We arrived at our New Forest location after driving across to the Salisbury region via North Cornwall, North Devon, Exmoor and a region called the Quantock Hills. Our first stop was a spur of the moment decision. We were driving past a place called Westward Ho! (complete with exclamation mark) and decided we had to visit just to see what it was like. Well it was a lot bigger than I expected, based by the dot on the map. It was a seaside town with a relatively long strip of sandy beach, a couple of large hotels facing the beach, fun parlours and an "adult games" establishment. We had a walk down to the beach to witness the school kids shivering their way back from their surfing lesson, had morning tea in a cafe and determined ... read more

The weather has been great and we've both managed to get sunburnt. We had 3 nights in the Cotswolds, so just 2 full days to get a taste of the region - we could have easily done with more. Our first day was spent travelling through a couple of villages in the North Cotswolds, visiting some lovely gardens and trying to avoid getting lost along the twisting roads. The main village that we visited was Chipping Campden which was just down the road from "our" village of Ebrington. Chipping Campden is a small market town and known for its High Street which dates from the 14th to 17th century; this is lined with buildings constructed from the very attractive Cotswold Stone. We picked up a map from the local information centre and walked the streets following ... read more

Here it is, the end of another working week and we've just arrived home from dinner at the local pub. We are currently in Holcombe Brook which is just near Ramsbottom and part of Bury Council. It's also where Terry was born and lived for his first five years, although he spent the next ten years about 3 miles down the road in Bury. The way that I think of this area is that Manchester is the equivalent of Melbourne, Bury is a bit like Frankston and Ramsbottom/Holcombe Brook is sort of like Mornington and Mount Martha. We quite like it here and so we are using it as an opportunity for Terry to get over his cold. We are also waiting for a package of tickets to arrive but so far no luck - hopefully ... read more

We arrived back at the hotel earlier today after 2 long days driving to and from the eastern end of East Timor. It certainly was interesting. We left Dili at 8:00 a.m. and had lunch at East Timor’s 2nd largest town Baucau which is just 123 km away. I’ve been on worse roads in China but these were still pretty bad – huge potholes, missing bridges, missing tarmac etc. If we weren’t slowing down because of road conditions we were slowing down so that we didn’t hit a cow, goat, pig, dog, chook or human. Still, we travelled in relative comfort in a 4WD. The locals travel either by small motorbike, microlet, bus or truck. A microlet is a tiny minibus which is packed to the gunnels with people, often with people hanging on but travelling ... read more

I've been lucky enough to spend the last week in Paradise a.k.a. Niue and it's been for work. Most people's reaction to being told that I was going to Niue is "Where on Earth is that?". Well, it's in the Pacific Ocean, north, northeast of New Zealand, east of Tonga and just on the other side of the dateline. Niue is a single, raised coral atoll and so doesn't have much in the line of beaches. Instead most of the coastline is comprised of 20 m or so cliffs dotted with caves at water level. There are plenty of paths down to the water's edge and once you get there the swimming is perfect. More about that later. There is only one plane into and out of Niue per week. We left Melbourne last Friday morning ... read more