Blogs from Kent, England, United Kingdom, Europe - page 7

The drive from Crystal Palace to Chartwell was only an hour and took us along quite a lot of roads which were marked as “unsuitable for heavy goods vehicles”. Not terribly well suited for a Tandy either as some areas were little more than single track with lots of bends, often blind. All made worse by the fact that the entire cycling fraternity of the county chose today to cycle the route we were taking. Quite hazardous really and we were pleased when we eventually came to a proper road which was wide enough for a white line down the middle. Chartwell is located in the middle of lovely rolling countryside and the house and grounds are an absolute delight. We’ve joined the National Trust this year so entry was free and we were waved into ... read more

TravelMat.... well they asked for a 'nickname' for this blog, and I thought it was a good play-on-words (my name is Matt if any stranger is reading this).. until I realized it makes no sense. Unless you actually travel with a mat.. then it works. I, however, brought no mat with me to England. So, after that little preamble, I'll start off by telling of my adventures.. or lack thereof. Well actually, just a little more preambling to give this blog some good ol' context. I left the cold, dead city of Winnipeg to work/live abroad in the southeast of England for a year. I am volunteering at an organization called L'arche, which has care-homes around the world for mentally disabled persons (that may not be the most politically correct definition, but I'm trying here). Also, ... read more

This weekend, I got to go to Canterbury to see all of the North Central folks who are studying there and celebrate my former roommate, Chris', 21st birthday. After taking the overnight bus from Glasgow, I arrived in London early Friday morning. Since it was a bit cold and rainy and I had done a lot of the tourist attractions in London when I visited in September, I decided to check out some of the museums. I started at the Museum of Natural History, which was incredibly huge. I spent more than four and a half hours there, and I felt as though I had just scraped the surface of the collections that they boasted. It was cool that it was clearly a working museum; you could tell that continuing to pursue research was one of ... read more

On the 29th of October I made a last minute booking for a open day at a university at SOAS. I'd heard about it a year ago from a friend of my headmistress whom lived there for 10 years and she suggested I have a look. A year ago I laughed this off, thinking I'd never be able to apply for such a thing as university, but soon after I moved for college I manage to get to grips of the reality of their entry requirements and when my tutor said I'm in a strong position to secure a place, I was literally so stunned. So, lately we've all been considering and talking about what we want to do afterwards, previous students went on to managing work within the tourism industry after doing NVQ which doesn't ... read more

So, Day 1. We started out in Somerset the day before, where we had to get everyone, and all our stuff, into a 15 year old 3 door car. 3 guys, 1 weeks plus worth of clothes and then some random essentials. We soon realised that not everything would fit into the boot. No problem! 5 seats mean we could pile stuff onto the seat behind the driver. Later on into the trip, this became a bad idea, more on that later! Next stop was Snodland, Kent which was our first stopover before we had to get the morning ferry to Calais. Next morning (6th September), we noticed we had an oil leak. Being us, we were optimistic and just carried on without worrying. We set off at 10am for the 12pm ferry. It only took ... read more