Off to meet the new rellies!

Our main reason for travelling to the UK was to see Roy's sister get married and so of course we went to meet her new in-laws before the wedding. We packed up our gear at Chippy, piled into the little car and drove to Oxford where we dropped off the hire car and met up with Clare and Sadie.

This was all of our gear... It was quite a challenge fitting all of that, PLUS us in the tiny little Kia Cee'd. But somehow, we managed! I would say that it was pretty amazing!

Roy and I hopped into Sadie's car (gorgeous little Pattsy the Peugeot) and the others hopped into Clare's car and we were off on our drive to Cardiff, Wales.

The Severn bridge.

I'd pictured in my head this looooong drive to a different country but was pleasantly surprised when we arrived in about two hours. It's still such a strange concept to be able to cross borders to a different country in two hours. If we drove two hours from Brisbane we would get to...... Noosa... wow..

It's so cool in Wales, they have dual language signs! It was fun trying to read the Welsh. We were making a fool out of ourselves because the letters look the same as English but some of them make different noises to what we're used to, so I think we were saying them TOTALLY wrong.

Anyway, so we arrived in a nice little suburb in Cardiff where Sadie's Mum lives. We all piled out of the cars and prepared to meet the new relatives. It's been a long running joke amongst us that we were going to be the giants going to meet Sadie's short family. I hope they weren't too overwhelmed by us crazy, noisy giants who I might add were on our best behaviour. The five of us travelling companions (Me, Roy, Roy's parents and Kate, Roy's younger sister) got to know the ins and outs of each other after living in close quarters for the past week so we were quite comfortable with each other which led to a bit of rowdiness at times. We did however tone it down a bit for the new meeting :)

We were welcomed into their lovely home and we quickly settled in for the weekend. When Clare had told us that they'd organised for us to stay the night at Sadie's Mum's place I thought, "hhrmmm how are they going to fit all of us giant people in their house for the night?" but to my surprise they were extremely well equipped to have us for the night. Bodies were scattered everywhere throughout their three-storey house. Some in bedrooms, some in the lounge room and some on blow up mattresses, but all were very comfortably looked after.

That afternoon, Sadie took us into Cardiff to show us around the bay. I've got to say, I was rather impressed with the lovely city. It was very clean, beautiful and we were very fortunate to have perfect weather for the afternoon.

The silver "thing" is actually usually a fountain in Roald Dahl Plass. Roald Dahl Plass was named after the Author... as you can probably guess and Plass means "plaza" in Norwegian.

A dragon on the outside of the Council building.

A rather short door?

We stopped into the Norwegian Church cafe and had our first try of a Welsh cake - which, I might add, was probably my favourite thing to eat on the trip (they are covered in sugar after all). After a nice sit in the cafe, we had a good look in the visitors information centre where we learnt a few things about the place. Cardiff Bay experiences one of the world's greatest tidal ranges - up to 14m. CRAZY!

So, after our great tour of Cardiff, we headed back to Sadie's Mum's place where we were greeted by her brother and his family. We had a lovely night sharing stories of our different cultures and having a good chuckle at the funny things that Sadie's nephew did. He entertained us by rocking out to the music that was playing. He had a favourite track on one of the CD's and whenever it played, he stopped what he was doing and started dancing along to it. So cute!

After some lovely dessert, Sadie's brother and his family left because by that time the kids were exhausted - as were we - so we all headed to bed for some shut-eye.

After a nice nights sleep we were treated to a lovely spread of breakfast (probably one of the best from the whole trip). Sadie's Mum had a huge array of various cereals, fruits, juices, yoghurts, beverages and she had even heated croissants up for us. As you might say in Wales... "It was lush!"

After our lovely morning feast, we headed over to Sadie's Dad's place and had morning tea (coffee and plenty of tasty flapjacks!) and a good chat about rugby (Sadie's Dad used to play Rugby and is an avid fan). We also learnt some more about Cardiff and heard a few stories about Sadie when she was growing up.

We had a great weekend seeing where Sadie grew up and meeting her lovely family! If only we had a little more time to continue exploring Wales. One weekend just didn't do it justice!

Don't ask me what a cock horse is...

Every since we heard that Roy's sister and her partner were going to buy a house in a town called Bodicote - just outside Banbury - Roy's Mum had been singing a song that goes something like this:

Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she goes.

So we had to check out this town to find Banbury Cross. We also went there because it was the nearest place to Chipping Norton that had a Tesco shop and the Tesco there was massive.

We did a few laps around the roundabout which was apparently Banbury Cross and saw a statue of what we assumed to be the rider on the cock horse.

