Friday 12th & Saturday 13th September

          SINGAPORE - BRISBANE - EMERALD

THE ADVENTURE ENDS

Robyn writes: Well, it's now the evening of Saturday 13th, and we are HOME in Emerald! Exhausted, crook, jet-lagged and broke, but HOME!

Our Etihad flight out of Singapore was supposed to leave at ten to twelve. However, at that stage we were still all just sitting in the lounge waiting ... and waiting ... and finally, well after midnight, we were loaded on and eventually got underway. We were fed a rather nice chicken wrap (which you wouldn't think you'd feel like at 1 am, but what the hell - all of that sitting around makes you a bit peckish.) Then the lights went out so people could sleep. I watched the Cameron Diaz movie "The Other Woman" (and really enjoyed it), while Lex watched "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and also really enjoyed it. Then we tried to sleep. Of course, that just didn't happen. The most I did was doze off for a minute or two and Lex was pretty much the same. It was another looonnnggg night. Of course, about two and a half hours before we were due into Brisbane, they put the lights back on and fed us breakfast, then finally we landed in Brisbane, rather late, at about quarter past ten.

We used our "E" passports to get back into the country, picked up our bags, and were soon out in the Queensland morning! We caught a taxi to Cait and Mikeal's place at Nundah and by eleven o'clock had crashed out to finally sleep. Bliss.

I woke up at about 2.30 when I heard Cait come home from work, but Lex slept on until we woke him after 3.30. After a restorative cuppa or two, we then tackled the big re-pack - our two 30kg bags from the Etihad flight had to be split into 3 with a maximum 23kg allowance for the Emerald flight. (I'd pre-purchased extra luggage.) Cait gave us her old purple port which is falling to pieces as a result of their trip, but she hadn't got around to throwing out yet. There was a lot of weighing and re-weighing, but we got there in the end.

Mikeal got home after 5 and we all got ourselves ready to go out for tea at "Hello India" in Nundah. We decided to walk (about 15 minutes) for a bit of exercise and so everyone could have a glass of wine. We went via the train station where we met up with Cassie, who very luckily is up in Brisbane this weekend - just lovely to catch up with her again! We went to the bottle shop where we picked up a bottle of wine and some beer, and headed for the restaurant. It was just lovely - wonderful curries, big servings and a reasonable price. We had a great evening, then walked back home for tea (and Lemsip, in my case - I have managed to get through nearly 5 months in the UK just fine and got sick on the way home. Bloody plane trips!) Cait and I took Cassie back to the station to catch her train, then we finalised our packing and were all in bed by 10.30 - Lex and I hoping madly that we would sleep!

Cait and Cassie at "Hello India" (shame about the flash!)

Sadly, all didn't go according to plan....we fell asleep quite quickly, then later we were both wide awake. I was quite convinced it must be nearly morning and I was getting up - then Lex informed me it was 2.05! Bugger. I got up and had another Lemsip, went back to bed and finally I did sleep, though Lex didn't much at all. Morning came, as it always does eventually, and we were up in time to farewell Cait as she zoomed off to work at ten to seven, then got ourselves fed and organised before Mikeal dropped us at the airport at 8.30. Our flight to Emerald was also a bit late, but not too bad and we were on the ground at 11.30.



Goodbye green landscapes, hello sunburnt country....coming in past 2PH citrus farm

Louie gets reacquainted with Grandy and Missy

Modelling the latest in Grenadier Guards T shirts!

