Singing in the Rain

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Hitting the road...

Once Gary's contract ended at the end of June, we decided to make the most of the time and travel a bit. Our first stop was Cornwall. We stayed in a cottage inland of Polzeath. Polzeath has a lovely beach and is a centre for surfing.

Just North of Polzeath lies the historic harbour village of Port Isaac - very quaint. While we were there they were filming for a local TV production, Doc Martin

Cornwall is also the home of Cornish pasties and we indulged at Padstock:

We travelled South and came to St Ives with the beautiful blue-green sea - but still chilly water:). Also came to Marizion, an island with a castle just west of Penzance (sadly, saw no pirates!)

Cornwall has a super ecological site, Eden Project. They have 2 biospheres - one with a Mediterranean climate( and yes, Cape Town and the West Coast featured :), the other a rain forest climate. This is a MUST visit place if you are ever in the area!

We headed home for a week and then took a slow boat to nowhere :) This was one of our best holidays ever. We rented a narrow boat with another home ed family and did a week on the Shropshire Union canal (West Midlands) from Wolverhampton to Chester ( an old Roman town) and back. Sarah, espceially, enjoyed opening the locks. With a week of sunshine, we had a wonderful time!

On our way home we stopped at the RAF museum:

As well as Cadbury World :)

Then back home for another 2 weeks before we went to Keswick in the Lake District. WOW! What a beautiful place. Lakes and meres, tall trees and mountains - England's wettest area but if I could choose a place to live, that might just be it. We attended the second week of the Keswick convention. Henry Olange(ex-Zimbabwean cricketer) was one of the speakers and also treated us to a cricket match with his invitation team against the local team.

And then home again for a week before we left by train to London for 4 days. I initially really worried about finding our way on the train (let alone all the other horror stories we heard about the tube stations!!) but armed with our Oyster cards (Alexandra still goes free :), the tubes really proved to be a wonderful way to get around London. We were blessed to have accommodation in Rachel's (my room-mate from school) flat while she was in SA and also caught up with Bertus and his wife Tracey and their delightful twins :)

It is impossible to do justice to London in 4 days but here are some pics of our whirlwind trip.