Excursions

During our stay in Chippy, we gallivanted around the countryside in our tiny little hire car. We got some advice from a local about good places to visit and one of these places was called Stow-on-the-Wold in Gloucestershire, just west of Oxfordshire. We parked the tiny car and went for a leisurely walk around the little village. The nice thing about the UK is the great old buildings and pubs, so even just looking at the houses and streets was interesting enough for us Aussies who have so little history to look at back home.

Stow-on-the-Wold has a square in the town centre. Markets and fairs were held there, where people would come to sell and trade livestock. Now the square is just a carpark. It was interesting to discover little alleys where they would have run sheep through to get to the main square for sale.

We discovered a great old church near the centre with a graveyard. It was amazing to see the old headstones and to think how old they must have been. It was hard to tell what year they were from because they were covered in lichen and the letters were so worn.

It was getting around dinner time so we decided to start the search to find a nice little pub to have a meal. We must have looked like tourists (all five large adults craning our necks in search for a sign that resembled a pub or establishment that served food) because a local called from her car and said "If you're looking for a good pub that does good grub then go to the Queens Head! It's just up that road". That was enough to send us on a hunt for the "good grub" (us tourists with rumbling tummy's). We walked up "that road" but didn't come across the Queens Head so we decided to ask another local (a nice gentlemen who was outside his front door watering one of his many hanging flowerpots). He pointed us in the right direction and gently warned us that the Queens Head was "very much a local's pub", but that's exactly what we wanted. So we continued on our hunt for the pub and discovered it in the main square. It was a nice quaint little pub that did have good grub! We ordered our usual beverages to accompany our meals - a pint of local beer for Roy and Pimms with all the Bits for the ladies.

It's always fun to have an adventure with advice from the locals.

Another nice little town we visited in the Cotswalds is Burford. It was a lot like Maleny, Monteville or Tamborine Mountain, with nice little streets full of boutique shops, cafes, pubs and antique stores. Most little villages or towns in England have limited street parking so you need to find a public parking place which is usually a little walk from the main street. It's so nice to just walk up and down the little streets doing a bit of window shopping or drooling at the boutique bakeries and cafes. We had heard stories about a place called Huffkins from Clare and Sadie, so when we discovered one in Burford we couldn't resist stopping in for a cream tea. Cream teas usually come with clotted cream which is quite different to whipped cream, so it took a little getting used to because it had a much stronger taste (kind of like butter).

We also couldn't resist a visit to the sweet shop which had jars and jars of all different kinds of tasty little morsels that you could buy by the 100g. I had to stop myself from going crazy in there for fear of not having enough money to spend on food and other important items. I didn't think I could survive the rest of the trip on just sweets. We learnt a few things whilst in England. What we call "lollies", they call "sweets". What we call "ice blocks", they call "lollies". We call "trousers", "pants" and they call "underwear", "pants". So we had to stop ourselves from calling our trousers "pants" otherwise people would think we were talking about our undies. Oh, and they call "thongs", "flip flops" and they call "g-strings", "thongs". So you can imagine why we had to stop calling our summer footwear "thongs". It was especially funny when Roy's Mum forgot this and was talking rather loudly about her "thongs" breaking, and her delight at finally wearing a fresh pair of "pants" after a trip to the laundrette...

So, back to the sweets....

These tasty little things were called "Millions" which you could get in a multitude of flavours but we opted for the mixed ones so we could get a taste of them all. They were too good to eat a handful of all the flavours at a time so we ate them one at a time to taste each flavour individually, whilst making them last longer too. They were kind of like skittles but less artificial tasting.

We would have gone to a lot more places in Oxfordshire and the surrounding county's if we had more time. We've got lots more to look forward to when we come back.

Chippy

We booked a self-contained cottage in Chipping Norton for our first week in the UK. It's in Oxfordshire and also in The Cotswalds. The Cotwalds is kind of like Tamborine Mountain on steroids. It's beautiful!

