England

Well I've just arrived in London again after visiting Nicki in Wales. It was really nice although me with my brilliant planning abilities visited her right before her last week of term...so she was a bit of a stressed out cookie. Yesterday was Mother's Day and the whole family came to see a beautiful castle - Caerphilly Castle. I loved it, it had this cool leaning tower thing and if I can get some photos to work soon I'll out a picture of it up. The only bad bit about the trip was that it was pouring! Most of our coats were soaked through by the end including my ski jacket! I'm glad that it was Nicki driving not me (actually it has put me off driving completely...) because there was zero visibility... The funny thing was the difference the road surfaces made! Some just sprayed so much it was like being in a car wash.

On Saturday (the day before) Nicki took me to her local shopping town Porthcawl, which is also where she went to school for her final years. It was really nice when it wasn't driving rain in our faces :p The coastline was really wild looking. We just pottered around on Saturday and went back in the evening for a drink. We drove up to Swansea in the afternoon and attempted to buy some flowers for her mother. This was a challenge on the evening before mother's day. We spent a long time in traffic jams and the first place we went to only had horrible broken flowers left. Luckily the supermarket we went to for supplies for dinner had some beautiful tulips left The Parker family did their best to fatten me up and I enjoyed steak on Saturday and a beautiful roast last night. I am very appreciative because for the next month I will be relying on tour food which I cannot imagine is gourmet.

All up it was a good weekend and I am now looking forward to chilling at Andy's for a couple more days. In particular Andy and Jos have a beautiful bath and I already have a bath bomb called Mr Butterball that I am looking forward to with much anticipation.

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This past week and a bit has been busy visiting friends. It has been really good to catch up with everyone! I think I last left you all while I was in Durham with Lou. Since then I’ve made it to Manchester to visit Nicki, Sheffield to visit Rosie and Josh, back to London to spend the weekend with Bryce and down to Surbiton to see Andy and Jos. I’m now near Hereford visiting Hayley and Nigel and their two children Kiri and Jake. Its been really lovely getting to spend time with everyone, and each visit had been a new experience. There isn’t a lot to tell you lot about though. Apart from one crazy night in Sheffield where I didn’t get to bed till the sun was well up a lot of tea has been drunk. That said there were a few interesting moments – on St Pat’s day Bryce punched a dude who was peeing next to his door, then was pulled over by the cops as he chased the dickhead down the street. Another was Andy’s msgs saying your welcome but we have no furniture yet so you’ll def need a mattress…. All up though its been a brilliant time. Everyone has taken care of me so well and I’m incredibly grateful for all their generosity!

Today I spent wandering around Hereford. I didn’t actually accomplish much except the purchasing of Panadol. This was a massive effort because I didn’t attempt it until I had a full blown headache. I had previously noted a Boots on my wanderings so at the beginning I wasn’t too worried. Then I wandered. And circled. At this point I was looking for anywhere that sold medicine of any sort and all I could find were herbal remedy places! I ended up asking in a shoe store – but the girl couldn’t understand me….. I eventually got my message across that I needed something for a headache (I thought they spoke English here…) and she reckoned she had never heard of panadol. The shop she directed me to sold it though and ended my misery.

This afternoon I met up with Nigel and Jake (who at 19 months is full of beans) and had a really beautiful meal at a restaurant on the river Wye. It was a really nice spot and Jake kept us entertained.

Tonight I’m going on to Wales to see where Nicki grew up J I’m really looking forward to seeing it and am anticipating a brilliant weekend.

Until next time…………..xxxxxxxxx

I'm in a cute little place where a friend of mine (Lou). lives. There is not alot here but it is nice and was very pretty in the snow. I had thought that March was quite late for a large amount of snow but apparently i was wrong. It appears that most of the country was blanketed in the stuff on Saturday night I think because I like it so much it makes an extra special effort in my presence because the same thing happened in Berlin.

When I first arrived it was into Heathrow. Heathrow is the worst airport I have been in by a mile. That includes Delhi. Even though the queen is still the official leader of our country I, as a citizen of Australia, had to que with all the people coming from third world nations. I got caught behind a Saudi family that was almost denied entry. Weird. Its the one place in the world where i though it couldn't happen....apparently we are not part of the EU or a trading partner...or Swiss which were listed seperatly (?).

Anyway, after stuggling my way through customs....(why are you here?what did you study? how did you like learning about glaciers??? hmmmmmmm)....i made the massivly long trek to the underground. I hadn't taken a trolley because i didn't think it was very far. Mistake. I then headed to Bryce's for the night. While i was on the underground i discovered that i had no idea where i was supposed to be getting my bus for Edinburgh from or what time it was leaving. I made a call to my travel agent, he was on holiday though so i talked to one of the others who had my ticket sent to me by email. Fine. Except it was the middle of the night and in the only 24hrs internet place the printer was broken. I ended up going to the bus in the morning and just pleading with the folk in the ticket office to print my ticket out for me....through my email account. They were really nice and i made my bus by 2 mins.

The bus took 9.5hrs so i've decided against buses for the rest of my travels in the UK. Seeing Trine in Edinburgh was brilliant though. I had a really good time there and ended up staying longer than planned....although my planning abilities are not the best so i hadn't really planned anywhere to go after.

I'm about to go and catch a train to Manchester and I'll continue my tale from there