Blogs from Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, United Kingdom, Europe

Sometimes you just need a break, don’t you? The younger generation takes long weekends. Us oldies, well, we take long mid-weeks. This mid-week, our excuse - as if we needed one, was that I’d finally persuaded my good lady to reduce the ever-growing collection of jigsaw puzzles she’d squirrelled away on shelves in our garage and in almost every cupboard and wardrobe in the house. She had more than 200 boxes of the things, collectables apparently – clever 1500-piece cartoons by a Dutchman called Jan van Haasteren and innumerable tricky ones by an outfit called Wasgij? (the picture on the box isn’t the puzzle you make, hence the back-to-front name!). Through one of those community websites, my wife found another good lady willing to take 10 percent of these desirable things off her hands for a ... read more

Less than two weeks until I fly and I'm feeling comfortably ready. Despite the surprisingly pricey month I've had gathering insurance, cash cards and equipment, I'm still going to be travelling with £7.5k carried on 2 separate bank cards. This should be more than enough for everything I plan to do, with a little left over for some indulgence in Thailand, and a few good nights out during Freshers 2013, and beyond. The unwelcome sight of snow piling up on the garden furniture outside (as I write, probably about 5 inches) is stopping me working at my Chinese delivery job, and if the long-term forecast is right it won't be thawing for at least a week. Touch wood, Heathrow will be fine by the 1st of February. Aneirin and I are looking to do a fairly ... read more

Packing has all gone well and I can just about lift the bike with the panniers on! Decided that it would be a good idea to put a new battery in the trip computer. Battery went in fine, but I'd fogotten just how unhelpful the instructions were! I got to a point where you enter a number based on your wheel size. It told me to expect it to be pre-set to 205. It appeared as 2096! Following the instructions, I set it to 0216, only to find that when I rode it I couldn't get the bike above 2 mph!! Clearly 0216 wasn't the right answer. I retried with 2160, which got close but didn't get close enough to the speed and distance that my GPS was reading, so finally I've set it to 2216! ... read more

Dear all, In a couple of days time Dan and I will have been back in the UK for seven months. When we got back I started working at a Special Needs school in Maidstone and I am still there. Poor Dan did not have the luck that I had with getting a job and he had a long six months of job hunting. However he started his new job in London last week and he seems to be enjoying it. Our travels are like a distant memory. Getting back into work did not prove to be too hard although I still have the odd day when I drive to work in the rain and remember going to work on a dive boat...it's not quite the same! This feeling has not been helped by the fact ... read more