The 3rd of July.....and its another birthday for me!! But no time to celebrate....yet,we are off to Bonnie Scotland and we have sights to see on the way.Bruce and Anice are also heading to Scotland to pick up their grandaughter in Glasgow as she is going to stay for 10days with them.So they won't have any peace for a while yet having got rid of us and a 12 yr old teenager moving in. With RR loaded up we hit the road with the first stop to be a public garden that we had missed during our trips up to the lakes. The garden was on the A592 road we wanted to initially take so that was convinent. As we were so early we were clearly the first to visit the garden for the day as ... read more

Our hosts Bruce and Anice think we are mad giving up the prospect of a beautifully fine day in the Lakes District to go and walk the piers and promenade of Blackpool. But its a bit like a pilgramige for Gretchen who for years used to tell our girls off when they had all the lights in the house turned on saying "its like the Blackpool illumination".She had of course never seen the illuminations except for on TV but she needs now to experience at first hand even if the lights won't actually be on because it will be daylight but to see at least what makes up those lights. So with another fine and warm day ahead we started out down the M6 towards Preston after deciding that we would take the direct route there ... read more

Monday 29th June A walk in the Lake District We couldn’t have planned our arrival in Kendal better as Bruce was today going to be one of the guides on a National Park walk and he asked if we would like to join in which we did not hesitate in saying yes to. The walk which was to be over easy tracks would take approx 5 hours and cover around 7 miles taking in 2 of the lakes in the area around Lakes Rydal & Grasmere The weather remained fine and sunny with a very high thin overcast and the humidity was reaching proportions that we experience at home.We hadn’t realised that the humidity would get to that sort of level in England and our hosts assured us that the current weather was a bit unusual ... read more

Saturday 27th June The Theatre of Dreams Everyone knows what The Theatre of Dreams is and where it is located......don’t you??!! Well for the unintiated and those who don’t follow football or soccer as we in NZ know the name of the world’s greatest game,even to a small degree,it is the home stadium of the world’s greatest football club...Man United or as the large red sign on the outside of the stadium says...Manchester United FC. Manchester as a city didn’t have a lot of offer the tourist according to our copy of the Lonely Planet Europe on a Budget but it did have the #1 visitor attraction Old Trafford football stadium. Actually I shouldn’t sound that unkind to a city that has seen a lot of redevelopment and there were other attractions that the Lonely Planet ... read more

Thursday 25th June In the footsteps of Captain James Cook RN We Kiwis should consider ourselves very lucky that Capt Cook spent time charting the waters of New Zealand and returning to England to tell of the country he had mapped and explored.If it hadn’t been Cook then who knows perhaps we would have been speaking and living some other European language and culture today!! We have both looked forward to this day for years as Cook in a way is a bit of a hero to us and having been to many of the places he landed in New Zealand over the years it was going to be interesting to see where he grew up and learnt his trade. So it was an early start to the day and full and hearty breakfast after our ... read more