Blogs from Swindon, Wiltshire, England, United Kingdom, Europe

Today we are taking a shorter ride to explore the temples. Should be approximately 30kms which will take our total to approx 380kms. We set off from our hotel through the town centre. A really busy town. Arrived at the first temple! Ta Prohm, absolutely beautiful - it has been left natural and the trees grow around and through the structure. An amazing place and very much how I imagined it would be. Then we cycled onto the second temple - Bayon - a much larger structure of stone faces and Terrace of the Elephants. unfortunately Matt lost his pass en route and was unable to have a look around. I went in and had a bracelet placed on my wrist and blessed. Lovely feeling. A quick walk and I was confronted by some very steep ... read more

Today we are cycling to angkor wat and the official finish line. Normal start time of 7am and we had a transfer by coach to see an ancient bridge at Kampong Kdei. This is an 800 year old bridge and just shows what amazing engineers they had in their time. Then on our bikes!! After lunch we headed through a very narrow pathway through the trees, lots of twists and turns. Very determined not to fall off at this late stage and luckily managed to stay on! At the end of this path we tried to gather into one group, not easy when there is 30 of you but this was the way into the finish line. Headed off down the road passing temples and water and then you turn a corner and can see Angkor ... read more

How to book a flight? Google the destination, pick a website and search for flights. After half and hour the red mist will descend and then you call my friendly travel agent Sue Claridge of "travel counsellors"! An e-mail arrives with flights, times and cost and the peace is restored as you reply to confirm and it's "job done"! So it's all set for end of Nov to fly west via Vancouver to Aukland and then onto Queenstown.... read more

Ready for the off on Wednesday!... read more

So: The the account has been set up, login details have been sorted, now it's time to chuck the first entry into my Blog: I've got the Aussie Visa, backpack, passport, driving license and tickets, so I just need to pack...more on that later! I don't really do planning...never have...I have far more fun when everything (well, as much as possible) is done on the fly, but I have gone as far as to book my first 5 nights at The Funk House backpacker hostel! So, my rough plans are: Join Wwoof and work my way up Aus to Cairns for my birthday, and my pressie to myself will be a 14,000ft tandem skydive over Cairns. Apart from that, I'm just gonna see where the world takes me! ttfn P... read more