Enjoying Nana's fridge magnet collection

Jim, Nikita and Louie were there to welcome us - it was so lovely to see them again. Nikita had been shopping and a hot chook was waiting in the oven and salad, milk, bread etc for a lovely lunch together. Unfortunately Jim got a callout so his was rather rushed! Louie demonstrated his almost-walking prowess and got acquainted with Missy again, and was shamelessly doted on by his grandparents! After they'd gone home for his sleep, we (very slowly) unpacked, sorted, found things and washed. Megan and Jake have looked after the house and yard really well, and we actually got a storm last night so came home to a nice wet lawn. Mum and Dad called around with a curry, apple pie, custard, passionfruit yoghurt and strawberries. We are so spoiled! Because of all of this wonderful food provision, I've been able to put off going to the shops until tomorrow. Thankfully. It's been a very slow afternoon but it is very, very nice to be home again! Missy Cat was extremely pleased to see us and has spent a lot of time on my lap and being patted. Apparently I have several months worth of pats to make up. Tomorrow we'll hopefully both feel a bit more with-it and get to catch up with everyone else and start actually unpacking all the bits in the house we had packed up before we left.

It's been a wonderful adventure!

The view from our window at Hotel "V" Lavender

Keen participant at breakfast

Lex on the Dragonfly Bridge

the "trees"

View from the walkway in the trees

Marina Bay (coolest hotel building in the world!) from the walkway

Another view from the walkway looking towards the Singapore Flyer

Inside the Cloud zone dome

Looking down from the top of the "mountain"

The plant mountain - rather like a large green dalek!

The food display at the "Casual Japanese Pasta" restaurant!

Thursday, 11th September         SINGAPORE

Robyn writes: Thankfully, I had a much better night's sleep last night. Lex's was a bit better than the night before, but still not brilliant. He claims I snored. I have apologised profusely but what can I do? One pillow and a sore throat and it was going to happen! Anyway, I'm sure he'll sleep on the plane and I'll be wide awake all night....revenge will be his.

It was 9 when I woke, which came as a bit of a shock. The curtains in our room were quite excellent at keeping out light! Luckily though we didn't sleep through breakfast again, so we quickly got dressed and headed down there for a last Singapore "V" brekky. Then it was back up to the room to sort and pack for almost the last time this trip. One more short plane flight after this and we're HOME! This all took quite a bit of time (brains were not working well) and it was around eleven o'clock by the time we had it all sorted and (hopefully) into bags of approximately the correct weight. We checked out, deposited our bags with the nice man at the baggage desk, and headed out for the day.

Our destination today was "Gardens by the Bay", the quite new wonderful garden complex near Marina Bay and the Singapore Flyer. We had seen them from the Flyer last time we were here in 2012, and they had just opened but weren't completely finished at that stage. We only had a one day stopover then, so didn't get there, and had definitely wanted to get there this time. It was easy enough; we took the MRT to Bugis, then changed lines to go to Bayfront. From there we found the correct exit, and chose one which took us up and into the huge Marina Bay Hotel complex. If you're not familiar with this, it's the one that looks like a curved boat sitting on top of three buildings! It was just as amazing inside as it is from the outside, and we discovered that there is an overhead walkway going from there right to the gardens. A brilliant way to get there!

The gardens are huge, and truly amazing. There are many different themed areas such as Chinese, Japanese and Indian gardens and various lakes - all of this is free entry. They have huge artificial "trees" dotted around, which are massive metal frames with vines and bromeliads growing all over them. They're only a few years old now; in a decade or so they will be spectacular. Some of the bigger ones have a walkway wrapped around and between them, so we paid $5 SD each to go up - we were so glad we did, as the views were wonderful and so was the breeze! Today was rather tropical and horrid - very hot and sticky with a storm building, so a breeze was a real bonus. After our tree walk, we went in search of lunch - there was a series of restaurants nearby and we settled on "Hill Street Coffee House" (which was actually a very Oriental restaurant!) My tea, when it came, was Indian black tea with, I think, evaporated milk in it, and I just couldn't drink it! Lex didn't mind it though so he drank it and I quite enjoyed his iced Calamansi tea, which he said was way too sweet. There was a green cumquat or two in it and it was quite refreshing, I thought. He had a huge bowl of chicken curry and noodles and I had yummy chicken satay skewers.

