United Kingdom

Just a quick post to say me and Rach are finally off for our first trip into Europe. And man it could not have come at a better time. The weather in Scotland is not the best at the moment and we are both absolutely sick of working, really itching to get out on the road again.

The rough plan is that we are flying out Friday 23rd to Milan, we have a ferry to catch on the 5th Dec from Bari to Dubrovnik. Then a flight out of Prague to Edinburgh on the 19th Dec. Everything in-between is a bit up in the air.

I’m sure it'll be great

Keep looking for updates and pictures

As some of you already know Rach signed us up for a 5 hour mountain biking / running / orienteering event in the Yorkshire dales on the 30th of Sep. And with our 3 months of studious training (yeah right) under our belts the date quickly came around and it was time to race.

The day before the race we hired a car and headed on down to York to have a look at the old York town and wall the surrounds the city.

After a quick stop at the boarder heading from Scotland into England we arrived in York to be met by a huge line of traffic and people milling about the city centre. Apparently we didn't know that the Yorkshire food festival was on that weekend and the city was packed with tents and people trying to sell you different type of York cuisine. It didn't really dampen our day anyway, still had a good peruse around the city and a walk on the city walls.

Anyway onto the main reason for the trip.

From York we headed into the dales national park picked up our bikes and went to the YHA to get a good rest before the race on the Sunday. Up early on the Sunday we headed into Grassington, registered for the race and awaited our fate.

The race was stuctered in that you were given a preliminary map of the MTB and Run stages with all the possible stations and points it was possible to got to and each team had to figure out what route they thought they could do in the allotted time picking up the most points.

What we didn't know was that when you start the race you get given a sheet telling you that 1/4 of the stations are fake and have to adjust your route to suit. But of course your time has already started and it's time to get going, pressure anyone??

I was the navigator for the biking leg and after getting us successfully to the first checkpoint I proceeded to get us lost down a small footpath to nowhere, Rachel was not very impressed. After that it was pretty plain sailing getting to the rest of the MTB stations, even getting to add one which was up a massive hill which we had to walk most of the way up.

Onto the Run stage and it was Rach’s turn to navigate, again pretty straight forward with a diversion down nettle lane (not named for fun, my legs were itchy as) thrown in for a little bit of variety. When we got near the end we had a choice of either one checkpoint or getting a extra on in there. Rach was starting to wane a bit but she pushed on through and we made it back with 10 min to spare.

(I realize these are the copywrited versions, don't worry I’ll buy them eventually)

So all in all, 2 3/4 hours of Biking and 2 1/4 of running, some very tired bodies, a stunning day and good views.
The Yorkshire dales while not the most stunningly awesome place is still pretty cool. Just the shear scale of work that would have gone into the stone wall fences which litter the landscape in every direction is impressive in itself.

nice

Well all I can say is that it's good to be part of the Scottish Rugby Union, I signed up for the newsletter when we got tickets to the Edinburgh Sevens earlier in the year. And what a good move it turned out to be!

We'd (well me, rach didn't really care), had pretty much given up on getting any tickets to the AB's vs Scotty group game of the RWC which was being played in Edinburgh. With the only tickets left either on E Bay or over £200 ($500) through an agent. But the good old SRU sent out a late email a week before the game saying that members were to get a last ditch chance to buy up tickets for the original £38 price.

Well I didn't need too much of a push and brought up 4 tickets.

Before the game we met up with a few Kiwi mates who were in town for the game and we couldn't believe how many NZders were mulling round the city. Every 2nd person was wearing black or singing slice of heaven.

Anyway we went around to one of Rachs workmates place who lives near Murrayfeild and who was coming to the game with us and headed on down to the park.

Our seats were sweet, front row on halfway. Drinks were cheap and the atmosphere was great, well except for the 10 year old girl sitting behind us screaming GO SCOTLAND for the whole first half. But it wasn't long before the score line snubbed her out.

So good day out all and all, bit confusing who was who. We just cheered whenever points were scored and were pretty much right every time.

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.