The Lake District in a day.

Another city another ancient wall.

Driving through the Lake District, which is stunningly beautiful, we were able to relax knowing that the exhaust from our Volks Wagon T5 van was well below that required by EU emission control laws. The country side was gorgeous and we weren’t hurting it. Not!

Hanging with Hadrian

So it’s not the Colosseum, but it’s properly old.

Hexam racecourse was the jumping off point (it’s a steeple chase track) for our seventy odd mile drive along Hadrian’s Wall. Armed with a brochure that listed the best places along the wall to see for free we set off early to follow in the footsteps of the Roman Legions. Figuratively speaking of course, we actually drove along the B6318 which runs parallel with the wall.

Heading north.

Medieval builders must have been slimmer than today.

After a whole week of fine, even warm, weather it was inevitable that some rain would eventually catch up with us. That we have gotten so far without getting wet is remarkable given the reports of how bad the summer has been this year. It was a bit damp when we first arrived but soon cleared up and kept on improving the further north we drove.

A quick guide to English camping

Warm but windy in Hexam

Camping and caravanning in Britain is a bit different to what we are used to in Australia. Which is the whole point of travelling, where would the fun be if everything was the same? But to be sure I’ll never complain about the caravan park in Leeton again. That’s not true, if the service is as bad there next Easter as it was last year I’ll stop going at all.

Day One

All journeys start with a selfie at the airport.

We’re rapidly losing track of time. It’s 4pm on Sunday afternoon at the Hexam racecourse camp ground in Northumberland, to be precise. It’s a touch windy, but we are stripped down to shorts and t-shirts which is more than we were expecting from the weather. Especially as it was so typically English when we arrived.

Teapot

Have you ever seen the Tim Brook Taylor from The Goodies do the teapot? It’s a regular in our household. Every time there is an opportunity for a stress related meltdown we do the teapot. It could be Gretta working out what to wear five minutes before we are meant to be somewhere, or me trying to find clothes in the middle of the night to go to a fire call. Flipping over the calendar to August has prompted a spate of teapot moments.

Snowmageddon

Swim anyone?

The next time you watch an apocalyptic movie and think to yourself, where would I go to survive, as the world disintegrates around you; think Canberra. While the rest of the Australian eastern seaboard was blanketed under a layer of snow, Canberra got zip.

Keep calm and put the kettle on.

It’s not often you have to call triple zero. Rarer still to call twice in as many days, but that’s just what happened last week.

A short story.

This week I’m doing something radically different. I know, change is scary, but you’ll get over it. I have to submit a short story for an assignment and I thought lets find out what the general public think first.

So here we go, one very short story:

That’s one ugly tree.

That’s one ugly tree!

We are the proud owners of what would have to be one of the ugliest trees to blemish a suburban street. During a busy weekend of socialising and flying we took an unattractive pine tree, and made it worse.