Since returning to the UK after our 'big' trip we've been getting more and more restless - so, to keep our sanity and our spirit of adventure alive action was taken. After years of being my pillion Gill passed her unrestricted motorbike test, we went out and bought two motorbikes (a Suzuki Bandit 600 for me and a Kawasaki ER 5 - 500cc for Gill), and we used them! Two days after Gill passing her test we set out on a 1250 mile round trip through Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, the lakes, Scotland (up to the Isle of Skye) and back down. Camping [View Full Entry]

---

---

Hello. Delayed again - but for a good reason this time - because I’ve been putting it off and denial is as good a reason as any. As I write, it is Nov 23, which gives us one and a half weeks before we fly home, although that’s not entirely true as we decided to ease the shock of returning to the UK after nearly 21 months travelling by landing short - in Amsterdam, for 5 days of R and R and culture (the old kind you don’t get down under) before officially becoming homeless, jobless, vehicle-less and financially challenged over [View Full Entry]

---

---

It is frustrating, and some may say ‘annoying’ that our up-to-date entries are less than current; so… Let’s skip one and get a little more current! For the past 9 weeks or so we’ve been staying in a small village (in NZ it’s a town) for one reason and one reason only - SNOWBOARDING. The title says everything, as with our stay in Bright and the Paragliding we’re sticking with our ‘tried and tested’ method for adopting new hobbies. We’ve never snowboarded before but thought buying two sets of second hand boarding equipment and [View Full Entry]

---

---

New Zealand - described on a tourist ‘T’ shirt as a country in three parts - the North Island, the South Island and the West Island! I’m quite sure the Australians have similar jokes regarding NZ, but despite their similar accents we’ve found NZ and Oz to have quite different cultures. When Gill and I were trying to be specific about the differences we found them difficult to pin down, but we managed to talk around the issues of NZ being a smaller, more welcoming place - provincial in its nicest sense. We thought also that because of its relatively small [View Full Entry]

---

---

It finally came to pass that paragliding and Bright was ending. We had many flights in many directions. Gills farthest straight line distance was 25 kms which took 2 hours, she then made it back to our camp in record time by being offered a lift all the way back by the owners of the field in which she landed! In fact she arrived back in plenty of time to receive my ‘please come and get me’ phone call after my landing. I wasn’t lucky enough to get offered a lift by the land owner but as the flight was 56 [View Full Entry]

---

---

I could probably sum up our time in Bright simply and quickly; we came, we saw, we stayed! Bright is in the Alpine region of Oz and features a mountainous vista; it has skiing in the winter while offering summer activities enjoyed by the whole family. It has also been hailed as one of the best areas for Paragliding! Now you see why it’s been months since we updated the web site! As we approached Bright we both felt our nerves and apprehension growing. The thoughts of getting back into chucking ourselves off mountains brought terrors of standing on launch and [View Full Entry]

---

---

This is a brief entry to fill in the New Year gap left by the previous blog. After this we can get reasonably up to date with our current experiences - ones which over the past few months have followed very similar trends, but more later. When we arrived in Melbourne, and finally navigated the city the way we wanted to (the map we had was out of date and used some different road names), we went to the information centre and found a number of camp sites to phone around. We ended up staying in a place called Williamstown, outside [View Full Entry]

---

---

Our onward location was to be Adelaide, with a few stops on the way. A strange occurrence on this leg was crossing the state border where a man took our Onion! The explanation he gave us for this ‘daylight robbery’ was onion rust. Not one local can tell us what the problem with rusty onions could be - the only explanation forthcoming being his lack of ingredients for his dinner (this being corroborated by his second request for Garlic; hmmm). Adelaide - what a nice city! We possibly like it a little more because of its Bristol-esque feel. Beautiful architecture, green [View Full Entry]

---

---

Without meaning to reduce this great nations variety and beauty, we have to admit that without keeping note of the where’s, when’s and why’s we find it difficult to tease apart the different areas and cultures - although they are similar in theme. Each of the small towns along the way have left an impression - be it small in some cases and negative in others, and these have all helped us to see the bigger picture of how all the fragments form the whole. From small town miners with attitudes belonging in the 1870’s, toppless/strip bars belonging in the 1930’s, [View Full Entry]

---

---

I’m afraid, to catch up on the page, that a little condensing is required (possibly a little more than a little). The time that we’ve spent in Aus has gone quickly - this has overflowed to the typing of the web page, and other ‘house keeping’ type things. After our little trip to Margaret River and the surround we returned to await our package from Gills folks. A relatively simple procedure, under normal circumstances, would be the receiving of this package - not however when you mix the Australian post and customs into the recipe. We traced our package for days [View Full Entry]

---

---