4 meals of Yorkshire puddings and a wedding

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This blog is rather late, seeing as we have been back in Asia for a month...but better late than never!

So the time had come to switch to the other side of the UK to go to Neil’s parents in the North East which involved a nice drive over the Pennines and North Yorkshire moors; it also included a stop for lunch in a typically British country town, Kirkby Stephen. The thing that struck us the most about the drive was the diversity of the landscape - hills, mountains, fields and the unique hedgerows which don’t seem to make an appearance in any other country, except maybe in New Zealand. Yes, things continued to amaze us about the UK which we never really noticed when we lived there - how civilised (no matter what our parents say!) the driving is...really it was a novelty to have zebra and pedestrian crossings and actually have people acknowledge them! Proper chunky chips with our meal instead of little thin French Fries, chocolate - what, we mentioned that in our previous blog? Well it deserves another mention! The politeness and sheer friendliness of people was still amazing us although the quality of the TV wasn’t...both our parents had Sky Satellite TV and considering there were literally 100 channels there was never anything on worth watching!

The afternoon we arrived in Hartlepool, Neil’s mum had booked us into her doctors so we could get our injections updated. This is where we were shocked and it made us realise for all the grumbling that the British do (us included when we were residents) the NHS is pretty darn fine. We both had check-ups and 5 injections each - all as a temporary patient. We expected because we hadn’t been in the country for so long we would have to pay some sort of minimal fee to cover the injections and prescriptions, but no all our treatment was free. After spending so long outside of the UK we have forgotten how amazing it is to be able to visit a doctor or get medicine on prescription when so many people in Asian countries die of basic ailments due to the lack of medical provision. Long live the NHS we say! Although later that day we were cursing when neither of us could move our arms due to the booster shots of Hep A and Typhoid we had been given, it felt like someone had given us a dead arm and we really couldn’t move our arms properly for about 3 days! Necessary evil though.

We had a few trips planned - one was to Richmond in North Yorkshire where Neil spent most of his summers when he was little. We had a nice lunch out in a tearoom and had a wander around the old town, shops and river. The cobbled streets were really nice although who decided a burger van could set up in the middle of the village square, thereby ruining any pictures taken wants a slap! The day was topped off with a visit to the Brymore ice cream shop/farm where you can go and see the cows where the milk and cream come from to make the ice cream and there is also a coffee shop where all the ice creams are on sale. Needless to say we skipped seeing the cows and headed straight for the ice cream shop...Neil was happier than a pig in you-know-what and had a huge black cherry whim-wham waffle cone.

The next day we had a shopping trip to Middlesborough for more Primark shopping for Donna. We also raided the Everything’s £1 shop for sweets, had more Greggs pasties for lunch and we were still finding it cold! We were still feeling very culture shocked with being in the UK with the sights and smells being so different although on the plus side we were getting used to dealing with pounds again and beginning to be able to gauge whether things were good value or not!

We spent the rest of our time in the North East doing things like having our fill of beans on toast, Yorkshire puddings (which we managed to have for 4 days in a row in our meals!), Cadbury’s crème eggs (yummy!) oh and running on the treadmill to try and get rid of any extra weight we might be gaining from eating so many treats! It’s funny but when we lived in the UK beans on toast was something we would try and avoid at all times as we had eaten too much of this as meals when we were students. But as mentioned in our other blog the strangest things appeal when you are back in your home country. We had lots and lots of wine (even bought a couple of bottles to take back to Asia with us!) and Neil’s dad even made his speciality mussels in white wine sauce. We were also preparing for Neil’s brother’s wedding...Neil was working hard on his best man’s speech and we were all hoping that it wouldn’t rain on the day.

We had a long drive down to Norwich with a stop at McDonalds services - actually we were amazed at McDonalds in the UK, there was so much choice, lots of relatively healthy options and there were even veggie burgers on the menu - India has been the only other place in the world where we have seen veggie burgers in McDonalds.

The wedding went without a hitch, it didn’t rain although it was a little but cold for us and Vicki (the bride) had a bit of difficulty getting her veil under control with the wind! We had lots to eat (more Yorkshire puddings!) and lots of wine and champagne to drink...most of all it was lovely to see the whole family together and to catch up. Neil’s speech went well...and...erm...and there was even some dancing once the wine had done it’s work 😉

Very quickly the time came for us to be returning to Stansted for our return flight to Kuala Lumpur where this time, we had a 20 hour journey ahead of us (with connecting flights to our final destination!) which we were not looking forward to. But we had packed our ham sandwiches, salt and vinegar crisps, chocolate, ginger nut biscuits...well, you get the picture! We think we spent that entire flight eating!

Only a couple of things left for this blog...we would like to say a big thank you to our parents for humouring us and having every food whim we could imagine there ready for us, oh and for driving us around everywhere! A big congrats to Darren and Vicki on the wedding going so well (apart from the drunken and out of tune organist at the church!).

Most of all we want to say a HUGE hello to Ellie and Grace - we loved playing games and getting to know you two bundles of trouble - we promise to send you e-mails!

So the travelling continues...do you think we will run out of places to visit...no? yes? we'll see!

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