Tent city & plenty of music

This past weekend I headed to the country… well actually, it was a temporary city with 150,000+ people enjoying a weekend jammed packed with music, mud & sunshine!! The traditional music festival has moved on from the small number of 1,700 in 1970s to being the largest music festival in the world apparently. There is one thing however, that remains the same – the mud!

With the hope of a sunny weekend, we headed about two and half hours west of London. We were greeted on the Thursday night with rain pouring down on us. It took us two hours to walk from the car to our tent spot on the other side of the makeshift town, fully laden with our gear. As you can imagine we were just a tad wet by the time we pitched our tent. Fortunately the trusty wellies (aka gum boots) provided a quick return on their investment. I even painted mine for the occasion, so no one could mistake my sunflower & butterfly boots for theirs.


The long weekend was fantastic. While it was overcast for the some of the time, the sun did shine for a little while too (& I now have a few “pink” spots on my otherwise pale white English skin). Over the three days we did plenty of walking from stage to stage to watch & listen to a variety of artists. To name a few, I managed to see The Fratellis, Amy Winehouse, Vampire Weekend, Massive Attack & John Mayer… but my definite favourites for the weekend was The Feeling, Scouting for Girls, James Blunt and Crowded House!!!

The final pic is a sunset shot of Stonehenge on the trip home (not a bad shot if I do say so myself, considering it was taken out the window as we were travelling at 50 miles an hour!)

Royal Ascot

It was an intimate afternoon with the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and approx 100,000 other people. With hats, fascinators, dresses & high heals, the population certainly stepped out in style for an afternoon at the annual Royal races at Ascot, located only a few miles from Windsor Castle. The afternoon was quite enjoyable as we soaked in the atmosphere, had a few pimms and placed a couple of bets. It was quite amusing to see an elated Queen on the big screen as her horse won the race – I wonder how much she won!?!

Lakes & dales

Work has taken me up north over the past two weeks. With a long weekend in the middle, I took the opportunity to do some sightseeing around the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales, popular for cyclists, walkers and water enthusiasts.



I hired a car for the weekend and headed west. With the weather being cold, wet & windy in London, it was a great weekend to head north to the sunny skies. The gutsy little Punto navigated its way through the rolling hills of the Lake District pretty well. The Lakes is a great place to relax with plenty of activities taking place on Lake Windermere and Coniston Waters, and many small towns to visit and complete a little window shopping.

On the Sunday we stretched our legs on a half day hike before heading east to the north of the Yorkshire Dales and the quaint town of Hawes in the late afternoon.

In the morning I tasted the local produce at the Wensleydale cheese factory (yumm!) and followed this up with a stop at a chocolate factory on my journey back to the east coast.

Surf, sun & wonder

With an extended May Day long weekend, I jumped in a car with four fellow Aussies for a four-day road trip around the counties of Cornwall & Devon (south-west England).

Here is an overview of our journey:
Friday – After a long week at work we travelled to Okehampton, located on the north side of the Dartmoor National Park, via Stonehedge.

Saturday – After breakfast at a local bakery, we drove through the National Park stopping at the youngest castle in England, Castle Drogo. Our final destination was Land’s End, the most westerly point of England, where we enjoyed a pear cider as the sun set over the ocean.



Sunday – We drove to Penzance (the origin of the play, “the Pirate of Penzance”) and headed to St Michael’s Mount. The early morning haze lifted to a glorious day of sunshine. As it was low tide, we were able to walk along the causeway to the island, but we had to return to shore via one of the many small boats to avoid getting wet. After devouring a Sunday roast at the local, we drove along the north coast stopping at the seaside town of St Ives. As all Aussies are trained to do when the sun is shining & the blue water is glistening… we went for a dip!











There is no doubt that we stood out with no one else actually in the water – the “fresh” temperature may have had something to do with that. Afterwards, we continued north to the town of Tintagel. The YHA was located on the edge of the Glebe cliff, a beautiful section of the English coast. It was a beautiful outlook to view the sunset!! The long days are great for travelling with the sun setting around 8:30 in the evening.










Monday – After a traditional cream tea with scones, local raspberry jam & clotted cream for breakfast we spend the day wandering around the remains of King Arthur’s Tintagel castle, perched on the coastline and nibbled on a Cornish pasty on the way back to the car. Continuing north we stopped at Bude, before entering the Exmore National Park. The national parks are quite different to back home - there are no trees like home, rather there are rolling hills of low level shrubs known as “moor”.

Tuesday – While the remainder of the workforce returned to work, we enjoyed a leisurely morning in Exford with a full English breakfast before heading off to Cloud Farm for a horse ride along the local stream.

A superb weekend of being in the beautiful outdoors with plenty of sunshine, good views & great food!

From winter to spring

This weekend I had the joy of walking out of the house for the first time without my scarf, gloves & beanie… instead, with my sun hat & sunglasses. Yes, we have finally had a snippet of spring and warmth – it was a gorgeous day! I made the most of it by heading to the London Zoo and relaxing afterwards (with a little snooze under a tree) at Regents Park.

It has been a little while since my last blog, so what have I been up to? I have been staying local with a few day-trips to local sites in and around London. High points include:

• Eating a famous red velvet cupcake (ie. crimson red cupcake with crème cheese icing) from the Hummingbird café at the Portobello markets.



• Watching “the race that stops this nation” – the annual boat race between Cambridge and Oxford. It was a stereotypical cold, wet & windy day in London for the race, though that did not deter the revellers to watch the teams row past along the Thames. It was good fun to be a part of.



• And finally, my desire to see snow in London came to fruition a few weekends ago. On the Sunday morning, I woke up with the snow still falling down outside my window. I was surprised that it really did dump. There was even enough snow to build a snowman in the backyard. I was pretty impressed that he managed to live for four days following being built.