After lunch, we headed to the area which adjoins the two huge domed gardens. We didn't know how long they would take, so we just paid $18 SD each to go into the "Cloud" garden. This started with a massive waterfall crashing down in front of us, and with that and the airconditioning, it was COLD! Like everything in Singapore, it was very well done - the 'mountain' in the middle was a huge mound of, again, vines and flowering plants and bromeliads etc with various walkways coming off. As Lex observed, the effect from certain angles was not unlike a huge green Dalek ("Exfoliate! Exfoliate!) (Sorry, am being given to flights of fancy here.) Anyway, we took the lift to the top and then worked our way down, admiring the plants and the views from each level (seven of them). They had little puffs of water spray constantly emerging all over the place so it was a bit like being in a cloud. There was a preschool class visiting at the same time so our visit was punctuated with the happy and sometimes not-so-happy shrieks of small Asian children and the fairly futile cries of their parents trying to restrain and discipline them! I must say I was a bit jealous; what a wonderful place to be able to take a school trip to.

When we'd finished our trip down the 'mountain', we went through the gift shop, had heart failure at the prices there and decided not to buy anything. I wanted to go for a quick visit to Chinatown (one of my favourite Singapore places) so we walked from the gardens back to the MRT via the river bank this time, and took the train just a few short stops away to Chinatown. This has a wonderful market, so we spent some time wandering up and down looking at everything and resisting the cries of "You come in, I make you suit!", or "Lady, I have nice blouses for you!" We did a bit of last-minute shopping then went to the cafe at the Heritage Centre, where we've been before, and I finally had a decent cup of tea! Lex had a pot of Chinese tea so we were both happy and refreshed. It started to pour just then, so we carefully made our way along under the covers and back to the MRT to head back to Lavender and our hotel.

When we got out of the MRT lift at the hotel, we were rather amazed to see that we were in the middle of a massive tropical storm - it was just pouring down and the poor shopkeepers were frantically sweeping water out! At this stage, it occurred to us just how good it is to have an MRT station in the basement....anyway, we wandered in, retrieved our bags and headed back down for the last train trip of the day. We'd decided to head out to Changi earlier than necessary, as the trains are absolutely packed from about 6 until 8 which was when we would normally have been going. This was a wise move, as we easily fitted in, and had a good run out to the airport, with only one easy change at Tanah Mera (we walked from one side of the platform to the other). Singapore is a dream to travel in after the nightmares of London stations where you frequently have to haul your ports up and down huge flights of stairs with no lift or escalator in sight!

We got to the airport at around six, and got the ten dollar refunds on our tourist travel cards. These cost us twenty each (plus the ten deposit) and have been wonderful value for the three days - I'm sure we've got our money's worth with them, plus the convenience of not having to buy a ticket each time then get a refund on the plastic pass as we've done in the past. We then got changed into our travelling gear (comfy and warm!) We carefully weighed all of the bags, and went to find out when we could check in. To our amazement, Etihad had an early check-in counter, so we got rid of our bags and went to look for some tea. We found a "Casual Japanese Pasta" restaurant, where Lex had the scallop and mushroom soup and I had chicken curry. Very nice. Then we wandered around the shops for some time (Lex bought a book to read), changed our Singapore Dollars into Aussie dollars, and are now sitting outside our gate waiting for it to open. We've had a free foot massage each (there are natty little massage machines dotted around - I do love Changi!) We don't fly out until just before midnight, so it's a looonnnggg wait ahead! I'm very much looking forward to getting to Cait and Mikeal's place tomorrow morning for a good sleep....

Wednesday, 10th September SINGAPORE

Robyn writes: Well, our worst fears came true with regards jet lag last night - and this morning. We were both wide awake for hours and hours (curse that 13 hours of sleep...) and as a consequence, have felt fairly drained all day! However, we've made sure to go out and keep as busy as possible, so fingers crossed for a decent sleep tonight.

