Hello! It's good to be home.

We are home at last, but not yet back to the land of the living. India is having a hard time adjusting to the timezone and is therefore keeping the rest of us out of sync. At least they are still on school holidays for another week so everything should be back to normal then. I am back to reality with my first day back at work today. We have a new starter who is really nice but I have a huge pile of work to get through..ugh.

We had such a wonderful time on our holiday, where to begin? It was jam packed each day with only one day to lounge around (the day before our flight home). Talking about our flight home, we did not encounter any problems on our entire trip until we landed back in Sydney. With the industrial action our 9:00 pm flight as cancelled as we had to take a 3 hour bus trip back to Canberra, followed by a taxi home. We made it home at 1:30am after 2 1/2 days travel...yuck. The kids are very happy to be home and don't won't to leave the house until they return to school next week.

We drove just over 1900 miles* in all over the 4 weeks, saw many castles, and historic places, got to go to a few carboot sales, and an antique fair, and had a great time at the Pleasure beach at Blackpool. We were also lucky enough to see The Wizard of Oz at the London Palladium with Micheal Crawford, it was incredible. I am sorry to say that I missed out on meeting up with Cate (A Vintage Mum) and never had the chance to visit Niki at the Nostalgia at the Stone House at Shepton Mallet either.

I am happy to be home to wide open spaces..some of the tiny roads we drove down were intense, not as intense as the tiny lane the GPS took us down in Crewkerne, where I could hardly talk as Mr T asked if he was clear on my side of the car...a tiny squeak is all that could leave my lips!

I nearly killed myself on the Red Double Decker Bus tour on my way up the top the the stairs the driver took off and I nearly fell to my death. The tour was o.k, but I would not recommend it to anyone. The underground was also difficult for a travelling family (especially carrying luggage) but would be great for a couple or with grown up children.

The towns and London were very clean. Tescos was fantastic and the pound shop was another favourite. I was also impressed that the trolleys were so easy to push around (I had to struggle with one yesterday) and that they have a lot of different trolley options for wheelchairs etc which I have not seen here. I know...its the little things that I noticed.

Back home to expensive food, petrol has gone up and the shops have changed some of the aisles around. We have only been away a few weeks and so much has changed. I did, however, see somebody in their pj's at the shopping centre on my way to work though..some things never change!

Overall it was a great experience and everyone was lovely (except for the publican at the Mousetrap Inn @ Bourton on the Water...would not recommend this place at all). We had great weather, although we were drenched in Bath, and at the Ardingly Antique Fair and Blackpool was pretty cold. We came home to freezing weather would you believe. Today at least it was nice.

I can happily recommend the following if you are planning a stay in the UK: Traffic Self Drive for car hire (fantastic), Brittons Hill Cottage (Kent), Farleigh Woods (Somerset/Wiltshire), Earby House Oddington (Cotswolds), Blackpool Wakepark (Blackpool, but only for a group of 4) and Kensington West Hotel (London) were all great places to stay.

I have lots of photos to show but don't want to bore you with the whole slide show snaps if you are not interested. Let me know if you would like to see some in the next post.

* we use metric measurement, so we had no idea how far a yard was and still don't know!