Sep 2007

The last two destinations on our little trip round the South UK were Brockenhurst, a small town in a National Park called New Forest, and Brighton the beach city below London.

We got to Brockenhurst from Exeter and we'd been told that the New Forest area was full of wild horses and ponies and we were like, yeah yeah heard that one before. Probably just one or two old scabby horses somewhere deep in the National Park way away from any towns. But oh were we wrong, a few hundred meters from the train station and we saw a few horses just wandering round the streets... the town streets. We thought 'well that must be it - right?!' but..... noooooooo no no.

A few blocks more and past the cattle stops which keep the animals out of the main town shops and there were heaps of horses and their ponies, donkies and a few cows, just milling outside peoples houses????

So, heaps of animals around, a nice forest to explore and Rach signing us up for a 5hr Mountain Bike / Run at the end of the month. Probably time for a bit of training. So off to the Bike Hire store to pick up a few bikes and a map of the area and hit the trails. It was supposed to be a 21 mile loop ride in the forest dipping through a few of the little villages as we went. It's just the map we were given wasn't incredibly detailed and the directions were all like 'go up the hill over the dale and carry on till you get to a gate'. Except there were many a hill, not a dale to be seen and gates a plenty. We figured it out eventually (except for the end, a mile from home I went the wrong way and added 6 miles onto the journey, sorry Rach) and got to see some nice rolling country side and English forest.

We finished our time off in Brockenhurst by taking our books, some 'local' food (chips n curry sauce) and going to sit in a meadow watching over the wild horses and the sunset. Bonus that we sat right by a blackberry bush so desert was right on hand. Brockenhurst and New Forest, big thumbs up.

Next and final leg of the journey was two days in Brighton. Not really sure what we were expecting going to Brighton, we new there was a beach and a permanent carnival on a pier but not much else. Turns out to be a pretty big place, kinda like the Gold Coast of the UK but Englishified. So sand is replaced by pebbles and sun is replaced by less intense sun.

We were staying about 30 min from the Brighton centre so we had a walk along the boardwalk each day to get to the city. And a pretty cool city it is, just back from the beach it's pretty easy to get around walking. Lots of cool shops everywhere, I had to rein Rachel in and remind her that......... I'm just kidding; no one can rein in Rach. So lots of cool shops that I had the pleasure of accompanying Rach into. Kind of a hippy, artistic vibe hanging around the place, probably because of the beachy nature to the place but it makes for a really laid back atmosphere even so close to London.

We spent quite a bit of time at the Brighton Pier and got a bit addicted to the dolphin racing game, throw ball at targets to make your dolphin go faster, there was a race caller and everything. Also did our standard fairground bumper cars, where Rachel hammered me repeatedly as my car was too slow (blaming the tools).

The Brighton food fair was also on while we were there so we got to taste some proper Sussex fare and Geoff (friend from Auckland) and his girlfriend Jamie (who's from the area) met up with us for dinner one night as well.

On our last night before home it just happened to be Rachel’s birthday so we finished our time by going out to one of the multitude of veggie restaurants (hippie influence on the city) and taking in the sunset on the pebble beach.

Brighton, Brockenhurst, Exeter, Bath and Cardiff. The South UK........done

After the newness of Cardiff we moved onto the 'historic-ness' of Bath. But before that we had to be able to get off the train that was taking us there.

You'd think it would be pretty simple, you get the call..."Bath Station next stop" over the loud speakers, then you get up, get your bags and finally go through the open doors and off the train. Well I thought it easy and managed all the required tasks to successfully disembark the train with all my possessions. Rach on the other hand had a problem with the "go through the open doors " part as by the time she got her bag and went to the doors were not open but rather they were shut.
And so I watched the train roll away out of Bath with Rach's little sad face staring out of the window as she sped away.

It wasn't all too bad, she just had to hop off a few stops later and catch another train back to Bath (paying heed to follow all above disembarkment steps). All the while I got to have a really good look around the Bath train station, awesome.

Anyway, when we were all accounted for (jamie..check, rach......ahhhh???....check) we dumped our bags at the hostel and made our way into the town. Quite a cool place Bath, kinda like a little Edinburgh with the same stlye architecture (Georgian I'm told). The main tourist attraction is the Roman Baths, uncovered early 19th centurish?? were the remains of some public Baths built by the Romans when they controlled lower England a few thousand years ago.

