Travelogues
Write-ups of the places we've travelled.
I like France. Good weather. Good food. Picturesque towns and
regions. Lots of culture. Lots of activities and it's easy to get to
from the UK. The language isn't too hard to figure out either. All
together, it's a great place for a holiday. Too bad England lost it's
hold on Aquataine!
We've already been to France six times before this. We've seen parts
of Paris, Normandy, Alsace, Charante-Pitou, Garcony, Dordogne, Loire
and the Cote Azure. However, we hadn't seen Provence or the Languedoc
so this became an obvious next choice.
Joining us on this holiday were some old friends from Canada, Daniel
and Una and their five year...
Last year I decided that a sailing holiday would be a great thing to try. I imagined it would be idyllic to sail around picturesque bays with a warm breeze at your back and new vista's constantly sliding into view. You're free to stop and explore wherever you wish and you're always off to somewhere new each day. It's convenient with your own food and accommodation readily at hand. There's also the exhiliration of a good sail and fun team work of running the yacht. Talking to various people and completing my RYA Competent Crew in August 2004 convinced me...
On short noticed, Jenny planned a holiday for us down in Dorset for four nights over the Easter break (2005). The primary attraction was to take the kids and explore the Jurrasic Coast.
Day 1
It was an easy 2 1/2 hours drive to get down to Dorchester. The hard part was the packing beforehand. Nevertheless, we soon found ourselve pouring into Flintcombe cottage at Greenwood Grange Farm Cottages. It was a lovely big clean cottage that easily accommodated us. Again, this was another successful choice from the Premier Cottages catalogue.
It was only about three o'clock so we went and checked out...
Spent four days skiing in the Pyrenees.
This travelogue covers a roadtrip a friend and I did in September 2004. We drove from near London to the Nurburgring race circuit and then on to Munich for Oktoberfest. We drove home via Amsterdam.
A Whim
It all started on a whim. I sent an email to Sean, my buddy back in Canada:
Psst. Hey, ever been interested in a doing a road trip in Europe?
I've always wanted to take the Porsche and drive down to the Nurburing circuit in Germany and go for a lap. Could be a fun road trip. Maybe we could drop by Munich...
We've been friends since grade...
I've just completed the five day RYA Competent Crew sailing course with Five Star Sailing based in Warsash, Southampton. We mostly sailed in the Solent which is the channel between the UK mainland and the Isle of Wight but we ranged as far as Poole and Chichester. The course is the first step in the RYA Sail Cruising scheme. It's a practical introduction to sailing with the goal of making you a useful crew member.
My real goal in taking this course was to decide whether I'd like to attempt taking the family on a sailing holiday some time in the...
We recently got back from Portland on the Dorset Coast. It's a small peninsula beside Weymouth famous for Portland Stone used to build grand buildings like St. Pauls Cathedral. It also forms the east most end of Chiswell Beach.
Our goal was to complete our PADI Advanced Open Water Diver certification. Unfortunately, Jenny had to drop out of the course because the doctor refused to give her medical approval. However, it still meant two days holiday without the kids. A friend of ours volunteered to look after them (on condition we take her two kids another time). Fair enough.
Now your reaction to...
After many years of thinking we would like to try diving, Jenny and I finally decided that this was the year (2003) we would just do it. We finished our PADI Open Water certification at a nearby lake in the summer with a local scuba shop, DiveStyle. They were great and I would definitely recommend them.
Wraysbury Lake wasn’t a very exciting place to learn. At least it wasn’t cold wearing 7mm wet suites but visibility was very low; maybe three metres at best. Nevertheless, learning to dive requires going through a bunch of exercises and it doesn’t really matter how...
We just got back from two days of off road adventure in Wales with All Terrain Services.
We left early Monday morning and zipped down the M4 to Pontardawe near Swansea and met David who was our instructor over the next two days. After a short briefing of the schedule and a bit of theory of how a 4x4 works, we soon hit the road in an Isuzu Trooper.
The day saw us crawling all over the top of a Welsh mountain which is their training ground. It even had a disused coal mine and an old motocross track which we made...
Here’s a run down of our trip to Cornwall in August/September 2003. After our previous holiday in France, we thought it would be better to stay more local and do less driving. Since we've met so many people who go to Cornwall for their holidays, it became a natural choice for us to go see what the fuss was about.
First you should know that Cornwall has its own culture that is quite distinct from the rest of the UK. It was the last part of England to surrender to the Saxons in 836AD and still remains strongly influenced by its...
Here's a travelogue of our visit to my sister, Rozanne, and her family. I've tried to just stick to highlights in a chronological order.
My sister and her husband, Seguei, live in Maryland close to the border with Washington, D.C. and not far from the University of Maryland. By American standards, her house is small and I guess you might call it modest. It's packed to the gills with a jumble of possessions and all the parapharnalia that comes with raising two children: Ruby, age 7, and Sasha, age 5.
Thursday, July 30th
To our delight, British Airways upgraded us to business class for...
Friday morning (6 June 2003) saw us packing and loading up the MPV for our next short weekend trip. This time it was to the Peak District in Derbyshire. I was hoping it could all fit in the Porsche so the drive would be more fun but no such luck; there was simply too much stuff to take. K* packed a big box of lego. After stowing it away, I checked with Jenny to make sure she had sanctioned it and found out that she had thought that I had sanctioned it. Nope. But we let K* get his way and...
Below is a travelogue I sent out to family last September (2002) documenting our last holiday which was to France.
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This was the first real holiday we've done since K* was born if you don't count trips to visit family or short breaks in the UK. Our last holiday was to Crete four years ago so we were really looking forward to travelling somewhere we hadn't been before. So we drove down to the Charente region of France. This is roughly the area between Nantes and Bordeaux on the west coast of France. We booked this last Christmas which is very...