The cottage was on the property behind this beautiful house which is called "The Kiln House" which is where the owners live.

The cottage wasn't all that glamorous but it served us quite well. It had it's charm and it also had a bit of a quirk about it. Our cottage was called "The Drake" and it was attached to another cottage called "The Duck" and there were statues of ducks throughout it.

This was the room that Roy and I slept in. A tad squishy and when we pushed the beds together we had levels... Roy's bed was higher than mine. Lucky he didn't roll over and squash me.

Around Oxfordshire there are great little public footpaths that cut through farmland to take the quickest route to the nearest village. They were usually signed but sometimes the paths were a little ambiguous but a fun to explore. Roy and I decided to take a walk into Chippy and before we realised that the footpaths were signed, we walked down what we thought was the "footpath" but thought that it was a little too rugged to be a public place. We persevered thinking that people just liked to walk in rugged areas but once we reached an abandoned machinery shed we realised that we'd taken the wrong path.

We did discover some beautiful flowers along the way though.

Eventually we found the correct path and carried on with our journey to Chippy.

As I said before, the footpaths cut through farmland (right through the middle of crops).

Being in Oxfordshire felt like being in a nursery rhyme or story book because we came across things that you would only read about in Australia. We saw bunny rabbits, squirrels, dandelions and beautiful big fields with moo cows. On our walk to Chippy, I discovered a GIANT dandelion and couldn't resist blowing it.

We hired a car for the first week so we could drive around Oxfordshire. We had some crazy adventures with five giant adults in one tiny car. It would have been a sight to see all five of us pile in and then extricate our large bodies when we hopped out. We couldn't stay in the car for too long at one time because it got rather uncomfortable, but lucky for us there were pubs in every village so we took advantage of our rest stops and had a beer or a Pimms with all the bits.

We had a rest stop in a pub in Chippy, deciding to sit out in the beer garden and have a few quiet beverages. Halfway through a sip of Pimms, I noticed that Roy's Mum was sitting on a chair with one of its legs stuck halfway down a drain hole - and that just a small movement could un-stick it, sending the leg down the drain and herself onto the ground! When I pointed it out to her, her face was priceless as she realised her predicament. She promptly said "Help Mummy!!!", putting her arms out for us to help her up and off the precarious chair. "Help Mummy" became a bit of a catch phrase for the rest of the week.

Most places we went in Oxfordshire had hanging baskets with beautiful flowers. Walking through these villages was a slow task because Roy's Mum stopped and looked at, smelt and sometimes picked flowers from each flower arrangement. It was nice to see such an array of different, vibrant flowers.

The Drake provided us with a great rest and recuperation place where we would retire at night after gallivanting around the countryside, exploring all the nooks and crannies of Oxfordshire. Some nights we just wanted to get home, get into our PJs, crack open the beer and play a bit of UNO or trivial pursuit (us youngin's sucked big time at trivial pursuit as the questions were aimed at older generations - it was still fun trying! Even better after a few beers). We didn't have enough cans of beer to have one each one night so we had to pour it into a glass (or in our case, tea cups). Why would you want to use a glass when you have a perfectly good tea set? I thought it appropriate given we were in the land of tea.

it's been a while!

Well now that I have my computer back I can start blogging about our adventures. Even though I had access to the internet in the last few weeks, I only had my phone to use and it's rather a tedious task to blog on it. So I'm going to try my best to condense the last 3 or so weeks into a few posts and I'll include some pictures too.

I'd been keeping notes from day to day on my phone so I could write a detailed blog about all the things we have been doing but now that it's been a long time since starting our adventure it might be a bit crazy to make it heavily detailed so I will just give you snippets of the fun.

So I've blogged up until we reached England. Our hotel on the first night was okay, it was conveniently right near the Stansted Airport so there was no crazy travelling to be done after our long flight. We had convenient store dinner and Roy had Macca's where we glimpsed our first bunny rabbit and heard our first kid speaking with an English accent (very cute). We also had our first experience with the sun being up really late, it still being light outside until after 10pm.

