If you started reading this blog way back in January, I can only thank you for persevering with us for this long and following our trip to the end. This is the final post in the blog and as you might have noticed, there are a lot of photos to get through. 78 in all. As a reward for your diligence I’m not going to waffle on too much. Hopefully the photos’ll do a good job of telling the tale of our summer, which after Montreal was one long beach bask. The cottages, which are arranged on a plot of land in the little seaside town of Shediac, are a two-minute walk from the beach. So on sunny days we would go to the beach, armed with a good book and a stern determination to get ... read more

Bein oh bein oh bein... Here we go readers, the final country of our tour and so one of the final posts. It's been a long time coming, as Canada was when we were on the road. But once we arrived it was certainly worth it. We made it up to Canada after getting a painfully early bus from Boston to the border, where Ginette (Em's Mum) and Geraldine (Em's Memere) met us. After confusing the US border cops, who interpreted our search for a toilet as us trying to run the border, we made it into Canada rattled but ready for the wedding. The reason we arrived so early in June was for Emilie's cousin's wedding, at which Suzanne the bride had asked Em to be a bridesmaid. The wedding was lots of fun, held ... read more

After a dose of city life we decided to cut down on our pork lives and get some exercise. So we rolled into Yosemite for a few days camping. Once again we were met with derision from the park staff, who couldn't believe that we'd simply turn up expecting a space for our tent. Little did we realise how much the Yanks love to camp. It was all booked out again, no matter how much we protested that our tent was smaller than a single wheel of most of the park traffic. We got lucky though and a last minute cancellation meant they could squeeze us into one of the park's camping areas. The guy next to us told us that he'd booked his pitch 6 months earlier. Incredible. Out pitch was on a crazy slope, ... read more

Having crossed the water on a ferry jam-packed with containers of smelly cows, we arrived on the North Island. It was a pretty boring crossing from Picton to Wellington, punctuated with a movie, which was groaningly, predictably Lord of the Rings. Not bothered about cultural milestones like capital cities, we stopped only briefly in Windy Welly, pushing north towards Rotorua. This town lives off its unusual geology, which is very special. Some far-sighted Maoris built the town on highly active volcanic land. Which sounds suicidal, but is safe and saves them pennies. They channeled the heat from the molten soil to warm their water and heat their homes. Pretty smart, right? The whole place has a nauseating eggy stink though, due to the ammonia risinhg up from the volcanic earth. We went to a couple of ... read more

The Catlins. Miles of open road with nothing but sheep to punctuate the view. I think the ratio of sheep to man is now around 10:1, which sounds high to most of the world. Here it only recently dropped from around 32:1. I don’t know why this is amazing, or why we found flocks of sheep so constantly surprising and worthy of being pointed out. But it’s rare you feel so out-numbered by animals. Thank God they’re stupid, or we could all be ruled by despotic tag-nut clad flossies by now. Well, in New Zealand at least. But there's more to The Catlins than sheep. Mainly it's rolling countryside but we also discovered an amazing wild camping spot, which was basically a patch of grass down a twisty dirt road, overlooking an isolated beach framed by ... read more