Blogs from Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom, Europe

We have been invited to look after a house for a couple of weeks in Burgundy whilst the owners are away in the south of France. Now I can hear you saying, Burgundy. Joan and Kelvyn. Now come on, how can you trust them not to drink the cellar dry. Well, I can only say that we have so many projects planned to keep me busy that we will have very little time to get round to drinking more than just the odd apéritif a la week-end. These are a few photos of the village of Coulanges la Vineuse. The first four were taken during the celebration of the feast of Saint Vincent, the patron saint of vine growers. The event always takes place in January. So it can be very cold as we parade around ... read more

Heya! See speaking like a true pom already... So here we are finally in the UK. Me and Bel just got back from seeing my family in Bradford for the last 4-5 days good getting up there to see them and even meet some of them for the first time! Nic is currently in Liverpool with her rellies and will be staying up there to work for the next 4-5 weeks to fund the rest of our adventures till we meet up again to travel Europe later in August-September. The day we landed what an effort that was... our flight from NY got delayed so we wer put onto a new flight, delayed going into the air, and then delayed landing. This then delayed us from getting our busses to take us up North to see ... read more

After the alarms of being without my passport....it is returned in the post the very next day, one day ahead of the postal strike. But no visa. Postal applications no longer accepted. Well, we had just discovered that from the Indian High Commission website, though it still explains in detail how to go about getting a visa through the post. Malcolm has an improving morning on the net looking for Plan B and finds it. Visa clinic in Bradford, today. Plan C was to get to Birmingham by 8.00 a.m Monday morning on our way to London.... please, no! Friday evening, Malcolm and I go to a cracking amateur performance of The Full Monty in Bolton, featuring among others, daughter Elinor. So we stay over with her family, got up at 6.30 a.m, and are at ... read more

Following my unexpectedreturn to the uk and a visit to the gp then two visits to the A&E dept, they diagoinsed it as a virus clled Bornhams Diease. I took a course of antibiotics and have been declared fit. Du to the fat that I am fit I have booked a ticket to Beijing for Thursday 26th April with Lufthansa so that I can continue with the Trans Siberian trip. The blog will be updated during the trip but infrequent as I am not taking the laptop with me.... read more

I have now packed the rucksack and re confirmed the flight from Manchester to Auckland for Wednesday 8th November. I have booked the first 2 nights accomodation. I will not update this site until I have arrived in Auckland.... read more