Melbourne

Well I arrived back to a rainy Melbourne night last night. I really need to develop a sleeping pattern of some sort, hopefully one mirroring the timezone I'm actually in. Its strange to be back, yet still leading the lifestyle of travelling - sleeping on couches and not yet fitting back into the life i left. Things will settle down once i start working again, but i guess I'll still be sleeping on couches since there is no point finding something more permanent when I'm going back to NZ in a month or so with undefinite plans for a next destination.

KL

I haven't seen much of KL so far, as i didn't manage to sleep much on the plane. So I have a pretty odd sleeping pattern here, i just got up for the day and its 3pm. I'm a little scared of what this means for trying to catch my flight in 19 hours tomorrow morning. Since i've already saw a lot of markets yesterday and giant buildings aren't hugely of interest to me, i think the plan is to ride the roller coaster in the giant mall next to the hostel and do some shopping - if there is anything that will make me want to sleep at a regular time it's shopping!

To,m Goes south

Well my plane leaves in 5 hours for KL. I'm not sure there is really too much else to say. I slept last night on a balcony of an 11th story apartment and awoke this morning to see the sun rising over Paris. It really is a beautiful city, its just a shame its so crowded with tourists even in the off season.

Dortmund

Its really starting to dawn on me that I'm heading back soon. Its also starting to get really cold here in Germany. My thoughts of only bringing summer clothes since i was coming to Europe in July seem so niave now. But I´ve kitted myself out in gloves and a scarf for only €1.50 at "the €1 shop" (well of course the name was actually in german). In preperation for clearing customs on my return, I´ve already shaved for the first time in almost 3 months. It took me 30 minutes and 3 razors, but I got there in the end and it turns out there was skin hiding under there all along.

In the next few days ill have to head to paris so i can catch my flight back on the 31st.

Berlin

Well Ive been in Berlin since Wednesday, and I have to say I like it. Its been one of the few places thats really stood out as a place i could see myself living. If I end up starting the new year unemployed, as is looking to be a real option, then Berlin will definitly join my list of acceptable job locations. Though my lack of knowing german could be an issue there, but im proud to say i can atleast count to 9 now (10 still escapes me.

Today i did a tour of the old berlin bunkers, including an old WW2 bunker and a modernish train station (1973 if i recall correctly) that was built to double as a nuclear fallout shelter. Its been interesting to be somewhere with such recent war history after the rest of europe where the interesting history stopped after WW2, while hear in Berlin its run right up till the 90s.

Tomorrow i think its time to start heading west again, i have to be in Paris by the end of the month, and i still want to make it to quite a few more destinations before i leave at the end of the month. I think the plan is to go visit another camino friend in Essen, but I as were both highly disorganised, we havent arranged anything yet!

Prague

Well I'm in Prague for the day, before continuing onto Berlin tomorrow. Though if I like it here, there is always the possibility of one less Berlin day and one more Prague day. That's the beauty in not booking anything in advance. Normally the
downside is that you end up paying through the nose for it. But coming
to Prague, I bought the ticket from Munich 15mins before the train and it was only 34Euro. However the journey required changing trains no less than 5 times, and some of the trains seemed more like glorified buses
from the 60's that were confined to only running on rails. Despite not
having a change time longer than 10minutes, I managed to make all my
connections, though there was a close call when I tried to get out at a
provincial station with the same name as the main station. I eventually
even managed to wonder the suspiciously quiet streets of Prague till I found the hostel without getting mugged!

Munich

I´m staying with some wonderful friends I met on the Camino in their apartment in Munich or München as the locals seem to call it. I also managed a day trip to Heidelberg and a quick stop in Stuttgart for lunch while i changed trains.

Tomorrow we´re planning to go for a walk in the alps, the day after that, I think I have to leave to explore more places. The goal is to get to Berlin on Tuesday via Prague and either Nuremberg or Dresden.

Also I spent some time playing with flickr. I accidentally missed some photos so it´s now 30 camino photos, and I´ve also placed them all on the map, so there is a map view now here. Some of the ones especially of fields I jsut had to guess, but most are accurate.

More photos

Well so far Karlsruhe is all very nice, my only complaint being that it turns out all the museums and tourist like attractions are closed on a monday! This has atleast allowed to sort out some things that I was unable to while on the camino, such as uploading some more photos. It's still by no means my complete set, but my 25 selected camino photos are now on my flickr page. Eventually once i'm back i'll find somewhere to upload the entire set (minus out of focus/duplicates).

Karlsruhe

Well Berlin turned out to be pretty far from Frankfurt Hahn and Karlsruhe turned out to be very close. So here I am.

I'm finally overwhatever was afflicting me before. It seem the perscribed combination of bacteria and antibiotics fixed whatever evil lurked inside me. It's still a shame that I never got to really celebrate the end of the camino either in Santiago or Finisterre but that's life and it doesn't distract too much from the experience.

The other thing that's finally over is my climbing draught. I went indoor climbing yesterday with an old friend in the gym here in Karlsruhe. It wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting after nearly 4 months without climbing, but it certainly wasn't pretty either.

Not really sure of my next destination, it seems like i'll have a bike, a climbing gym and the people are friendly so i'll probably stay atleast a few days, then either go somewhere random near by, or visit some camino friends in Munich (I assume they've finished walking by now anyway - they had to pause for a job interview).

Santiago take 2!

Well I´m no longer a pilgrim. I picked up my package from the postoffice that i had sent to myself 37 days ago. I´d pretty much forgotten what was inside, so it was a bit like getting a present opening it. It turns out i had some nice clothes in there, so i´m now wearing nice clothes. Other than my beard (which is too unweildly to shave despite my present to myself containing my shaving utensils) I don´t look at all like a pilgrim, and I don´t look spanish which i guess makes me a tourist.

I didn´t really see the cathederal the first time i was here, so i´m off to go see it better and probably get looks from pilgrims who think i´m just a tourist.

Finisterre

It took me 4 days rather than 3 since I´m still sick, but I made it to the end of the earth! (or atleast what was thought to be many hundreds of years ago). As is the tradition I burnt some clothes as the sun set. It´s certainly nice to be by the beach again. It did seem odd to me to be walking for 35 days continuiously and not see the ocean.


In an hour or so i´ll bus back to santiago, pick up my long lost posessions from the postal office and find a hotel for the night. Then an early flight tomorrow back to germany. Hopefully the ´being sick´ thing will end soon, as its harder to enjoy things when all I can eat and drink is bottled water and toasted bread.

Day 32 - Santiago!

Well I did it. Despite the world conspiring against me in nearly every way possible for the last 10km (I got sick, twisted my ankle and got very cold and wet) I managed to make it. The mass was good and they did light up and swing the incense! I was in the optimum position for being crushed if their slightly dodgy looking knot didn´t hold too which made it all the more exciting.

Now i´m trying to work out how i can get out of here. Its never as easy as one would hope. The only ´direct´ flight from santiago to my preferred next desination of berlin has a stopover and costs $800, I´m sure i´ll find something though, it just won´t be as simple as i would like. I´m still planning to walk to finesterre tomorrow if my body hasn´t completly fallen apart.

Day 29 - Not really sure

I forget where i am (i never know when i write these posts actually, but normally I have my book next to me, but not so much today), it´s irrelevent anyway as we can´t stay here since its full, we´re only waiting till 4pm for the store to open so we can buy some food as the road ahead has no shops and maybe not even bars. Its only 65km or so to Santiago now, but i´m pretty commited to walking on to the end of the world so again its not really relevent.

These last few days are a lot more hectic and are less enjoyable and I think it will be a relief to get past the toursits and keep walking past santiago. As always internet time is limited, and i´ve pretty much run out of time. I´ll probably post again when i´m in Santiago!

Day 27 - Sarria

Well I took the longer route today, past the monsestery in samos. We didn´t go in because it was 3 euros and it was all in spanish, but it was a wonderful sight from the outside. I´m now only 110ish km from santiago, but I think I will goto finisterre, I think i would regret having walked 7/8 of the way across spain and not finishing the job off.

