A continuation to my travel blog, although not world travel, I did travel to Cirencester, within our very own beautiful Cotswolds. The airfield is just south of this at the Duke of Gloucester Barracks, 29 rgt J.A.M.C. Home of the Silver Stars Parachute Display Team. The Red Devils also travelled here to take part on behalf of all the various charities. What an amazing experience, I am so thrilled to have had the opportunity to do this skydive, tandem, with the famous Red Devils, and at the same time sponsor the RNLI (A Key emergency service, in my opinion). THANK [View Full Entry]

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The flight home was excellent with BA, had a great seat at the back, near the loo, and the large man I would've been sat next to decided to move to another row where he had no-one either side of him. Good move. My Brother met me at Heathrow, and then we went to meet John at terminal 3. It was great to catch up with him and Jen and hear all their plans for travel later this year. Now I am back, making home and nesting at John's, his bachelor house has been transformed slightly . It seems quite strange. [View Full Entry]

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San Francisco, my final stop (this time round). I settled in here and liked it from the minute I arrived, which is strange considering I had no intention of going to the USA. John found it harder to settle in after NZ. (He felt as I did when I first arrived in Auckland after leaving Australia) But we had a brills time..... As I said in previous blog, the flight was 12 hours to LA and they are 16 hours behind NZ, so Monday was a very long day. I spent the whole 2 1/2 hours at LA in queues for [View Full Entry]

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Back on North Island. Feeling shattered after our massive driving and travel day yesterday, and a bit shell shocked that we are now back on North Island, we have a new plan to head up the East coast of North Island. At first we got totally lost trying to escape from Wellington and stopping a man to ask directions, it turns out he is from Totnes, we chatted with Gary for quite some time, he moved out here 4 years ago and hasn't looked back. We were initially headed for Napier, but it is Saturday and we were told several times [View Full Entry]

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Queenstown, East Coast and back to North Island - After a scenic drive to Queenstown, we found Queenstown itself pretty but packed with tourists and endless money spending activities (Adrenoline Capital). The camp site was Packed with tourists, huge and exposed to the elements. It is named lakeside view, if you walk around the back of the ammenities building and right up to the fence you can get a glimpse of the lake down below. Showers are the worst yet, take your kit in and with no curtain to divide it, and shower full on, you can look forward to dressing [View Full Entry]

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Nelson - Motueka - Abel Tasman - West Coast - After a very windy ferry crossing, we arrived in Picton with the rain slashing down. However we had our route planned to start off with we headed towards Nelson, stopping just outside in Tahuna at a fabulous campsite which although the pitch was a bit damp, it had stopped raining and the facilities here were excellent. Even in the rain our initial taste of the scenery in South Island was awesome!! The following day we continued our drive towards Abel Tasman, and stayed at a litle town about 15km from there [View Full Entry]

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Beautiful Lake Taupo - This is my second visit here, and it is still raining and misty. So much so, that the famous Tongariro walk would not be possible again, or the sky dive. The lake itself, in the Middle of North island is beautiful and massive, (606 sq KM), it is 357M above sea level and the lake formed by one of the greatest volcanic explosions about 26,500 years ago, fortunately then uninhabbited, it also has a geothermal area, like rotorua. After being here a couple of days the mist cleared to enable us to see the mountains of the [View Full Entry]

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We had a couple days in Auckland again, mainly so that I could sort out my flights. Not so straight forward as John's, I need to fly via LA to get to San Fran. We also enjoyed another lovely evening with Sinaed and Lucien. We were on a campsite with the smallest pitches ever, no room to even put out our guide ropes and we were already overlapping into next doors terriotry. By the time we were set up, we were 6 inches from the next tent (a bit close eh?). However the facilities were excellent, with 6 washers & dryers, [View Full Entry]

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Now back near Auckland, as a treat we booked into a motel for 3 nights in Birkenhead, (just north of Auckland) where we hooked up with Lucien and Sinaed. Lucien and John had a surf at Piha, we later had fresh fish BBQ (Blue nose Green, Salmon kebabs and scallops, hand picked from the fish market)and when Lucien was back at work on Monday we caught the ferry across from Devonport into Auckland and went up the Sky tower, where we watched several people do the sky jump from just above the observation deck. John sorted out his tickets with Air [View Full Entry]

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Starting off the New Year, after taking down our wet tent, we headed off to Thames, the gateway town to the Coromandel. (or as I keep saying, Comorandel). We booked into a campsite here for 1 night as all others seemed to be booked up until 2nd, it was a nice campsite too, in a tranquil setting of a butterfly farm, as we arrived to put the tent up, it rained again (think its following us). We then had a couple of nights booked at Harbourside campsite in Whitianga (pronounced Fity-anga) North East of the Coromandel, Mercury Bay. On the [View Full Entry]

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