Blogs from Slough, Berkshire, England, United Kingdom, Europe

A relatively easy journey to our hotel near Heathrow courtesy of Josie. Puntuated by a very good lunch at the Plough Inn, Bolnhurst near Bedford (found via tripadvisor). Would thoroughly recommend it and worth the slight detour from the sat nav instructions to Heathrow from Newark. Must end now as wi-fi is £5 per hour at this hotel.... read more

What cameras and associated bits to take?? The next thing....was what camera gear to take...? After the last trip, my first thought was no backpack for the camera - this is something I have been thinking for some time anyway, as backpacks make the changing of lenses and filters so much more time consuming. The question was, what to replace the lowepro backpack with? Eventually I settled on a Crumpler 7 million dollar home. One problem - it's only available in the US....DOH! A colleague was over there, so I bought it blind, hoping it would be right, and as it turned out....yes...it's bloody brilliant! I can fit everything I could in the old backpack, plus some, and it's quicker and easier to use. So, I can easily now take: Canon 5D Mk II body Canon ... read more

Destination Samarkand Less than a week to go now; the visa stress hasn't reduced much in the last couple of weeks. On the plus side, Peter & I now have a full set of the visas needed: Russia, Kazakk, Uzbek & Chinese. It's only dad we are now struggling with, and after a(nother) moment of panic at the Uzbek embassy, when they stated he'd need to come back a week later, but managed to talk them into opening later the same day, as it would completely f**k things up for the rest of the holiday if they did insist on it, so they opened at 3pm for him. Despite this, someone else in the queue arriving after dad managed to do a same day turnaround for a visa....seems fairly shambolic all in all. Still - we ... read more

It's going to be a close call! We've hit an unexpected hiccup today. Dad has his chinese visa refused, apparently due to the fact that he did not detail the hotel he was staying in, or flights home. Odd that, seeing as neither Peter or I did on our forms either, and they all went in at the same time! We're at a bit of a loss as to why that happened, so dad is revisiting the embassy tomorrow to try again, but that sets us back 3 days, which makes things interesting when certain other factors are considered... The Uzbek Embassy states that they take up to 10 days to process visas They only open 3 days a week - Mon, Tues, Fri (and then for 3 hours). We have a number of bank holidays ... read more

And we're off again! The Silk Route....TSR II - The Revenge We are now on the trip for sure. We have an itinerary, and are now actively applying for visas. This time round it's to be The Silk Route, by rail. The intinerary so far (once we'd rectified the mistake dad made of finding a train that stopped running in 2009, from Prague to Kiev) is: 07/05/11 - depart London - arrive Paris - depart Paris/Chamonix - arrive Munich (meet up) - depart Munich 08/05/11 - arrive Budapest 08/05/11 - depart Budapest 09/05/11 - arrive Kiev 10/05/11 - depart Kiev 11/05/11 - arrive Moscow 11/05/11 - depart Moscow 14/05/11 - arrive Tashkent 15/05/11 - arrive Samarkand 18/05/11 - depart Samrakand/Tashkent 19/05/11 - arrive Almaty 21/05/11 - depart Almaty 23/05/11 - arrive Urumqi 24/05/11 - arriv... read more