Enough history here's some pictures

Bath; Built on the only hot springs site in the UK, is a really cool place and on the sunny day we had a really good walk around the place. The river,which I can't remember the name of, is walled the whole way through the town and a cool shaped dam sits below one of the many bridges.

And just for Mum, here's the birth place (or so your led to believe) of the Sally Lunn bun, we didn't get one as the lines were too long but here a picture.

As a bit of a sub note, we also spent a night in Exeter with a Uni friend Tracey. We did pretty much the only thing to do in Exeter when you're there for a day, the cathedral.

Our first stop on our little trip to the South of England wasn't even in England but in Wales. Evan and Sarah, friends form Auckland, moved over to Cardiff around the same time we came to Scotland so we stayed with them for a few days.

On our 1st day we went for a walk around Cardiff city, which it was ok. There is a Castle in the middle of the city, where I found lots of animal statues, which I seem to take pictures of where ever we go.

We took a quick boat ride from the city around to the 'viaducty' harbor area of Cardiff, where the welsh MELLENIUM centre is, the one with the big copper roof.

and then Evan got pooed on by a bird

We were told there was a pretty cool castle and village a quick train ride from the city, so we headed out with there with Evan and a few others. The carphilly castle was one of the coolest castle we've seen so far. It had a big moat around it and some of the turrets were crumbling and falling over but still intact. We ended up having dinner and drinks at a pub over looking the castle.

Then the main reasons we came to the Diff (as Evan got us calling it) was to go out on the town to sample the local night life. Every Friday and Saturday night the city closes off the streets to traffic in it's main clubbing area so the night life can sprawl onto the main streets. It's like New Years at the Mount. One thing to note was the length, or lack of, the girls skirts pretty much non existent. Not that I was looking.
We were also introduced to chips and curry sauce in chippy lane, a small alley lined with heaps of hot chip shops selling chips in as many different ways as possible.

The next day was a bit of recovery day. We had planned to hang out at Evan and Sarahs recuperating from the night before, but after a quick trip to Sainsbury’s Supermarket we returned to realise Sarah had forgotten the house keys (really Sarah I'm not angry with you). So we headed out to where Evan was playing cricket (to get his keys) and watched for abit. It was pretty cool seeing a real English (sorry welsh) cricket ground with little white picket fence for the boundary and all.

Anyway that was Cardiff, cool castles, mad night life, little skirts and chips with curry sauce.

Me and Rach just got back from a week trip around the UK's South coast and for only a week we packed in lots of stuff. So rather that make you read through a whole lot that ya don't want to know here's a short blow by blow of what we did.

First stop Cardiff, Stayed with Evan ad Sarah (I worked with Ev at FnP and Rach did running events with Sarah), walked around Cardiff city and out to their version of the AK viaduct, train ride out to carphilly castle and dinner at a pub, sampled the 'insane' Cardiff night life and watched Ev play cricket (cause sarah locked us out of the house).

Bath, Jamie arrives in bath and waits for Rach who had an unforeseen 'Delay/got stuck on the train', visit the old Roman baths, walk around the city then dinner and a comedy walk (he threw a rabbit into the river in a bag!!!).

Exeter, Stayed with Tracey (from uni days) and pretty much did the only thing Exeter has to offer the exeter cathedral, impressive none the less

Brockenhurst, Hung out with the locals (horses just wandering the streets), Big day bike ride in the forest, dinner of chips and wild blackberries.

Brighton, Brighton Pier and Brighton City, loads of second-handy/hippie/cool shops, local food festival, back to the pier and some bumper cars, Rachel’s birthday and a movie.

all topped of with a good patting down at Gatwick Airport

The embellished stories, with pictures will follow.

P.S. just got tickets to the AB's vs Scotty next week, woop woop!

Just a quick email to say nah nah nah-nah nah...... we were in edinburgh august 2007 and you wern't.

It was maddness with the international fest, fringe fest, film fest and book fest all on at the same time. With some 20,000 performers and 200,000 tourists flooding the city for the month.
It turned the 50 min trip to work into a 1 1/2 hour mission but it also meant there was something to do every single moment of every day.

We went to heaps of shows (mostly good but some......not so much), saw heaps of street performance, went out almost every night of the month and generally had an awsome time! Bring on Edinburgh fests 2008.

oh yeah and there was a big purple tent in the shape of a upturned cow.