I’d like to be Under the sea In an octopus’s garden In the shade. The words of a Beatles song some of you will familiar with. Today we saw an octopus, but let me backtrack a bit. Yesterday we set off to walk to the South of the island but somehow took a wrong turn and ended up on the west coast in a small bay lined with four 5 star hotels. Only one small end of the bay was left without sun beds and umbrellas ect.. Probably because it was a bit rocky. We decided to go for a swim as we were extremely hot from walking. Amazingly the rock soon gave way to coral and we saw a whole variety of fish, a huge puffa fish, 2 cuttle fish and many more non descript ... read more

After braving the British winter for a couple of months we have, at last, escaped and are now in S.E.Asia. When we left on Monday morning the temperature was a cold minus 2 degrees, here it is a swealtering 32 degrees, but we'r not complaining!! We landed in Bangkok at 9pm on Tuesday, 28 hours after leaving home, and headed straight out to a street bar for Pad Thai and a cold beer. Once fed and watered we were content to 'people watch' as the crazy world of Bangkok passed us by. We spent the next day finding the Vietnam Embassy to get our visas proccessed for when we go there in a few weeks time. Unfortunately instead of the usual 3 days to be proccessed it will take 12 days, due to Chinese New Year ... read more

Sorry, there still seems to be a problem with the photos but if you are seeing only empty boxes- click on the box and the photos will appear. It seems some people can and some can't see them. ---------------------------------- After a few hectic days in Lodz most of the wedding guests had returned home. Stan and I had 5 days left before our flight so caught the night train south to Zakapane. In the winter it's a ski resort but in the summer months the town is a lively touristy spot and the surrounding mountains are beautiful, covered in pine forests with the odd Swiss style chalet dotted around on their flanks. A maze of paths lead up to the summits or for the less energetic there's no shortage of cable cars and ski lifts to ... read more

I'd heard that weddings in Poland were not like the average wedding so wasn't too sure what to expect. Many of the usual traditions we have here in Britain are not standard over there but instead they have many more of their own traditions! One thing I was sure of there would be lots of vodka and lots of dancing! In actual fact Gary and Milena's wedding far surpassed all our expectations Stan, Sharon and I arrived in Lodz along with Pam and Fred (Stan's sister and husband) on the Thursday before the wedding. We were all booked into the Ibis Hotel in the centre of town in close proximity to the Cathedral and site of the reception. In a short space of time we bumped into Dave and Claire (my brother) who'd travelled all the ... read more

We completed the full circle and arrived home four weeks ago. We were greeted with mountains of post to sort out (although, thankfully, my neighbour had weeded out most of the junk mail -thanks Angela, eternally grateful!) The house was freezing due to the boiler failure that occured while we were away and all of the doors had warped due to the extreme cold, meaning after we'd struggled to get in the front door it wouldn't then close. We should have heeded Angela's warning and used the back door! Anyway that was at 2.30pm when we arrived home and by 6pm Stan had the heating working and shaved away at the door frame so that we could finally close the freezing weather out! I spent the next couple of weeks catching up on washing (and there ... read more