I´m yet to get a blister, so it seems like im missing out on the camino experience. Just to force it i´ve been too lazy today to wash my socks for the second day running (Well yesterday it was because we slept in the church of Triacastila and there was no wash basin...) so if i´m going to get blisters, tomorrow will be the
day.

I still don´t quite know what to do when i finish. but my mother has helped by telling me i can fly to frankfurt from santiago, I guess I can head from franfurt to berlin by train or bus. But i´ll investigate other options too probably when i hit santiago in 5-6 days.

Yesterday sleeping in the church was quite a story. The Xunta albergue was full and they wouldn´t let us sleep on the floor. My friends refused to pay 7 euros for the private ones. My book said that the xunta one had overflow accomodaton in the church. They denied this, but after sending 2 of the girls off to talk to the minister of the church, he said he´d concider it after the mass. In the end he let us, but he wrote down all the passport details of the males - apparently females were ok...

Anyway, i´ve run out of time.

Day 24 - Villafranca del Bierzo

It seems like a long time since i last found internet, but it´s only been 3 days. But it´s been a much more eventful 3 days than the long constant meseta. There´s been hills, people claiming the world will end in 2 months (Tomas the hospitalero in manjarin), small children tipping over wheels barrows, several culinary inventions - Jam and tuna sandwiches, panic when i thought my camera had broken only to find it had run out of batteries and another case of me almost seeing the last of my walking stick when i left it in astorga.

It´s crazy to think that i´m under 200km to go now and will probably finish in 7-9 days. I´m thinking about continuing walking on to finesterre, but i´m also aware of the impending flight back to australia and the huge amount of friends i´d still like to visit. I haven´t even started to look at how i will travel round, so i guess it´s going to be expensive. On the bright side the camino and spain in general is dirt cheap. Last night i paid our tab after 2 drinks each at a bar for 5 people and it came to €13, I could easily spend that on myself in Melbourne.

Walking in a group has also slowed me down a lot, not so much in distance as in getting up later and arriving later. Today I got to the albergue at 7:20pm (though 40mins before the stragglers at 8pm), but it was an amzingly beautiful walk over the hills through the vineyards in the setting sun.

Arriving late seems to work well the overflow beds are always better and quieter than the dormitory ones and we haven´t once been rejected (well it happened once to the others when i stopped in sahagun). Tonight we again have our own private room for the 5 of us. It´s funny that we do so well for beds by arriving late, when there are people who get up and leave 2 hours before its even light just so they can get the first beds - yet they only end up in the dormitory of 20 or more snorers and miss the sites along the way.

Day 21: Astorga

Well it was a long day, but I made here here in the end. Probably arrived around 6pm. Nothing too much else to say really. While everything hurts, its only a little bit - I still haven´t had a major affliction. Only 260km to go, I suspect i´ll be in Santiago by the end of the month.

Day 20: Villar De Mazarife

Well I made it in and out of Leon, despite a close call with a learner driver on a pedestrian crossing. Leon was fantastic and i´d really like to explore it again in a non camino mode - it´s hard when the albergue locks the gates at 10 and the nightlife doesn´t start till after that. The cathedral was amazing too with all the stained glass, but i decided to respect their wishes and not take photos despite the fact that everyone else was.

Leon was also the first bit of walking in the rain - it only lasted 20minutes, but it sure did pour. I think we´ve been lucky so far, but it doesn´t seem like it will last. There were more threatening clouds today coming out of Leon. Tomorrow we´re planning to push for astorga, my book claims its 34km, but i´ve heard others claim as low as 24.

The albergue (Albergue de jesus) here is fantastic. I´m going to sleep out on the terrace (by choice). There is art work done by pilgrims scribbed all over the walls, a wonderful courtyard, 2 amazing kitchens (thankfully it was my turn to cook too) and it´s all only for a donation. The garden there has beds in it, a pirate ship and an inflatable swimming pool that is sadly out of action.

Day 18 - Mansilla de las Mulas

Well I made up for my short day due to sickness with a 37km effort today and it felt fine. I started just before 8am and could have left later as it turned out my walking companions hadn´t managed to find beds and had slept on a tennis court and didn´t manage to make a move until 10am (it´s a lot harder getting up from a night outside). So i over took them by walking 10km before they´d even gotten up.

Tomorrow is only a short day to Leon, even though i feel fine after my longest walk yet, i´m glad tomorrow is a shorter day.

Using my short day in Sahagun I managed to upload several new photos before the internet cut out on me. I still have a lot more, but it sounds like i´ll have a lot of time to sort them out in melbourne as my job prospects initially upon my return look bleak.

Day 17 - Sahagun

I had this idea in my head that once i reached the half way mark, it would be an easy stroll (albiet a 370km one) to Santiago. Last night was a reminder that a journey ahead is still long and hard. I blaim it on the tortilla I had in the afternoon, my companions blamed in on the cheap tasting wine - what ever it was i didn´t sleep much last night and spent a long time hunched over a cistern.

Though I struggled on and managed to make it to sahagun today (almost 20km according to my guide book, but even in my fevered state, i´m sure it wasn´t quite that long) before siesta even and managed to get things from the pharmacy. My friends went on, but I think with a good nights sleep tonight I should be able to catch them tomorrow or the day after. It will be nice to have a little time by myself again before i manage to rejoin them.

Day 16 - Ledigos

Well I´m past half way! only another 370 odd km to go.

To expand on the ice story. I´m now walking with in a group of 5. Two Austrians, a German, a French and me. We decided it would be a fun experience to camp out in a field just after Villafranca Montes de Orca. So we bought a bottle of wine (for a whole €3) some chocolate and some bread and found a nice field full of straw.

All was good until we woke up very cold and wet (dew - which we were expecting) at 5am. We pulled out our emergancy blankets and that kept us warm till the sun arrived, but it was then that we noticed that there was frost on our bags and sleeping mats.

We also had a visit from a farmer early the next morning telling us we needed permission to camp there, he gave up after he realised none of us spoke spanish, and those of us who did, didn´t at that hour anyway.

Anyway, there is a spanish man sitting next to me gruntting, which i think means that once i´ve finished trying to track down a rather large missing payment on online banking, my time is up.

Day 13: Hontanas

There is a lot i could write about the last 5 days, such as the night camping in the field where there was ice, burgos and the various other places, but the internet is horribly slow and there is dinner is more important. But its nice to have walked over 300km, though hitting half way in a few days will be even better. I´ll write more when I can.

Day 8: Azofra

Well it was my shortest day yet, but the choice was 15km to azofra or 30 to santa domingo so 15 was the obvious answer. My french companion also had a gammy leg, so the two of us had a slow hobble from ventosa. I also0 had a bit of a shoick this morning to discover my hiking stick/photo monopod was missing from teh bin of sticks at the entrace. I´m still suspicious of the circumstances it left under (it seems someone has tryed to scratch off the identifying markings?) but apparently it was left by a fountain just before Najera and pciked up by another gentleman whom i happened to run into. So no major disasterç


The albergue in Azofra resembles a resort with 2 people per room and a small pool and massive courtyard for only €5. And the town is in Fiesta!!

Day 7: Ventosa

Well another 30km to complete the trifecta of towns starting with V. I managed it but only just. The long distances has taken its toll on my knee and its now starting to hurt a bit, i´m not sure what exactly is wrong. It´s nothing major but it will slow me down a little while i wait for it to stop. It was the first time i didn´t coat my legs in voltaren so maybe it did help after all.

Ventosa is a lovely little down about 1/2km off the main route. The albergue is small only catering to 30 or so people, but like cirauqui was run by a wonderful woman.

Dinner was a delicious pasta and of course a €2 bottle of the local wine. The woman runs a small shop out of the closet of the entrace and has everything the passing pilgrim could want - such as soap for the pilgrims who accidently left theirs in viana....

