The Briar Court Hotel Huddersfield

... November. All types of food and drink on offer plus many stalls with Christmas decorations. It has been great to hear the Halle Orchestra and Bridgewater Hall has a magnificent acoustic.

Christmas Break

We are really looking forward to the 3 week break at Christmas after such a long term and so much on. Lee and Shane arrive on the 17th, Christmas music in the Cathedral on the 18th and then off to Liverpool for a Christmas Beatles ...

... attend as mourning with tears will hinder the deliverance - so many brave faces were displayed whilst we attended the three cremations that took place whilst we were there - over 200 per day the norm...!
The city of Varanasi itself is a very noisy and polluted place with nothing much to appreciate - all life (& death) happening around the Ghats.... Definately worth a visit but no more tha a couple of days and again, worth proper planning before the visit. A highlight of the visit ...

How could anything be worse than the Ball Breaker? How? And yet it was. Damn the kilometres of bog, damn the no bacon butty truck on the highway, damn the twisty part where you go around curve after curve after curve and don’t see anything ahead of you but CURVE. Then damn the “ ...

... back for me while I got something out of my pack, he didn’t, and the sheep almost got me.

See that Campsite?

After almost finishing the part of the Pennine that I call “The Ball Breaker” Ryan points down the mountain to a little campsite in the distance. It was far away but hope sprang back into my heart until he said, “See that campsite? Our campsite is only 2km from there.” YEARGH!!!

Well the day has finally arrived! The alarm was set for 6.00am but we were both awake before it went off. After a quick breakfast we were on the bike heading for a rendevous at Colin's house in Halling in the rain!

After a quick cup of tea, Leigh up turned on his Triumph Tiger and it was time to set off for the Marsden to meet Lyndsey & David & guess what it ...

... chicken would have resembled a sleeping child compared with me I was that hyper (caffeine mixed with anticipatory excitement). I could barely write and was definately on turbo speed mode. Survived that and so did my patients, then ventured into town after work to visit the Birmingham/Frankfurt xmas markets (apparently the largest outside Germany). Of course it was dark by the time I got into town (5pm) so all the xmas lights were on and gave ...

This is just to get the ball rolling as it were.
Our aim is to have a life laundry over the next few months. Plan our year long trip through Europe. Sell or pass on to others things we need. Buy and equip a motor home. Produce a photo/video documentary of the trip.

Last brief entry, just to say we are safely back home, arriving yesterday with Sue picking us up at Manchester airport.

We've had a fantastic trip - very memorable! Thank you for following our trip. Hope it hasn't been boring, certainly hasn't for us.

WOW what a week! No sooner had we unpacked our bags and repacked our belongings into storage we were packing again to start our adventure! We had only a very short time to catch up with family before we were saying our goodbyes again. Although we never thought we'd be ready our bags are finally packed and were on the train down to London Kings Cross. We are very tired so hope to get some sleep on the overnight flight to Nairobi.

... want to experience more - I think kids living on the street in Costa Rica deserve way more attention ... but that's just me ! I'm going to build homes in Guatemala, I'm going to teach street kids English in Costa Rica, I'm going to Ecuador to help orphans find fun in their lives and I'm going to sit on a beach in the Galapagos Islands to help monitor the extremely rare Giant Tortoise breeding patterns ...... can't wait !