Day -23!

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Just over three weeks away now and starting to feel like the time is racing away towards the 18th. There always seems to be something to do, be it involved directly with the trip or as a result of the trip. Little things mainly but so many of them! We seem to have the majority of the accommodation booked now - with the exception of Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne, which hopefully are not too far from being sorted. It was our original intention to travel by surface between Sydney and Brisbane, but we have now made the sensible decision to discontinue this plan and re-shuffle some dates. The essential benefit of this is that we get longer stays in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne. Much better than rushing between them and doing them all an injustice, as well as the places en-route. We also get a more comfortable and longer time to explore New Zealand... Get in!! Here's the 'Route Map' :


From a personal point of view, the anxiety I feel about leaving my job for this trip seems to be a worry I can not shake off. This in turn is having a negative bearing on my ability to think clearly and get done the things I need to. Somehow, this will have to be put into the background sooner rather than later.

I wish once more to raise the point of the mammoth effort with research for this trip done by both Clare and myself. I'm sure that there are retrospective benefits to be had by doing minimum amounts of information seeking pre-trip, such as the experiences of finding accomodation and routes whilst in the area. However with the relatively small amount of time we are going travelling for, I feel our collective hand was forced towards planning so much of the journey prior to departure. In some ways it feels more of an extended holiday than 11 weeks travelling. In others it feels like we are free to concentrate on activities and locations rather than the stress of needing to hunt down an appropriately priced bed for the night.

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Photos

Practice
'Hurry up and take it, this is bloody heavy!'