Day 6: Viana

Well today was the longest day yet, I made it to viana, 30km. I also had my first foot problem requireing attention. I learnt a valueable lesson - be carful walking with a hiking stick when wearing sandles. I didn´t do too much damage, but theres a quite impressive wound on the top of my foot. Luckily no sign of blisters and such yet.

I have 3minutes left, and only 2 photos uploading, but maybe i can do more later tonight.

Day 5: Villamayor de monjardin

Can´t write too much as i can upload photos instead. But last night was in Villamayor de monjardin. The albergue was basic, but was by donation which was nice and provided breakfast.

Day 4: Cirauqui

Well Its been 4 days, just a tad over 100km. Last night I spent hte night in Cenzor minor at the albergue run by the nights of malta. Cenzor minor turned out to be a good choice as the town was in fiesta mode - I was very suprised to see the party still going as i started walking at 7am. I guess Spaniards know how to party.

Still no problems with any limbs or extremeties, though I´m still applying voltaron emugel liberally and taping thing things that I think might hurt if left uptaped (I leart this from climbing!). This afternoon it was so hot i decided to walk in my sandals and that seems to have been fine too.

Now i´m in the amazing hilltop town of Cirauqui with amazing views out the balcony. I´m hoping I can mantain my average of 25km a day and manage to reach Santiago by the end of the September, but time will tell.

There are certainly a lot of characters on the trail, sadly I think my speed has meant i´ve left a lot of the more diverse ones behind (But this also means I run into new ones!) and seem to have found a group of people who walk at the same speed. Today I walked with two french guys who weren´t that good at english, so our common language was failing together at Spanish.


Still these frustrating internet machines that suck up € by the 15minute and offer no ability to upload photos, are incredibly slow and seem to sporadically stop working for no reason. I´ve already filled up one memory card (though it wasn´t empty when i started) so i need to find a real computer soon before I fill up my second card!

Zubiri

Spending the night in Zupiri after a much slower (and more painful!) day tomorrow. I´m hoping tomorrow my body will be more accostomed to the walking and that as i continue to organise my pack better and throw out useless things it will get easier. Tomorrow I plan to make it to atleast Pamplona!

Again internet time is limited! only two minutes left and also still no ability to upload photos, but I got some very nice ones before sunrise ()yes i was up when it was still dark to all the disbelievers!) of the chapel in roncosvalles.

In roncesvalles

Well I made it! Despite having to wait till 9am for the post office to made it, I crossed the border at great pace, walking all 27km in about 6 hours. I didn´t really mean to walk so fast. It was only when I saw the 3.6km to go sign that I realise i´d stopped catching up and was now just walking fast!

My pack is now a lot lighter with most of my possesions on route to santiago with me slowly chasing them.

I have lots of photos of fog which I would upload if i could, but well I can´t, so I´m not. Its quite amazing that this place has internet. On the outside it´s just an old stone barn. Inside its an oldstone barn with hundreds of bunks in it. However underground and it´s an amazing tiled modern internet and bathroom facility.

The counter is counting down on my 1€ for 16min internet so I should sign off before I lose it all.

Viertel Festival

I'd like to claim I planned it, but that would be a lie. But I managed to attend what I assume is one of the best festivals in Bremen - the Viertel festival taking place in the Viertel quarter. They block off an entire street and many of the streets that come off it, fill it up with stalls and trailers selling becks. Put up four stages and then project crazy stuff onto all the houses in the street. There was also a garden in the middle of the road and sounds coming from all the storm water drains.

One of the house projections was part of what I would assume was the world's largest pinball computer game. Hopefully the photo shows what's going on, but it was all lined up so that the features of the house were included as part of the game.

Other less interactive projections featured people climbing out of the windows on the ground floor, climbing up the building and then going in other windows, it was quite mesmorising and exceptionally well done.


One of the things that strikes me as odd, is how easy it is to buy alcohol and cigarettes - there are vending machines for cigarettes everywhere and beer seems to be able to be sold on the street, certainly every place I've seen that sells food even a dodgy hot dog stand will sell becks. And while almost everyone smokes, it doesn't seem like public drunkeness is more or less of an issue than anywhere else I've been.

I'd also like to whinge about the fact that blogger doesn't auto rotate uploaded photos!

Beyond Bremen

I always find it a relief to have my next major onwards journey booked. Its very stressful when there are too many options. And trying to work out how to get from Bremen to where I'll start the Camino was certainly no fun with the multitude of train/flight/coach combinations. But I just booked a flight from Hamburg to Toulouse, so that settles that for the most part. It probably would have been cheaper to not split up Germany into two separate parts of my trip, but i think when i was ready to leave the UK it was too early to start the camino, and its certainly been a nice relaxing time here staying with Edith (a former flatmate from Melbourne). The other option of course would have been to keep touring round Germany and then do the camino later, but I have to say I'm itching to start walking. This way as well, I have the option of taking the camino slow and enjoying it more or rushing through (though is there such a thing as rushing when you're walking?) and having more time for Germany, France and maybe even time to squeeze in another country.

With remaining time diminishing (not that I'm even at the half way point yet?) its time to start being more organised, and in this vein i have filled in my calendar a little more
So it looks like i'm on track to start the camino on Thursday, hopefully keeping me just ahead of the weekend buldge. I still have some things to drop off, and some things i need to buy before I can start, but i'm informed on a globetrotter megastore in hamburg, so I assume they can equip me with my final needs / mostly a pair of pants as the only pair i bought had had a hard journey being worn solidly.

Bremen

Well as much as I enjoyed the UK, its a relief to be out of it. Atleast there is sun here in Germany! It's a much bigger cultural difference aswell. I'm not used to traffic on the right hand side. It seems much stranger here than my brief trip to the US too. I have immediate recations to things such as thinking buses are driverless and or going backwards before remembering. I've also been kindly provided with a bicycle by Edith (My former flatmate who I'm staying with) and have thus far managed to stay alive, but its possibly more by luck than anything else. Though the biking trails are good here, it seems like cars actually look for bikes before turning and respect the right of way. So much so that I've had cars try to give way to me as i was stopped on the sidewalk looking around being lost.

The language barrier is also interesting. It's my first time in a non english speaking country. I had plans to learn the basis from the lonely planet european phrase book that i've been carrying round with me since i left. However several weeks ago when I went to find the german section, I discovered it had been replaced with a gap in the book binding - I did just find the book in my old sharehouse so I guess I can't complain too much. So this has left me with knowing next to no german. I realise almost everyone speaks english, but I don't feel right just launching into english, so it was a bit awkward the first day. Now however I bought the Lonely planet Germany book, which features a small phrase section which ought to be enough to get me by.

Out of order, but thats ok

After my reflective, wheres the last month gone post, I just realised I haven't blogged for quite a while not really since Manchester.

From Manchester we drove south to Cardiff, getting in quite late after getting stuck on the motorway in amongst traffic going to the V festival. It took us the better part of 2 hours to go 10miles at one stage. The bridge into wales was quite a site, and well worth the £5 toll (going the other way is free!?).

After arriving rather late, we pretty much headed off to bed after a few games of pool at the hostel. The next morning we decided we wanted to do a tour of the millennium stadium - however the fact it was match day said otherwise, so instead we went to the match and saw Wales just manage to beat Argentina in a very close game. Despite being from NZ this was actually my first rugby game (as long as you don't the rugby 7s at the commonwealth games). It was a massive roofed stadium much like the telstra dome, everywhere in sight was advertising for 'brains' the welsh beer. The crowd was friendly and a good time was had by all - except maybe the number 14 Argentinian who was sin binned for a dangerous midair tackle.

After that we drove onto bath, stayed the night there, There were two walking tours offered, one was free and left almost as soon as we got there covering the history of bath, the other was £5 and gave us time to eat first and covered nothing of importance. Obviously we went with the bizzare bath tour and saw nothing of important but had a good time doing so. Most of the tour centred around strange buildings that had their doorways bricked up with an ongoing gag that it was done by a fameous archietect. The tour was fun, and despite containing no actual history walked us past most of the scenic parts of bath.

