Category: 2014 trip

  Somewhat symmetrically… back at southern cross for sunrise. Turns out our fellow passenger from London was also catching the Sandringham line, we meet him again on the platform. Dolphins! On the bay past Brighton Beach. Good to be home.

Bristol Street Art Tours – although we could have walked the streets of Bristol for free and seen these amazing works, we wouldn’t have had a window into the other world that street artists inhabit.  Our guide opened up the complexity of practicing street art – legality vs illegality, tourism, technical production, attitudes from city …

The squirrels around Cabot tower are obviously hand-fed; they come hunting around to see if you will feed them. In this case, the squirrel wanted to see if the camera was edible. The grey squirrel is an invasive species in the UK; the red squirrel it is displacing was signposted in a number of places …

The SS Great Britain is one of the first hybrid steam driven screw/sail power iron construction ocean going ships. Built in Bristol in the mid-1800s, it was scuttled in the Falkland Islands in the 1930s. It was then salvaged in the 1970s and returned, with the dry-dock used to construct it retired by receiving the …

Transit time from Australia to Bristol via Dubai and Heathrow, courtesy of Metrotrains, Skybus, Qantas and National Express was around 32 hours including all transfers. While Danielle had been around here for a week visiting Ben, I spent only spent two nights in Clifton. Nearby attractions include Cabot Tower, SS Great Britain, and the Brunel …

Today brought us through wonderful Welsh countryside to Llangollen. The river Dee rushes past the old corn mill, now a pub, and steam trains run on the other side of the river. The pub celebrates the history of trap shooting.

Today we’ve arrived in Chirk. Transferring train at Newport was like arriving in a foreign european country – not the mother country like Bristol. All the station signs were bilingual. The train through the Welsh country side was lovely. On arrival at Chirk, we walked across to the hotel, puzzling about the sweet smell in …

Strangely, given I work close to where this was taken, I haven’t stopped to take notice of this side of Docklands before at dusk.

I’m excited to be finished work and to be going to join Danielle today. Not quite Brighton in the UK yet. Soon though. Well at least somewhere in the general vicinity. We will be posting to our travel blog once again, at least I will be; Danielle has not contributed much in the past week. …