Excuse the shotty pictures as they were taken whilst in the car going around and around the roundabout.

After our fair share of dizziness from the roundabout, we then drove on to Tesco where we did a bit of shopping. Upon hopping out of the car, we got a super strong whiff of coffee apparently from Kraft Foods, the world's largest coffee-processing facility. It smelt rather nice at first... but after a short time grew to an overpowering, somewhat unpleasant smell which at times reminded us of weet-bix...and then shortly afterwards made us want to chuck up just a little bit. After scouring Tesco for various goods, we left Banbury and headed to Bodicote to check out where Clare and Sadie might have lived if the nasty guy hadn't backed out from buying their cute little flat. Bodicote was quite a nice place but after having spent a week in Witney - where their flat is - I can't help but feel happy that they are staying in Witney.

Harry Potter Adventure part 1

We ventured into Oxford to explore the great old city - but really we had only one main thing that we (well mainly me) wanted to go and see. I had heard that the Christ Church College of Oxford University was used as a film location for part of the Harry Potter movie series. Roy's Mum had a lunch date with a friend from Australia (they couldn't resist lunching at Jamie Oliver's Italian Restaurant). It was a little rainy so the rest of us went to the nearest cheap shop to buy umbrellas so we could continue our exploration.

Roy opted for this classy little umbrella (mainly for the small price tag over the design). It served him well until it could no longer put up with the rough treatment. It wasn't long before it promptly got shoved into a rubbish bin - I had to wipe Roy's tears with my sleeve (ok maybe a slight exaggeration... :P).

After checking out some of the sights around the city (including chatting to a history enthusiast at the Museum of Oxford to gain a little bit of insight as to what Oxford was all about) we met up with Roy's Mum and headed to the Christ Church College. It was rather exciting for Harry Potter nerds (Kate & I) to be inside this college and to imagine being at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

This is the Great Hall where the students at Christ Church actually eat their meals!

There is also a pretty spectacular cathedral in the college which was doing a service amongst the groups of tourists.

There were great wood and stone carvings in the cathedral.

And plenty of stunning stained glass windows!

Roy can never resist a good squat in a random location. There's nothing more satisfying than having a squat holding a pink umbrella in the back streets of Oxford. :P

Old stones that weren't Stonehenge

Another fun adventure in our tiny car was to a place called Avebury in Wiltshire, which borders Oxfordshire to the South-west. We wanted to check out something cool and old but we were a little apprehensive about going to see Stonehenge - we heard that it's full of tourist buses and that the monument is apparently roped off so you can only look at it from afar. So we instead took a drive down to Avebury - which, we were told, also has massive old rocks - to have a bit of a squiz. It was a pleasant but squishy drive down there with a few detours here and there (including a pub stop of course!). We discovered a little dirt road that went up a hill which had a large Geoglyph of a horse. After parking the car on the side of the road, we decided to brave the rain and have a bit of an explore. After a short walk, the terrain got a little too rugged and the rain too heavy to go any further so we headed back to the car. Of course, Roy's Dad was extra adventurous and couldn't resist heading off further into the forest, by himself. After waiting back at the car for a while, we eventually saw Roy's Dad appear over the hill, slowly walking back with a broken umbrella - he was a little worse for wear after stumbling on the slippy grass and mud!

Chocolates played an integral part in keeping our minds off being squished in a tiny car and we sometimes went a little crazy - making up silly songs, or testing each others pain thresholds with thigh-slapping competitions. Or even making crazy headgear out of our chocolate wrappers. For the record... chocolate is heaps nicer in Europe than in Australia!

After our little frolic (stumble) in the fields, we headed back en route to the giant standing rocks in Avebury. It was a very small village surrounded by a rock henge which is about 5000 years old. It's really hard to comprehend just how old it is. I guess it might be easier to imagine how old it is if I knew anything about history. Aside from not being able to grasp just how old this henge was, it was still impressive and great to be standing amongst the monument. I loved the fact that there was no huge touristy feel about the place. It just felt like a nice little village with giant standing stones that you could walk around and even touch. Although we didn't go to Stonehenge, I'm guessing we had a better experience at Avebury because we weren't stopped by ropes and didn't have to fight tourists to get a glimpse of the stones.

Roy also found himself a giant connect four set and couldn't resist a go.

Roy and Marty decided to run up the nearby hill to get a better view of the stone circle.

We ended the outing with a pub visit and ordered our usual beverages. It was great having a place to sit and chill after sightseeing. Walking around giant stone circles can be thirsty work :P