Picked up the car from Avis yesterday- luckily only a 2 minute drag of the bags from the hotel - we got a very cool brand new VW Polo1.4 in dark grey. The driving through Cape Town was good, hardly any traffic and Sat Nav worked well. The drive along the M1 was stunning. About 20 minutes out of town the vineyards and mountains start and didn't stop for the next 2 hours. We drove through a tunnel that must have been several miles long. Arrived in Montagu in the early afternoon, we had a lovely lunch of salad and toasted sarnies, the portions are huge and we are currently eating way too much it is just too darn nice! We've had to switch to diet softdrinks to free up calories for gorging ourselves at meal ... read more

It's my Birthday! Decided to take a day off work and go to London (and being that I took quite a few photos and did a lot I thought I blog about it) We started at HMS Belfast which is somewhere that I have wanted to visit for ages as I have been past it so many times. It is definitely worth a visit as it was really interesting and very well done. It involved going up and down a lot of ladders so it is not a destination for the frail. You could go all over the ship including in the boiler rooms and the shell rooms. It is amazing what things they have on a ship of that size. There was a small hospital/sick bay, dentist, workshop, huge canteen amongst other stuff. There are ... read more

Tried to go cycling today but failed! It would appear that cycle shops have defined opening times and when it reaches an arbitrary date in September then they all shut. We went into a camp site that had a huge signs saying hire bikes here. We could see the bikes but they said we couldn't hire them. We asked where we could hire them but we just got told that the “la saison est fini, FINI! “ the season has finished! Since when does cycling have a season? Do these people not want to make any money? Maybe George Bush was correct and the French don't have a word for entrepreneur! Having given up on the cycling we decided to visit Sarlat-la-Caneda instead. We got there and got parked without too much trouble. We had been ... read more

Just spent two great days exploring the area. It really is pretty here and round every corner there seems to yet another pretty village or town filled with lovely houses. I have lost count of the number of times we have said “There is a nice house, I'd like that one!” Yesterday we went to Domme and then La Roque Gageac. Domme is a village right on the top of a hill so we had great views over the whole area. We could see for miles. The only bad thing about it was Tim's need to use the word Domme to make the tune for F1 racing (Domme, Domme Domme Domme, Domme, Domme, Domme, Domme, Domme...DOMMMMME!) every 5 minutes! The Dordogne seems to be the duck capital of France as every second shop we came across ... read more

It's Tim Birthday - the big 30! We decided not to let this pass unmarked so we headed off to the Norfolk Broads for the weekend. Considering they are only an hour and a half from Cambridge we don't know why we have never been there before. Vicki and Jo came with us and we hired a 28' cruiser. It was very cool. We weren't too sure what to expect but we were pleasantly surprised. Georgie B (the boat) was fairly spacious and we had a double cabin, kitchen, bathroom and a sitting area with a sofa bed. The whole roof of the living area slid back so we could enjoy the nice weather whilst relaxing. This was just as well as we spent a lot of time relaxing! We had the boat from Saturday morning ... read more