It's hard to know what to think of bath, we ran out of time to see anything other than the tour and had to make do with a quick walk into the foyer of the baths. It wasn't worth paying £11 to go further since we really only had less than an hour to spare. The nightlive seemed to consist of stag and hen parties from london that couldn't be bothered finding an eastern european nation to invade. Maybe saturday night wasn't the best night to be in bath...

Next we saw the Stone Henge the next morning en route back to Cambridge to meet up with Sam and Zoe and sell the goat. I was worried that it would just be getting charged a small fortune to stare at rocks from afar. But we went on a free guided tour (Well entry was £5) presented by a very enthusiastic arceology student who made it all very worthwhile with her knowledge and enthusiasm.

Back where I started.

Give or take 20,000km. I'm back at Hammersmith at least - by chance the same room and bed as i spent my first night in the UK, sitting here now in the same Internet cafe as i posted my first in the UK post.

I feel like the last week has been all retracing steps as we came back down the UK via various places we'd already been and staying a couple of nights more in Cambridge.

I managed to get a little more sightseeing in today - I finally got to the Imperial War museum the last thing I really wanted to tick off London. It was nice to cover the first world war in more detail as nothing else had really

Of course despite being back in the same place, everything is different, for a start everything I see here is surreal, I know I've been here before, but its all been so fast it's kind of turned into a blur and its more a sense of deja vu than an actual remembering. The number of parks, boats, museums, art, tanks, planes and pubs I've seen in the last month and a half has been immense, the amount of sleep i've gotten less than immense. I have to concentrate to remember the actual location and happening, and all the touring i find it easy to skip a city when reciting them.

The other difference is explained below.

I haven't shaved since the wedding, I haven't decided how long to keep it up, but at this point shaving seems like a lot of effort.

In other news, Craig imforms me that he's managed to sell the goat - less than a day after we put it up and only £30 less than we paid for it. The goat certainly served us well, without offering any major dramas. The only main expense was the insurance for it - at £130 for a month (and this policy didn't actually cover me, hence why i didn't do much driving).

And talking about retracing steps, now i'll have to go half way back to cambridge and pay twice as much to do so to get to Stansted.

To Germany

Well after much delaying, I've booked a ryanair flight to germany on Wednesday, so that will put an end to the UK for this trip. I've seen a lot having driven round almost all of the UK, but of course there is more i would have liked to have seen. I'll be back sometime, hopefully with less travelling and more staying.

The journey south begins

Taynuilt - It was relaxing and fun and even unexpectedly had more lord nelson knowledge - according to local legend his cannon balls came from iron made in the taynuilt cast. I can't say there was a huge mention of this at the actual site, and there may well have been an element of the locals talking it up somewhat. We also did a short bush walk in Glen Nant, which is where much of the charcoal for the iron cast came from.

From Taynuilt we drove south (Inverness and Loch Ness would have been fun, but at 3 hours drive away and running out of nights they were unobtainable) and slept in Glasgow at a university dorm room being rented out over the summer. The college was massive and i think we counted about 15 turns in the hall way and several flights of stairs to get from the main door to our rooms - it's a good thing we had a quiet night in Glasgow or this maze could have been interesting. Our dinner venue was set as soon as we walked past a gastro pub called "the goat".

The next morning we were able to do a quick lap of the museum and find a pub for lunch. It was during this lunch that I got into an altercation with a wasp who had decided to steal my chair while i was at the bar ordering. The wasp certainly had the upper hand at first, and did a fine job stinging me on the ass as i sat down unknowingly in the dimly lit pub. However he was beat when my friends joined the good fight on my behalf while i limped back to the car to find the wasp spray Craig had bought when he'd had a similar misunderstanding with a wasp in Cambridge. I can't say the four hour drive from Glasgow to York was the most comfortable journey I've had, but it was mostly OK by the end of it.

The plan was to arrive at york mid afternoon and have a long leisurely pub tour evening. We had a pub tour guide sheet that went through 9 historic pubs and picked up landmarks along the way. Unfortunately we didn't get there till 7 so it became a game of pub hopping only allowing for a quick half pint while we asked the bar staff why their pub was in fact "the oldest and most haunted pub in York" (a claim made by no less than 4 of the pubs we visited). The route between pubs was meant to include a section of the history city wall, however we were quickly herded in the opposite direction by the keeper of the Wall as it was closing time. He agreed however, that if we kept in front of him walking in the opposite direction he would give us a personal guided tour of the wall. As the keeper of the Wall he certainly had a lot to tell us about who'd sieged and occupied the walls and city over the years, it may have been the wrong direction, but it was well worth doing.

Now we're in Manchester, heading south at a rapid pace. I expect that within a week I'll have said goodbye to Craig, Brendon, and the goat and set off for Germany, but of course I still haven't planned anything.

Taynuit

We're never one to pass up the option of some one's couch to sleep on - it got us through another night in Edinburgh allowing us to see both the castle and some more fringe festival stuff. The couch quest has now bought us to Taynuit. After a late arising and a stop off to visit Stirling castle, we arrived nearing night time so haven't had a look around yet, but the I did the driving up (my first UK driving - Craig counted 5 times where the windscreen wiper came on rather than the indicator, and that's only counting the left turns!). The views were spectacular with extremely hilly terrain and quiet lochs bordering the road.

My other Scotland post was rather brief so here's an expanded, it's 1am and I can't sleep version.

The Scotland experience started far too early in Dublin, I forget the exact time but probably around 5am - the cheapest Ryanair flights are at stupid'o'clock of course. As no buses started till 7am we had to catch a taxi. We'd ordered it the previous day for 6:20 am and it showed up early despite having gone to the wrong address after a slight misunderstanding. All was seemingly good till the driver clipped the curb at an interesting angle at an interesting speed. This lead to the first blown tyre of the trip, and certainly not the last, but that comes later. The earlyness paid off as we made it to our flight, which was late anyway. It's the first time I was happy to have a delayed flight - The flight to Dublin was on time and this was announced with an incredibly obnoxious trumpet noise, no such rudeness after we got into Liverpool 20mins late.

The goat was left grazing at long term parking and other than a little bird presents on the roof was none the worse for its 4 days of abandonment. We were all pretty happy to get out of Liverpool and the Lakes district was certainly nicer scenery. I was a little disappointed that they didn't hire out sailing boats at the boat hire on Lake Ullswater, but the wind wouldn't have allowed for more than a calm drift anyway - The photo of the boats shows how glassy it was. After this it was on to explore Roman ruins at Housestead. This took us of the M9 and brought us more to the East.

We were pondering making a run for Edinburgh, but settled for staying just out of it in Melrose. The England Scotland border was my first challenging piece of rock climbing on the trip. On the A68 the border is marked by a large boulder, and it simply had to be climbed. I still haven't acquired a pair of climbing shoes yet, but managed to get up bare foot.

Melrose turned out to be a fine decision as the friendly people there were able to book us a night in Edinburgh central after 4 phonecalls back and forwards. The hostel was also right next to a pub and the abbey ruins - what more could you ask for?

Despite only being a 45minute drive from Melrose to Edinburgh, it was an all day trip via Melrose Abbey, Dryburgh Abbey, a William Wallace Statue, Crichton Castle and finally Craigmillar castle. We certainly made good use of our 'Historic Scotland' Explorer Pass.

That night Craig and I went and saw James at the Corn exchange. The concert was fantastic, one of the best large concerts I've been to, we managed to get onto the barrier up the front by half way through and stayed there till the end. After the concert we queued in polite British style for the bus. Despite what looked like an unmanageable queue, everyone managed to pile onto the first double decker bus to amble its way up the street. All was good the the concert awed crowd enjoying the ride back. Eventually a strange sound started coming from the rear of the bus, it sounded just like a dodgy rear windscreen wiper and we thought nothing of it. Turns out double decker buses don't have rear windscreens and hence have little need for wipers on them. This was the second blown tyre. Somehow we managed to score a ride on a couple's taxi that was going the same way we wanted to (I guess it's not that coincidental since that's the route the bus was going...)

