Ready to Leave. 27th March

Hi there,
Well, we are heading off on the start of the trip today. Going down to Harwich then crossing the ferry to Holland tomorrow morning, spend one night with our friends there then drive quickly across to Istanbul. Sad to leave Neil & Jenni once more with their wonderful hospitality as always. We go back a long way but still enjoy each other's company. Next time it'll be in New Zealand.
The weather the last week has been very cold with snow thick on the ground here at Great Yarmouth. Those who know Joan will realize how she must have froze; warm in the houses and shops but cold in the van once the motor is turned off. We spent one night sleeping in the van after leaving the Cotswolds, I will post a photo of Joan rugged up when I get to a computer that accepts my memory stick. On the way over to East Anglia we visited Kenilworth Castle, the home of Dudley, the Earl of Leicester and the bloke Elizabeth the 1st was enamoured with. Through tragic circumstances they never did marry. It was very interesting and well presented.
We had a good time in the Cotswolds despite the weather. It's not the countryside that attract visitors to the area but the villages that are so picturesque. The last day there, after going to the Easter Service in the local church, we meandered around visiting places like Bibury, The White Horse Hill, Lower Slaughter, and Stow on the Wold. We also discovered one of the 4 remaining duck decoys in the country. My memories of duck decoys were the cork things we used to put out to coax the ducks to come within range during the duck shooting season in NZ. And were what Sandy, our labrador, would fetch in instead of the duck. These ones were a section of woven walls and netting over large hoops diminishing in size to a low hoop where the ducks could be captured. Quite interesting. In use up to 50 years ago the ducks nowadays are banded then released.
The blogs may become a little irregular from now on, depends on the internet accessibility as we go along.
All the best
Gary & Joan

Snowing at Tom Tower, Christ Church, Oxford

The Cotswolds 23rd March

Frost was heavy on the ground and ice had formed on the still water. I had woken early and decided to go for a walk. I love these footpaths that pass through the farms in England. On the outskirts of the village where we were staying the one I took skirted woodland on one side and climbed up to a vantage point looking over cultivated farm land on the other. Rabbits took off into the bush, a cock pheasant noisily broke cover and three fallow deer nonchalantly headed back into cover as I walked towards them. I briefly stopped to watch a skylark singing skyward. It had to be brief, the wind was so bitter; the clear night previously had now turned to low cloud with the promise of more snow.

We awoke yesterday to snow falling. We intended spending a few hours in Oxford doing a walking tour around the university colleges but the weather curtailed our plans somewhat. One moment the sun would be shining next we would have snow making us cover up. There was the odd bout of sleet with hail later in the day. Max temp was 5c. Seems to be all due to the front coming down from the Arctic.

It’s been good catching up with Adam, the hotel we are staying in is on the edge of the Cotswolds a few miles from Oxford. The room has a 4 poster bed, it’s warm and there’s a pub just down the road that serves good meals. It’s an ideal base to see more of the area the next couple of days.

Thanks for the people who post comments on the blog. We really appreciate hearing from you. Haven’t been able to post any photos yet, have just bought a new camera and have to work out how to downsize the images before I load them on.

The promise of snow I spoke about early didn’t take long to arrive. It is now falling heavily and building up on the ground due to the cold earth temps whereas yesterday it was melting as soon as it landed.

Australia/France

Paris 17^th March

. It was a good start to our trip: a morning flight to Sydney and met by Joan’s sister and Ewen, a visit to see the Archibald Prize art exhibition then an afternoon spent on the harbour in the cruiser they have shares in. Most civilized.

That morning I had woken early, about 3.30. Shuffling out to the kitchen the enormity of what we were doing suddenly hit me. For a brief moment I was looking at the trip as a whole, it’s just too big a venture to do that.

On checking in at Sydney on Sat. morning our first hiccup occurred. The woman behind the counter told us that France had a regulation saying visitors to that country had to have an onward ticket. We did have one Paris/Norwich but I hadn’t printed it out. Not good enough she said. I had to find a way to connect my laptop to a printer to print it out. Two hours later, completely and utterly stressed out and with hands so shaking I had to ask someone else to work my laptop for me, I was still without the necessary hard copy. I then did something that I should’ve done in the first place, go to the JAL office upstairs. The woman there had never heard of such a regulation neither had the supervisor at the check in counter who she phoned. Back down I went just as the check in counters were closing and handed our documents over without the bloody onward hard copy. “Who told you you needed that?” the woman who served us said. She had never heard of it either. All that stress for nothing. I was seething. Unfortunately the woman who put us through all that hassle was gone otherwise she would have heard what I thought of her.

I always Always wonder which is the best way getting to Europe from Australia. We usually take it by the horns and get there as quickly as possible even if it means 27 hours in the plane including a refuelling stop in some place like Abu Dhabi at some ungodly hour of the morning. This time we thought we would do it differently. Japan Airlines has a flight that leaves Sydney mid morning, a very sensible hour, takes 9 hours to get to Narita near Tokyo arriving at 6pm local time. They put you up in a hotel near the airport, meaning you sleep in a bed that night in clean white sheets, a hearty breakfast is part of the deal the next morning. A short bus trip back to the airport to catch the 11.05 flight to Paris, arriving in our favourite city the same afternoon at 3.30pm. It was very pleasant.

Jetlag h Jetlag hasn’t been too bad, we spent the morning on a cruise down the Seine taking in all the highlights of the city and later in the day went to the Pompidou Centre to visit the at gallery there. I had never heard of Louise Bourgeois before this afternoon, she is a sculptor and painter. Now 97, she has an exhibition running at the Centre at the moment. What an amazing artist. Her work covered a variety of styles and methods but all so interesting. That exhibition alone would have been worth the admission fee. It is cold, 9c today, but at least the sun is shining off and on. Tomorrow we visit the Catacombs and the Sewers of Paris before flying to Norwich later in the afternoon.

18th March

catacom The catacombs were closed, a nuisance after a long metro ride out to them. We decided to revisit the Pere La Chaise Cemetery where we had briefly looked around a few years back. It was bitterly cold, brief shows of sun breaking through a sullen sky, trees that were still devoid of leaves, perhaps the right atmosphere to wander through a grave yard. But it’s the people buried there that brings the crowds: Edith Piaf, Chopin, George BIzet, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Steyn, Jim Morrison to name a few. Maria Callas was for a while until she had her ashes scattered over the Aegean. There are well over a 50 people of note buried amongst the Parisians. Well worth an hour or two visiting.