Day 2

Ok, so we woke up at some silly time in the morning and began the second day.

The journey today takes us from York to Edinburgh with plenty of stops and sleeping time on the bus available.

Firstly we stopped off at the university city of Durham only very briefly to stretch our legs and have a wee. The next stop was the angel of the north which is a huge statue of an angel made from 200 tonnes of weathered steel and has the wingspan of a jumbo jet. Quite big but not all that attractive

Back on the bus now for a quick nap before we drive through Newcastle and make a stop at Hadrians' Wall. The wall was built at around 122AD by the Romans to mark the most northern part of their empire and kept the Scottish (Celtic) people out, it once stretched the width of the country approx. 120km.

Moving on now it was goodbye England and hello Scotland! thanks to the big rock with England and Scotland written on opposite sides so we new where we were!

Lunch was taken at Jedbergh a border town which was once home to Mary Queen of Scots.

On to Edinburgh. On the drive into the capital we got a nice view of the castle and here's a picture from the door of where we were staying the night.

At this stage the Scottish weather had kicked in and it was bloody windy, the cans were getting blown up the hills. The scaffolding to the right was been put up in preparation for the festival of Edinburgh (one of the biggest festivals in the UK) and I guess it is the same area they use for the Edinburgh tattoo.

We did a full tour of the castle, saw the crown jewels, a whole bunch of cannons, some stain glass windows of William Wallace, the dungeons & other exhibitions. On the way back from the castle we visited the world famous Royal Mile which runs from the castle to somewhere, at this stage I'd like to say that Edinburgh has over 850 pubs the most in the UK per person by a very long way.

Back to the hostel we meet up with a guide who showed us over a lot of the city and filled us in on a lot of history(there's too much to write). Dinner was served up and like a good ancestral Scottish fella I ordered the haggis and thought it was quite nice.

After drinks and the usual shenanigans in a open mic night pub where our driver sang some songs (he has a record coming out soon) we headed back to the hostel for some well earned sleep. Now, it was always the plan to visit the graveyard which has the most documented ghost in the world residing in it after we left the pub. To cut a long story short I ended up visiting the graveyard by myself at 1 in the morning take a few pictures and proceed to call home (Dad and Daniel can verify this). The worst part about the graveyard was trying to find the entrance to the place because disappointingly I didn't see anything weird at all, I tried saying hello to them and all but alas no spirits.

With day 2 finished day 3 takes us through the Lake District (vry nice) and eventually to Liverpool.

Holidays!

Hi all

Ok, well i was on holidays last week and did a quick tour of some of the uk. So here we go....
Day 1

So we've all got into the minibus and start our journey of discovery and lack of sleep.

Heading northward the first stop was Nottingham castle to see some statues of robinhood and pop into the oldest pub in england for a refreshing drink or two where it was rumoured that the troops would stop for a pint before heading of to the crusades with king Richard.


The pub is actually built into the limestone and has quite a few chambers inside the hill. The same limestone joins to Nottingham castle, you can imagine all the secret tunnels to and from the castle for the convenience of some nobles.




From Nottingham we headed straight for York.

After checking into our backpackers hostel we had the free run of the city to have a look about.
We managed to have a look at clifford tower, climb up the top and have a bit of a gander... gander......gander around kind of like a goose but not quite! Which brings me onto my next point...

GIANT DUCKS

That's right the ducks where huge! bigger than geese in fact (if they really were ducks and not geese). Honestly the baby ones were larger than our mummy and daddy ones, amazing.

York Minster was next on our list of sights. It's quite large and well i'll just put this picture in so you can see.

There you go, you just cant get far enough away to fit the whole thing in one picture. I did manage to get a film of the place while its' bells were playing a tune which i cant remember right now.... um..... like hark the herald angel sing but not quite!

When we got back to the hostel our tour guide Darren and his sidekick Dave took us for a walk around the city walls then into a local pub for a Viking feast.

Food out the way it was time for the Ghost Hunt of York! The ghost hunter fella really was quite good and funny too we learnt some of the towns history and even got to try and scare some people in an Italian restaurant.

Day 1 was nearly over so we followed our ghost hunter to the pub and stayed a little too late (the beginning of the trend). Here i have to point out that it was only the australians on tour who partied the night away that first night, good on us i say!

I'll follow up with day 2 when i next get my typing fingers on

Goodnight

Another Woods Edition

Just so everyone doesn't think that I just saying that the woods around here are weird when they're not, have a look at this bright yellow slimy fungus which was more liquid than solid.



I also took a short film of me poking this stuff with my finger and once you see the film you'll realise how squishy this stuff really is...quite squishy indeed me-laddo!

Epsom

A quick note - On the same day i saw bambi I also went to find epsom well, which is the place where epsom salt comes from...or i should say did come from, now there is a wishing well there.
When i finally did find the site it was closed, so poo!

Bambi

I went back to Ashtead common for another ride on wednesday and ran into bambi. I tried to get a good picture but as i dumped the bike and started to get closer a middle aged lady going for a jog ran past me towards bambi, proceeded to frighten it off then turned around and said 'did you see the deer?'. Whilst trying not to say 'no shite, was there a deer there, your joking right?' I replyed with a very polite 'yes i did thankyou' ........... Stupid dumb twit.
Well Bambi frolicked off just like in the movies up and down like a spring and i continued on my merry way.

Look closely at the middle of the picture

Things should start to get a bit more exciting in a couple of weeks, I'm taking time off and going for a tour to scotland wales and all around, should be good fun! I'll try to keep things updated but I may have to wait until i get back to post anything on the net.

Hope everyone is having fun in Oz!