The next day was filled with Edinburgh castle, followed by street performers, then free comedy.

The first comedian was really good, and was nothing like the stereotypical "I'm a drunk Irishman with an accent" style of comedy that some comedians seem to get away with. The second however was an Australian woman, and to steal the English phrase, she was rubbish. Still that's surely the fringe experience, and we weren't forced to pay a cent for it!

The drive up was mostly uneventful, we paid our £1 to go over the rather scenic forth road bridge and went to Stirling castle. I defiantly prefer the semi ruined castles to the intact ones. The intact ones seem to be more tourist trappy and seem less authentic what with their illuminated exit signs and clearly modern alterations and repairs. Crichton has been the most enjoyable thus far, and the guy who managed it was able to tell us a lot about the history of the castle, including all the research he'd done on the Internet about the Italian origin of a diamond pattern on one of the walls. To be honest he seemed a little lonely, which was unsurprising since we were almost the only ones there for the two hours.

After Stirling I took over the wheel. I can report our goat drives just fine, other than being a little light on the acceleration and having a maze for a gear box. The only en route disaster was arriving at the petrol station at Doune with the sign 'The last station for 22 miles' to find that we couldn't fill our near empty tank with the unleaded tipple our goat demands as they had run out till Monday. This lead to going back up the road and off to the East a bit to Dunblane. It was also an interesting challenge finding our final destination without a town map, and the fact that addresses here are house names rather than numbers, oh yes, and there are no street signs either.

So I'm not yet sure what plan for tomorrow is, but there are options a plenty with the sea, lochs, mountains, towns and castles all around

A stroke of luck

So, despite my pessimism, without any prior arranging, we have managed to acquire:

• Tickets to a sold out gig
• 3 Hostel beds for a Friday night in the centre, in the same room even
  
• A car park in central Edinburgh, just outside the hostel, that cost us 50p for the entire weekend
• Hopefully more to come.

We spent last night in Melrose, just inside the Scotland border - giving me for the 2nd time so far 3 countries in a day (Scotland, Ireland and England). The Melrose Abbey was fantastic and there was just enough of it standing to be mighty impressive and just enough fallen down that you could believe it was at least 600 years old.

Deer Stalking in Dublin

Warning, Deer!

Deer Spotted!

Ok, after 2 hours walk, the best we could do were stuffed ones in the visitor centre.

From the papal cross, with its elvation and papal awsomeness, deer are located!

Close up view.

Yesterday we went deer stalking in Phoenix park. It was a little slow at first with deer slow to materialise, but upon the recommendation of using the papal viewing area as an elevated platform for optimum deer viewing potential we eventually spotted a small herd in the distance. The trophy shots will follow later once I'm reunited with the rest of my luggage including my card reader (RyanAir charge extra for checked in luggage so we're traveling light in Dublin).




After making good use of the fine weather (it only rained once!) and meandering about the park for the better part of 4 hours we made course for the Guinness brewery. It was a much better time than the Jameson tour - this one was self guided rather than led by a dutch guy (not that I have anything against the dutch, and am all for equal opportunities - but really a dutch guy leading a Guinness tour?). The ground floor covered the ingredients including an impressive waterfall (again photos to follow). The second the process including tastings of roasted barley, and another 5 floors detailed the history as you ascended up around and through a giant 7 story pint glass. The top floor was where the free unit of Guinness was dispensed and offered a near 360 degree view of the city (nothing else is taller than 7 stories except the odd smoke stack, the giant needle and another viewing tower).


Today we took the DART train system around the bay of Dublin seeing the south and the north. The north was a nice small little seaside village with a lighthouse and a marina. Along a different north bound route was a castle dating back to the 16th century, though heavily modified. The tour was fairly mediocre and consisted of being rushed through various rooms behind roped off parts while a taped audio spitted out dates of the furniture from a speaker. Most disappointingly there was no way to get to the parapets up the top - without parapets it may as well have been an old house!


Tomorrow its an early start (5am or similar) to catch the flight back to Liverpool to pick up our goat and drive it onwards to somewhere northwards. The plan is to hit Edinburgh by Friday night. However we have nowhere booked to stay, and it's the festival so our chances aren't good, it may be a cramped night or two in the goat.

Liverpool

From Nottingham we needed an early start as we could only get on-street parking in a ticketed zone for our beloved goat. We made tracks north to Sherwood forest where the Robbin Hood festival was on. Somehow I ended up as the volunteer in street theater for a 'fool', i was tempted to juggle his fire sticks, but decided it was poor form to show up the performer, even if he was playing a fool.


After watching Robbin Hood defeat the sheriff. We went to Liverpool via Manchester and the scenic snake pass through the peaks district.

Finding accommodation in Liverpool proved challenging - after finally getting the nottingham hostel computer at 1am I started the search and found everything initially booked out as expected. After checking a few more sites i found the "Beatles Brain Epstein Guest House" had room and was cheap.

It had a tenuous connection to the Beatles - the house was once owned by the grandparents of Brian Epstein manager of the Beatles, but that didn't stop them going to town on it, with photos all over the place of the Beatles and the name of the place itself. The reason it was so cheap and empty was that it was still being renovated - but other than a jet of water coming from the ceiling in the bathroom at one stage, this didn't really affect us and the people that ran it were very helpful (They were kiwi's of course).

The only other downside to the place was its location - right across the road from Anfield, soon to be old Anfield. All the houses surrounding it were burnt and vandalized after being abondoned to make way for the new stadium. Trying to find a pub that served anything more than larger and football also proved challenging.

During the next day we made it to the Beatles museum, the Tate Liverpool and had a good wonder round the city. Maybe we just saw the wrong side of the city, but it didn't seem that appealing.

Following that we had another early start to catch our Ryanair flight to Dublin. Nothing overly eventful happened, but that didn't stop ryanair playing an ear pitchingly loud trumpet sound on their arrival to gloat that they in fact had not delivered us to Dublin late.

Dublin seems pretty good so far other than their weird sports like hurling and constant drizzle. Tomorrow we're off to Belfast to catch some of the north. There is also the constant search for somewhere to stay in Edinburgh - it turns out the hostels fill up during the festival and doubly so on weekends.

The goat gets us to Nottingham

Nicknames tend to stick, and the first one for our car was the goat, and its slowly sticking. It's showing no signs of giving up, and instead is showing us a whole new set of features. When I was unlocking it yesterday, I discovered that we have a car alarm.



So now we're in nottingham (via the cadbury factory tour). Coincidentally we seem to have arrived at during the robbin hood festival. So that will be the order of the day, followed by going to liverpool, and then flying to Dublin on Sunday.

A car!

Well we bought the first car we came across, for a whole 320 pounds.
So far it has taken us a hundred odd miles up the road to Birmingham.
We were a little late checking out of out house as we couldn't pick up the car till 6pm - checkout time being 10am. However luckily no one showed up to actually notice.

On the drive up I tested the 'active' mode of my VR lens seeing if it really could cope with a moving vehicle. It seemed to do pretty well, the majority of the bluryness of the photos was actually the fact that things moved, rather than lens shake.

So we'll hang in Birmingham for a few days before heading further north.

A Cambridge Wedding

Above is the photo of us NZer's standing infront of our rented house (well 3 of us rented it) before the wedding. I managed to cobble together a suit to avoid looking out of place, the biggest score was my tie which despite being marked at 7 pounds, only cost 2 at the register. The shoes I had to buy aswell, but the jacket and pants I managed to borrow. Not entirely sure what i'm going to do with a pair of dress shoes for the next 3 months, but I'm sure I'll figure something out.


The wedding itself was fantastic and went on well into the small hours of the night.