We caught a coach bus from Stansted to Oxford and I decided to have a bit of a read of my book "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" which was set in England and just as I read about a place called "Hertfordshire" the bus drove through Hertfordshire. It was quite funny! Clare and Sadie picked us up from the bus station in Oxford and they drove us to their flat in Witney where we stayed the night. We got to meet Lily the dog finally! And she's very, very cute!

They took us for a little walking tour of Witney and had some GREAT food at the Plough Inn! The thing I've noticed in the UK is that there is a heap more options for Vegetarians and the labelling of food is great! Things are labelled with "suitable for vegetarians" if it has no animal nasties in it. So I don't have to stand in the middle of the supermarket and read the tiny writing on the ingredients list to work out if I can eat it or not.

England is like something out of a nursery rhyme or story book! It has dandelions, butterflies, fields with cows, puppy dogs and flowers! It's really, really pretty!! Especially Oxfordshire!

These pictures were taken on our walk around Witney.

Clare took us on a double-decker bus to Oxford where we had a bit of an explore before we met up with one of her friends (who lives in London) for lunch. Clare introduced us to probably the best sandwich shop EVER! Pret a manger! There is a large range of really nice sandwiches but every time I go there I can't go past the "Posh cheddar and pickle baguette."

Clare took us to the Covered Market in Oxford so we could buy what I think is one of the tastiest cookies I have eaten in my life. We bought a triple choc chip cookie from "Ben's cookies" and they were fresh out of the oven and 'oh-so-goooood!'

I love the logo because it was illustrated by Quentin Blake who was the illustrator of my favourite author's books Roald Dahl.

After we came home from Oxford, Clare and Sadie drove us to Chipping Norton where we stayed in a self-contained cottage. That brings me up to when the rest of the Wallace's arrive for our big UK adventure! I will leave the Chipping Norton adventures for the next post.

we made it to the MOTHERLAND!

I'm not going to do go into details right now because I'm effing tired and my battery is running low but just a quick one to say we've made it to ENGLAND! *queue the national anthem*
I will talk more when my eyes can stay open.

So we've made it to KL

We were always intrigued with how we were going to go with flying 22 hours on a budget airline. We've done our first leg and it wasn't all that bad... except for the fact that water isn't free and they don't accept credit cards. When we were at the Coolangatta airport saying goodbye to my parents, I gave away my last $10 thinking that I would have no use for it. We got our pre-booked meal on the flight and luckily they gave us a small bottle of complimentary water. We had to ration out 350mls of water for a couple of hours until Roy remembered he had about $3.70 in change in his bag. Luckily the bottles of water only cost $1... so we bought three. We only just lasted on our nine hour flight with the little water we had. I'd say we've learnt our lesson and we have plenty of Malaysian Ringgits to spend on the next leg of the flight which is thirteen hours, lots more water to be bought.

It's difficult travelling with so much luggage and Roy being the only one who can lift things over the weight of 15kgs. There were a few frantic moments of chucking luggage onto shuttle buses and then back off again in the pouring rain.

Our hotel in Malaysia was about two minutes drive on the shuttle from the LCCT terminal of the airport which is about forty minutes from the city and since we were pretty damn tired from flying for nine hours we decided to not venture to the city.

 So instead, we hung out in the airport terminal and hunted for fun things to eat. There were a few disasters.. weird noodles, super spicy sauce, peanuts, cucumber and a fried egg on top... Roy left that one alone with a fear of it coming back up later on.

 There were some winners though... We went to a place called "Marrybrown" which is a fast food place which seems like a combination of McDonald's, KFC and Red Rooster. They had a mixed bag of things on the menu. There was fried chicken, noodles, chicken porridge (WTF), ice-creams, iced Milo (awesome!) and two vego options which we promptly ordered. These were Vegie satay with vegetables, rice and papadum type chips and a vegie burger (photos to come soon). The vegie burger was a pretty damn cool idea. It was a bun with lettuce and a hash brown. It was pretty bland but with a bit of sauce it comes up a treat.

