2010 Trip To South Africa & Australia

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The Long Journey to South Africa

Now that we have moved to the beautiful Highlands of Scotland it is no longer a quick hour or two drive up the motorway to Heathrow, check in, and off you go.

This year, apart from having to work out how to get from Fort Augustus to Heathrow, we also had to worry about the weather.

Anyway, after a week of pretty bad (or good depending on whether you like or want it) weather with plenty of snow and ice and closed roads and airports the snow all suddenly disappeared to allow us to get to Glasgow.

This was via the only bus on a Sunday from Fort Augustus (they've just put a bus stop outside our neighbour's house, how considerate) to Inverness then catch the bus to Perth, change there for the bus to Glasgow where we were lucky enough to be picked up by Roy and Paula (thanks) and stayed the night with them. The next morning we took a taxi to Glasgow airport to catch the flight to Heathrow, and then our connecting flight to Johannesburg. See - I said it would be easy!

No sooner had I sent a text to Aaron to tell him the pilot said our flight time would be half an hour faster so we would arrive early, than he informed us that there was a delay in taking off so we would be leaving half an hour late - therefore - arriving on time.

A pretty good flight although having slept on most of our bus journeys and previous flight were wide awake for most of this one.

Arrived to an overcast Jo'burg - but still warm.

Since getting here we have done some shopping - lovely to see some real shops again, Fort Augustus has gift shops and Inverness doesn't have much more than a Tesco and Primark - although I am looking forward to doing some browsing on my own without Andy waiting at the door looking at his watch.

We've had some lovely meals out including the best seafood I've ever tasted at Ocean Basket, a good old fashioned braai complete with cheese wors, and steak and prawns on the skottle and some South African wine.

The weather has been pretty good with some hot sun and a fantastic storm last night that flooded the garden and patio but was gone within half an hour.

Oh, and we've also been watching the South African cricket on the tv, what more can a person ask for.

Trailer is all emptied, sorted and repacked ready for the off in a week or so after the Christmas celebrations.

We're now chilling out (apt phrase) watching the UK and Scotland under a balnket of snow with freezing temperatures thinking how lucky we were to leave in the only few days in the middle that were free of snow.

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