The plan from here on in is to try to buy a car to take 3 of us arround the UK for 3 weeks. We've left it rather late given that we get kicked out of our cambridge house tomorrow. But hopefully the one we're looking at tonight will be the right one.

Cambridge

Well I've been in Cambridge since Saturday now, it's probably the most livable place I've come across yet. If i ever get to a more than 'considering it' stage about further study I'd definitely include Cambridge as something to investigate. It satisfies my being able to walk/bike everywhere requirement, has a nice relaxed lifestyle but with all the amenities of larger city (though I'm yet to test the coffee) and for the things it lacks London is only a 45minute express train away. My friend Sam does a 2 hour commute to Canary Wharf in London every day, I couldn't handle getting up that early, but it certainly proves its possible to include London as a part of the lifestyle.



The other reason why I may be finding Cambridge more livable is that I actually have a house here and have my own attic room. Three of us ex-Waikato folk have hired a 3 room house for the week, while I have nothing against hostels it sure is nice to not worry about possessions and to have my own room - even if it is a precarious climb up ladder like stairs.



Not really sure what the post Cambridge plan is, there are thoughts about hiring a van and going on a 2 week tour around the UK with the three of us, but campervans are pretty prohibitively expensive.

Portsmouth

I'm still alive, though with all the rain that wasn't a guaranteed. Just a quick update. I caught the train from Brighton to Portsmouth yesterday after seeing the wonderfully opulent Brighton pavilion. Portsmouth is another quint little place, but full of wonderful history and has the signs of many forts meant to defend it from many different wars.



Tomorrow I'll train to Cambridge via London and take occupancy of the house we've hired there for a week. I'll post more photos there hopefully.

Brighton

Well I did it. I avoided London - there was a train straight from Gatwick to brighton and I took it.



It's a coastal town which is clearly a little past its heyday. Reading the travel guide in the hostel (which despite being a new hostel is dated 2000) it suggests the west pier which was damaged in the war would be replaced by 2002. Yet it's 2007 and it's still a managed mess of steel sitting in the bay.



The Brighton pier though is still maintained and has all the usual gimmicky stuff you'd expect from a turn of the century beach resort.



The sunset view was amazing, though I probably should have been capturing it from further down the beach to get it happening over either the managed pier or the functional one - maybe I can do that tonight. At one point there was even a huge rainbow out to sea just incase the actual sunset part wasn't impressive enough.

Jersey War Tunnels

Yesterday I managed to get to the Jersey War Tunnels before having to catch my flight. It was basically a musem of the occupation of Germany set up inside an underground hospital that the German's built while they were in charge.



The basic plot was that britian decided it was undefendable and withdrew all military, half the population went with them. The Germans bombed the remaining trucks of potatos as they looked dangerous, took over the island and run arround fortifing it with huge concrete towers. Meanwhile Churchill ignored them and sailed straight arround them and retook France.



Looking at how many forts there were, its hardly suprising; it would have been an absolute blood bath to take, for little use tactically.



The hospital itself was impressive, a grid of tunnels 100m long with rooms and operating theatres waiting for action - though of course it never came.

Onwards

Well I guess my time in Jersey is coming to an end for now. It's been a fantastic long weekend. Today we covered more beaches, amazing views, a 6000 year old tomb and a lot more war fortifications.


It would have been a shame to head straight back to the hustle and bustle of London, so for now the plan is to head to Brighton. I've booked a single night at a backpackers there, though I'm hoping I'll stay longer.



Sadly my camera has a lot of crap sitting on the CCD (think film, only an electronic sensor) and this is really affecting a lot of my photos. With my traveling light (well lightish) philosophy, I didn't back my lens blower and all attempts thus far to dislodge said dust without touching the incredibly sensitive CCD have failed. Hopefully tomorrow will yield someone with a hair drier or a camera shop where I can buy a lens blower.



It's a relief to hear that everyone who was in hospital is now on the mend.

Jersey

Well I've now had a day to soak in Jersey, and I have to say it's been wonderful. The weather when I arrived was amazing and sunny - a stark contrast from drizzling London I'd left not more than 30mins earlier. After catching the bus into the main town (in fact the only one on the island) of St Helier, the first task was to ditch the bag, 3 pounds (I can't decide whether i'm missing the English keyboard or not...) later and that was sorted. Then it was time for my usual behavior when presented with new surroundings - get absolutely lost and try to find my way back. This lead to my first revelation about Jersey, it has massive tides. When I left the marina was dry, there was a billboard on the exit displaying an exit of 0.0m. After getting lost for probably only an hour, it was already at 2.7m. Apparently the tidal variation is about 13m, which in some places turns low tide's total beach desert into waves crashing over the 5m ocean wall.


The Island is dotted with forts and castles who have used the island as a strong hold. It's quite amazing that the brits held it so well when it was so much closer to France - yesterday on an exploration round the island welcome to France on a remote tip where apparently i got better reception from France.

Camden Town

Well I had my first case of being denied entry to a pub last night, for improper dress. Karl and I had ventured to camden town looking for a nice place to have a drink and catch up. Karl was also in the market to buy a belt, but thats another story. Once the attempt to buy a belt had failed (it was 9pm) we started looking for a pub. We went upto the first one we saw.


The bouncer politely told us we didn't meet their dress code. After we both looked down and saw we had shoes and and button up shirts on, we gave a confused look. Apparently it was goth and alternative only and we weren't welcome. From the outside it just looked like a typical english pub.


So eventually we found somewhere that wasn't obnoxiously loud, we were allowed into, and had beer. It was called "The Good Mixer". I forget which english beer I had, but it was exactly how Karl had described it, like a milkshake - very smooth and creamy, but quite pleasent despite that.


Just after midnight we called it a night because we were all scared of the underground closing and being caught in camden town rather than our respective places that we were meant to be. It was probably a good time, because any later and I would have missed my last tube line. Though at least this time I wasn't falling asleep every second station like my first late night tube adventure.


Well its been over a week since I left melbourne. I'm really pretty settled into the nomadic thing. I'm trying to plan where to go in the uk after I get back from Jersey. I have a week to go somewhere before we start renting the house in cambridge.

Time

It occured to me I'm a time geek. At CTI an aspect of the system I was working on was to handle input, addition, subtraction and other operations on times - including the fact that they could be in different timezones. At Melbourne uni one of the main projects I worked on was time synchronisation for computers. And at Intelliguard there was a fair amount of trying to merge events (with times) from various sources. So its fair to say a large chunk of my professional carrier has been concerened with time.

With that in mind I was well overdue for a visit to greenwhich. At my grandfathers wonderful email advice i caught the DLR to Greenwich. Though I may add there was a slight diversion to flat white in soho for the first passable coffee since i left Melbourne - not quite as good as my usual kerekere brew, but pretty good all the same and for £2.3 i'd be spitting tacks if it wasn't.

So with coffee digested i arrived in Greenwich - I was planning to alight at the cutty shark station and begin my journey there. But in a cruel twist of irony that station was closed due to a fire alarm. The driver assured as that it was only a 100m walk from greenwhich station however. The brits sure haven't adapted to metric yet, it was atleast a km - though later i would find out that the non adaption was to spite the french after they agreed to adopt Greenwich if the brits would go metric.

The cutty sark was just a white marque - couldn't even do the disaster tourist thing and stare at the burnt out remains. So with that minor disappointment I continued to the Royal observatory and fulfilled my time geek dreams for a good few hours.

After that It was lunch on the hill overlooking london. I was sucked into the suasage stand and payed a whole £3 for a single sausage, but atleast it was a little more interesting than the bread and butter I'd packed.

Then I was off to the maritime museum to learn all about Nelson. Like salvador dali I can't say i knew much going in, but now have a wealth of information, including the names, professions, and history of all those who surrounded him as he died in the hull of the Victory.

Well the machine tells me I only have 5 more minutes, So I guess it's time to wrap it up. I've been room juggled again and am now back in my original room. Tomorrow I'm off to jersey!

