

Where the Forest Meets the Sea

Oceania » New Zealand » North Island

Waharau Regional Park
Not even Glynn is as giant as this fern.

Holy Macaroni! Can you believe it's been well over 2 months since the last blog entry? If you've been wondering where we've been, the answer is simple - nowhere! For almost 8 weeks now we've had rain, rain, storms and more rain. Yes, it often felt like we'd never left England! Well, it is wintertime here so we didn't expect the weather to be great but on Sunday we had our first sunny day without showers for a long time so wasted no time in donning our walking boots and foraying into the great outdoors again. Our destination was the Firth [View Full Entry]

By Inspirado
June 18th 2008

It's the Little Things I Love

Oceania » New Zealand » North Island » Auckland

Jandals

For a while now, I've been meaning to put together a bit of a blog entry about all the things I've come to love about New Zealand. These are pretty random thoughts but I'm hoping they'll give you a better insight about life and the people here, and of course why we are so happy here. Who knows, maybe it'll give you a little bit of 'inspirado' about visiting us on the other side of the world! Telling it like it is The Kiwis are straight talkers for the most part and usually in a good humoured and positive way. For [View Full Entry]

By Inspirado
May 20th 2008

Working Girl

Oceania » New Zealand » North Island » Auckland

Hi folks :-) Just a short one tonight as I'm absolutely shattered after my very first day at workin New Zealand! My main work permit is still being processed but Immigration graciously issued me with an interim permit for 3 months so I've now officially joined the Kiwi workforce. Everyone in my new office seemed very friendly and my head is already spinning from information overload. It's only 9.30pm and I'm ready for bed! I'll be in touch again soon but for now, leave us a message on the blog and tell us how you are - we haven't heard from [View Full Entry]

By Inspirado
May 6th 2008

A Serious Case of the Foos

Oceania » New Zealand » North Island » Auckland

Foo Fighters 1
Main stage

One of the many reasons Glynn and I opted to live in Auckland rather than Christchurch in the end was access to the live music scene. Those of you who know us well know that going to rock gigs is one of our passions, so it was with no small measure of excitement that I managed to get my hands on a pair of the hottest tickets in town to go and see the one and only Foo Fighters live in concert. If you haven't heard of the Foo Fighters before, where have you been? Do you remember a band called [View Full Entry]

By Inspirado
April 24th 2008

Home Sweet Home

Oceania » New Zealand » North Island » Auckland » Takanini

Front Garden
This is just one chunk of the whole garden...

I once calculated that since I was born 33 years ago, I have moved house at least 35 times. Well, now you can make that 36 times as we've just moved again! This time it was a case of 'goodbye CBD and small, noisy apartment' and 'hello massive, quiet house in the suburbs'. We're now in Takanini, a tranquil neighbourhood in South Auckland which also happens to be home to our good friends, Liz and Allard. The house is huge; in fact, I think it might actually be the biggest house either of us has ever lived in! It's an old [View Full Entry]

By Inspirado
April 24th 2008

All Play and No Work

Oceania » New Zealand » North Island » Auckland » South Auckland

Giant Spanner
On a tour of the factory where Glynn works, Jude couldn't help but notice the shiny, new, enormous spanners. Anyone need their nuts tightening?

Ok, are you ready for some big news? Well, Jude has finally landed herself a job! Hip hip hooray! It only happened yesterday and I don't think it's sunk in properly yet but with both of us working, we'll be onto a winner :-))))) I'm going to be working as an Information Systems Trainer for a family-run company that manufactures concrete pipes. Doesn't sound very exciting, I know, but I will be running the entire training department all on my own and will get to travel all over New Zealand as the company has lots of small branches on both North [View Full Entry]

TravelBlog » Inspirado

Inspirado | Jude & Glynn Harris | Travel Blog

Inspirado - Jude & Glynn Harris

Blogs & Travel Journals

Spring-ing Into Action

The Auntie and the Hogg

Awhitu and the Beach of Shells

We've Moved.....Again!

Where the Forest Meets the Sea

It's the Little Things I Love

Working Girl

A Serious Case of the Foos

Home Sweet Home

All Play and No Work