We retired back to our closet sized hotel room after gorging ourselves on cheap fast food, had showers and quickly fell asleep. In the morning I went down to the local 24 hour 7Eleven store and bought some before-breakfast snacks which consisted of three cans of different flavoured coffees, vanilla and chocolate cream filled breadrolls and chicken chorizo and smokey sausage flavoured twisties which cost a total of about $3.  We packed up our stuff and vacated our 'closet' and made our way to the airport where we had breakfast at our new favourite place "Marrybrown" where we had more vegie burger and milo which brings us to the present time where I sit waiting in the airport for our next flight to Stansted - London.

one of the hardest things about moving overseas

Yesterday we had to say goodbye to my Brother, his Fiancée and probably the coolest kid on the planet, Madison. Travelling and experiencing other cultures sounds like the most fun thing to do but it sucks when you have to leave behind family for a few years.

We went out for a whole day of fun starting with the city to watch my Dad march in the Reserve Forces Day March. We then went to the markets at Riverside where I got a nice present to chat to Madison through Skype with.

When we were in Beijing, Madison and I had a finger puppet of Spongebob that we used to talk with on Skype. I think my new little rock friend will take pride of place on a shelf in our new apartment in Switzerland (when we find an apartment).

It was a fun day of eating, marching, talking, face-painting, balloon making, walking, playing, laughing, tickling, crying, driving, yelling, joking and cuddling.

I'm gonna miss that kid! Thanks to Skype I'll still be able to talk to her.

almost ready to go

Roy and I have moved out of our unit and we're now living with the Wallace's where we prepare and wait until we fly on Wednesday 7th July. Roy has three days left at QUT and I'm not sure it's really hit him that after this Friday, he will no longer be a student. It's time for a real job, which I'm sure he is relieved about.

It still feels funny to think that next Wednesday we'll be leaving for two years or maybe even longer.

work is over..

I left work on such a high last night. I had a nice lunch with some work people during the day and then went out after work for some drinks with other work people at night. I got a lovely present (Lonely Planet Europe book) from everyone which I think will come in handy when looking up places to travel in Europe. It was nice going around work and saying goodbye to people and realising that maybe work isn't just that crap place you go to earn money. Even though there were a fair few lows at work, there were also quite a lot of highs and hearing the nice things that people said when saying goodbye made me leave on a great high!

After quite a few drinks at the pub and after some great chats with some good friends I went home and I think it finally hit me that we REALLY are leaving! Quite a few tears and running snot later I managed to get to sleep to wear off the alcohol.

Now the reality begins of making this move overseas happen. We have a week to pack up and get rid of our stuff and move out of our little unit. Then a week after that we FLY!

the closer we get...

Our time in Australia is quickly running out and the time we have left with family and friends is twindling. It still hasn't REALLY sunken in that we are leaving Australia for two years. We have only a few weeks left until we leave and for me only a few more days left at work. We are still trying to maintain this delicate balance of preparing for moving and also catching up with family and friends. For the last week and a half, the catching up with friends and family has taken over our preparing for moving. Nearly every night we have been out for dinner seeing certain groups of people for the last time for two years. It might sound fun and glamorous but it's actually quite exhausting. I think when we get on the plane we will just fall into a pile of tired goop until we reach the UK. Here's hoping that the next three and a half weeks goes somewhat smoothly.

time goes quickly when you have a deadline

Both Roy and I have been feeling the crunch of time (Roy more than I) as we prepare to move overseas and for Roy to complete his PhD Thesis. We're trying to get maintain a delicate balance between preparations for moving, catching up with friends and family and taking advantage of the nice weather and seeing what Australia has to offer us before we leave it for two years or more.

The UK trip preparations are going pretty well with only a few things left to organise and we're hoping that the volcano won't play up while we're relying on planes to get us from city to city. We can prepare and prepare all we want but things always go differently but sometimes that's when the fun stuff happens.