Tate Modern

Well if yesterday was museum nerd day, today was art snob.




I went to the Tate Modern via a detour to St Pauls. After checking out the standard exhibitions (read free) which included the likes of pollock and picasso, i was left with the hard decision of whether to hand over £13 to see the other parts. After my delicious lunch of brie and baguette, I decided it was only money and this was the only chance to see this stuff.




The main exhibition was Salvador Dali. I can't say i knew much about him going in, just that he did the crazy clock melting painting. But what a treat it was - He had all sorts of bizarre and strange paintings, films and a very impressive moustache. The highlight was probably the completed version of the once abandoned Destino short film. It featured many of his iconic motifs and ideas in an animated short. Disney scrapped it in the 60's but it recently was finished and escaped! Its a bit sad that it happened in the first place - The cobbler and the theif also got ruined by Disney in a similar maneuver. The last thing in the gallery was a collection of photos of he posed for with his moustache, Its amazing how many shapes he could bend it into for comical effect. Though I think in the end it was more inspiration to continue shaving than not.

Whole foods market

While it never was, and still doesn't seem to be my plan, i've been scoping out london to see if its somewhere i could live. Thus far it's been alright, but nothing to write home about - I still miss melbourne! However yesterday I found one thing london has going for it.


The whole food market. It's the most amazing supermarket i've encountered - it trounced the pants off harrods food section and certainly puts total and utter shame to anything australia can offer. It's like taking everything good that the Vic markets has, adding even more good stuff and then packaging it into convient supermarket form.


Sadly though, in comformation with my last post on money all i oculd really do was look. While the prices didn't seem out of whack with other supermarkets, it was certainly out of my league while spending AUD. I had to walk past the isle dedicated to dark chocolate - they had 100% pure dark chocolate, but at near £4 a block, i guess i'll just have to stick to the memory lindt 85%. They even had coopers pale ale - though again at £2.80 a bottle, I'll just have to wait till my return.


I did come away with a french loaf and a tiny wheel of brie for £2.60 - it lasted 2 meals so definitly good value.

Money

Now that i'm a few days in, I decided it was finally time to draw up a budget. It's my first time travelling with tight resources, every other time has always been short and without currency issues.


So the plan:

$15k AUD for the whole trip


To work out what this amounts to for daily spending, I figure that it will cost me about $1kAUD for misc things like suncream, replacing lost things, buying new things, etc. $4k for travelling within europe - this works out to $300 a week (ignoring the month for walking across spain where i really hope my feet can do all the travelling!) .


So that's 10k for food, entertainment and bedding. $83 a day - or £34. Yarrg. The hostel is £18 only leaving £16 for other things a day.


So thats the plan, now lets see if i can stick to it

Well i've done some more exploring, I've seen the tower bridge, I've seen harrods and I've been a musem nerd and seen the science musem. Harrods was just a fancier but more cramped version of Myers. The tower bridge is disappointingly painted an ugly blue colour and the science musem was mostly full of kids.

There was a few interesting things at the science musem though - a full scale replica of the crashed beagle rover, a 1979 cray super computer that upon first glace looked more like designer furniture and a prototype artifical lung.

I have more photos to post, but sadly this new internet cafe at my new bayswater hostel lacks cameralike plugability, most of the photos i've taken lately were of the passing thunderstorm anyway, despite taking many photos i managed to completley miss the specatular lightening every time.

I just had dinner in china town which was also a little disappointing everything there was expensive, nothing like the near free meals that you can get in the Melbourne equilivelent.

I worked out the secret today though of getting cheap lunches - Finding the food places where there are guys in line wearing hard hats todays lunch was a sausage and egg roll with a can of coke for a mere £2. I wouldn't say it was the best lunch i've had, and certainly far from the healthiest, but at £2 it hardly seems relevent.

While it seems I have a lot to whinge about, I'm still having a great time. I'm feeling more settled into the travel lifestyle and starting to think ahead to what i'm going to do with my remaining time.

A Number and everything.

Well now i have a sim card for my phone, You should be able to reach me on +44 7511235580. My attempts to be able to roam with my Australian number were yet again a complete failure. Mostly because I was far too late to get the number transferred back into my name from the company.

Nothing too exciting has happened since my last post, I went back to my hostel and in my 2 hours absence the room had fulled up. As part of the 'it's a small world syndrome', 3 of my new roommates went to the same high school as I did. As part of the 'it turns out I'm really old now' disease they only started after I'd already left. With my new number in hand I contacted some of the friends I had here. Turned out there was a bbq on at a friend of a friend's house. A few tube rides and 35 mins later and I was surrounded by kiwis sitting round a small smouldering charcoal bbq.

Around 11pm I finally started to crash, the being up for 19 hours straight was started to affect me, between that and the trains closing up around midnight I set off back to the hostel. I was lucky i didn't leave any later and also that hammersmith is an end of line stop for the line i was on.

I had a quick look for the other roommates in the bar thinking one last drink might be nice. We'd had a bet that the 18-19 year old kiwis would be out late and making a bunch of noise as they came in. It turned out to be the opposite as when I got into the room at midnight they were sound asleep.

I slept soundly till being awoken at 5am by my fellow ex-HHSers getting up to checkout, but managed to get to sleep again despite it being very light outside until the more reasonable 8:30.

I'm a total convert to the breakfast being the most important meal of the day idea now. I can see the real value in a meal that is all you can eat and provided free by the hostel. Lunch and dinner just can't compete with such an offer, not when the currency is pounds anyway.

Not really sure what's on the cards for today. I have to check into my new hostel at some point in bayswater.

Well I'm here, and I'm mostly awake. I'm convinced my hektek schedule before my departure was actually a huge boon in that i seem to magically already be more or less on UK time. The entire 24 hours of transit just completly messed up my clock and sleep patterns, and the 3 hours of sleep i got before i left meant that i wasn't so tired that i had to sleep, but was tired enough that i could sleep if i wanted to. Once I hit KL I swapped my ipod over to UK time and used that as a guide for when to sleep on the plane.

Arrived at heathrow at 6am. Clearing customs was amazingly simple. Someone had warned me that I might have problems since I had no ticket out of the UK, so I was prepared for touble. But they seemed happy when i told them I still held a job in Australia.

Caught the underground to hammersmith and dumped my luggage and began my exploration.

Hammersmith was dead, not a person to be seen. I decided to make for the thames and had a nice morning walk along the river for a good hour to Putney. After much random walking and a truely awful coffee I happened across the Brompton Cemetary. One thing I love is exploring old overgrown cemetrys, see the photostream above for some of the photos I took there. I may post even more later if i find a cafe that has basic photo editing capabilities.

After being chased by squirrels out of the cemetry, i caught the train into the inner city. I had no idea but apparently the Tour de France actually starts in London to some degree and with my wonderings I accidently found myself on the inside of their warm up track kind of stuck watching the parade. It was good fun, but was a real maze to get out of it. After that I checked in properly, had my first shower in god knows how long (and for the record I even shaved - not sure how long this habbit will last) and now here i am catching up on being a geek.

I feel quite comfortable in London in a lot of ways, It may have something to do with having spent almost all my life living in cities with a dirty river running through the middle of it (Wellington being the only exception). Having mastered the trains in Sydney and Melbourne the underground also seems pretty managable. I guess what confuses me is that I'm yet to find the CBD. All my explorings so far have either found the historicalish precincts or sururbs, no congregation of towering office blocks. Also need to find a real coffee.

19 useful hours and counting.

Well I have 19 hours left until i have to checkin, and still a gigantic list of stuff to do. I'm blogging this purely so i can keep track of it.

• Pack
  
• Move stuff into storage
• Move other stuff to nuwan's house
• Finish up last thing i'm working on for IntelliGuard IT.
• Leave
• Sleep
• Put more music on IPod
• Charge batteries on phone, iPod, camera
• check passport and ticket
• say goodbye to the remaining close friends i haven't done so yet
• Setup internet to work in my absense
• Try to cancel contents insurance
• Ensure i have receipts to get tourist refund scheme
• Work out directions to hostel in london
• Confirm with friends where i'm stayin
• Send out emails to friends i haven't told about this here blog yet.
• Stay sane.

That's the list for now.

• Sort out roaming on phone that may or may not be in my name now.
  

Up late with shiny new toys

Well its almost 4am here and what a day it's been.

I decided in the end that with the extra hours i've been putting in, i deserved a new toy, so at lunch time i traded in my 2 old lenses and a wad of cash for a brand new lens. It has mechanics to correct for shakey hands and or coffee withdrawl, allowing for photos in really low light situations.

I also splurged on a hiking pole. However this hiking pole can be unsrewed at the the top to reveal its hidden talent - no its not a drug stash, nor is it a lethal weapon, but a rather limited monopod.

My testing today with my new toys shows that i can get passable zoomed in photos in situations requiring a shutter speed of a whole second. So that's exciting, well it is for me anyway.

And then when I got home I finally booked some accomodation - it's only one night I didn't want to get carried away. I arrive on a saturday and most of the hostels seems to be full that night, well the reasonable ones anyway I don't like the sound of the 24 bed dorm room nor the cost of a single room. Eventually I settled on a 6 bed room in Hammersmith for $50AUD a night.

And then to top all that off there was possibly the most exciting america's cup race I'll ever witness - hence why im still awake at 4am

Tomorrow's task should i actually sleep - to replace myself and find someone to fill my room

2 lots of 2 Weeks

Well in 2 weeks exactly there should be a plane moving in an upwards and forwards direction, with me onboard.

The list from the last post is still daunting. Atleast i managed to stop being sick.

Work has picked up and both my jobs are looking to squeeze as much out of my head as possible before I flee. This will work to my advantage though in some respects - one of them is casual and will become my after hours job paying overtime, and the other i can work 10-6 (my version of 9-5). This will help pay for my ipod and IceBreaker addiction - maybe i can afford that super lens after all.

I still have nothing booked for the first 2 weeks in the UK. I'm, contemplating getting out of there as quickly as i can and going somewhere else before coming back for the wedding. Whatever I decide I should move quickly as July is peak season and things are filling up quickly from what I can tell.

3 Weeks and a day

Well it's 3 weeks and a day till im gone and everything is chaos. Things to do before I go:

• Sort out lease on house and fill 3 soon to be vacent rooms
  
• Sort out moving utilities for house from my name
  
• Finish buying things
  
• Stop being sick
  
• buy more stuff
  
• Cancel australian health insurance and various other things
  
• Maybe even work out where im staying in london for the first few nights
  
• Work my two jobs
  
• Probably submit a conference paper or two
  
• Catch up with friends before I go
  
• Clean my room
• Sell my bed
• Read up on touristy things

I'm not really sure for the order, but stop being sick has to be the top of the list. I went away rock climbing for the long queens birthday weekend, and had a great time, however i must have been coming down with a cold as i was leaving and sleeping in a tent in 4 degree temperatures can't have helped much.





The climbing was good though, The weather during the first two days was amazing - I was climbing in a singlet, however the nice clear days of course made for cold evenings. It was amazing how green the area was. Over summer there wasn't a blade of grass to be seen in the pines camping ground. This time it was like a lush meadow - one of the photos above shows a nice view of the feields. Maybe australia isn't totally doomed to an apocapytic mad max style fight for water after all.

The giganormous TODO post

Well at this stage I think my tickets are final - it's now 4 months of travel, leaving on the 4th of July returning on the 3rd of November. So it's time to get serious about it. It's only 55 days till I leave and I'm working 2 part time jobs which somehow seems to add up to more than one full time job.

Things to definitely buy before I go:

• While I have wonderful boots for the walk across Spain, I need some semi casual shoes, that could pretend to be semi formal at times, yet still be comfortable for a good deal of walking
  
  
  -Update: Done, I have fantastic Tivas, any more shoes required I'll buy over there
  
  
  


• More travelish clothes. I'm hooked on the ice breaker stuff.
  
  
  -Update: Done much more ice breaker gear purchased to the detriment of credit card balance.
  
  
  
  



• A lonely planet guide or two.


• A drink bottle holder for my pack


• An Extra memory card for my camera

Things to buy if I can convince myself its worth it:

• A Nikor 18-200 VR lens - It will replace both my current lenses (And hence be lighter and no lens changing required) and be better in every way, shame its so expensive.
  
• An Ipod. My current Ipod is sad - literally half the time I try to use it, it only displays the 'Sad Ipod icon'. Not just useful for music on long trips it will also be good for storing photos and any other digital documents.
• Hiking poles. If I'm going to take my camera, they may well be a solid investment in the future of my knees.
• A Eur-rail pass.
  


• A more discreet bag that will hold my camera and a few other things that screams less of tourist


• A hiking pole that will double as a camera monopod. This will remove some of the need for the fancy lens i want.

That's my list for now, and suggestions of useful travel items Camino related or not would be appreciated.

That's not really a hold (A slight change of plans!)

On Saturday night I had some friends around watching rock climbing films. One
in particular, E11 was about a Scottish guy trying to complete the first
grade e11 (the scale previously went up to e10) free climb. On one of his
practice runs to learn the moves, he accidentally ripped off what he thought was
the crux hold (the one that gets you through the hardest move of the climb).
In true spirit he still managed to get up there anyway somehow, but I've had
my own hold ripped off

So with the dodgy segue out of the way, I got an
email this morning from the travel agent saying Malaysian had cancelled all
unpaid holds on tickets on my flight even though it was meant to last till the
end of May. Luckily and oddly there was still tickets left on the 6th of July, so that's my new departure date (assuming that doesn't get cancelled too, but it's paid and everything now). It lacks the easy
rememberability of the 4th of July, but at least its still close and still gives me a near full 4 months of travelling minimum.

Tacos

Well another lunch time training walk completed. I've developed a regluar destinaion for my lunch time walks Trippy Taco. The music festival food van that somehow turned into a cafe on Smith St, Collingwood. The food there is realtively cheap and good and if nothing else it's unique. I'm damned if I'm going to walk 6km with 15kgs on my back just to eat at subway.

So far I'm very happy with my choice of packs - The Macpac Genisis. It's the all round back-packer backpack that allows access to the contents from all conceivable angles, has a real harness, looks like you could drag it behind horses across a gravel desert and still have it intact at the other side and isn't excessively heavy. Hopefully I won't be altering my praise of it half way across Spain.

Todo this afternoon: Try to get a later return flight on my ticket and then confirm them and also try to fit in some work for the uni inbetween.

Introduction

Well this will be my blog for the next 5 months. It will chronicle the lead up to my trip, and the trip itself were Internet access and time away from funner things allows it.

In keeping with my geekiness and laziness I'm aiming to Mash-Up as many web2.0 like things as possible without having to write them. Above the top lies my Flickr photo stream (also available here or in RSS). Given than I plan to lug my DSLR over half of Europe, hopefully there some worthwhile photos. Currently there are a few photos from my trips to Sydney and New Zealand earlier in the year.
I'm still trying to work out how I can get a calendar to appear on the side bar for an itinerary - any ideas would be welcomed.

Onto the trip itself, I now have a departure date - the 4th of July.

I think it's important to have some aims for traveling to avoid boredom and actually achieve something, so for now I have 3 main aims:

• Celebrate Sam and Zoe's wedding.
  
• Visit my old flatmates in Germany.
• Walk across Spain

The first two should be relatively easy, but the third may pose a bit of a challenge and that's where most of the build up posts will center around.

Other things I intend to do if possible along the way:

• Go to a music festival or two
  
• Try to get in some rock climbing or bouldering - Yep stinky climbing shoes will be traveling with me.
• Try to get out to Eastern Europe if possible

Well that's all for now, I'll try to post updates about once a week with anecdotes about my preparations.