We were both fully awake by half past seven, so dragged ourselves out to get dressed and make it down to breakfast (included in our hotel deal). This was at an outdoor restaurant on the fourth floor and in the shade it was quite pleasant. They had most of the usual breakfast dishes with an interesting Asian twist or two - Lex had noodles (okay) and a bean dish (not so good) amongst other things. At least they had fresh fruit even though there was no yoghurt. We were able to have a good feed before setting out for the day.

Our aim for the day was to do the Rivers of the World at the Singapore Zoo. This involves a fair bit of travel - two trains on the MRT and then a bus to the zoo itself. We managed this very well - much better than when we went in 2007 as there is now a big, well-signposted bus interchanged at Ang Mo Keoh, our MRT station we got off at. The bus trip took nearly half an hour, so it was about eleven o'clock by the time we got there. We lined up to get our tickets, and were horrified to find that to do the rivers, we had to pay the zoo entry as well - $50 each plus $5 to do a boat cruise. Their prices are not well explained on their boards - it looked like we could just do the rivers (and as they are quite separate, there's no earthly reason we couldn't have.) Well. we'd come all that way, so we gritted our teeth, handed over the money and booked a boat cruise for 12.30. We went off into the zoo to have a quick look at some animals and find a cuppa. I was also rather upset to discover that I'd left my camera behind at the hotel - first time on the whole trip I'd done such a stupid thing! Lex very kindly let me use his, and we crossed our fingers that his battery would hold out.

Orangutan

Baby orangutans on the platform behind me

Zebras

I loved the giant otter

They had brilliant display tanks so you could see everything

Next shock was the price of drinks - $5 for a cup of tea or coffee! Lex declined to have anything and I forked over almost that much for a large iced Milo (Milo is big in Singapore, thank goodness.) Much more filling and refreshing than the tiny cups of tea or coffee I saw being served. It was nearly 12.15, so we headed back to the main area where we thought the river cruise went from, at the start of the river section. Wrong again! It was right down at the very end of the rather long pier, so we had to race to get there - to discover that it was actually rather like a theme park ride, not the proper boat ride we thought we'd asked for! We went on it anyway, and seriously, if you're at Singapore Zoo, I wouldn't bother. More than half of the animals we supposedly went past weren't in evidence at all and our boatload was getting quite amused at the number of no-shows! In eight minutes it was all over, and we could go off to look at the river exhibits we'd raced past properly. They had fish and animals from eight of the great rivers of the world including the Murray, Meikong, Nile, Congo, Yangstze, Mississippi etc. Many fish and animals there I'd never even heard of, so it was very interesting. They included the pandas, but only one of them was out - the others were all feeling a bit shy apparently! My favourites were the giant river otter and the manatee.

By the time we'd finished looking through all of these displays it was after two, so we went into the food area for some lunch. Fortunately the food prices weren't so bad, it was just the drinks they really slugged you on. I had a curry chicken set (cold, unfortunately) and Lex had a Laksa, which he really enjoyed.

Rather cute Asian crocodile - very small

The Asian otters were having a lovely play!

The lemurs were my favourite

They were quite tame

Don't know what he is, but he's gorgeous!

The male lion was being very vocal

Then we set off to go through the zoo again. Our tickets included rides on the 'train' which goes around, so we used this a bit to cut down on walking. Singapore must be one of, if not the best zoo in the world, and they have some wonderful exhibits in great natural surroundings including orangutans, a polar bear, adorable meerkats, Asian otters and ring-tailed lemurs, lions, tigers, rhinos, giraffes, zebras, a huge range of monkeys, reptiles...the list goes on. A lot of them you can walk among, and there are frequently monkeys swinging overhead. I loved the otters, meerkats and the lemurs - they all have so much personality.

The famous Raffles - with lots of very expensive cars outside. That's a Lamborghini!

Singapore Sling and beer to celebrate (?) our last night overseas on this holiday

By five o'clock we were fairly had it, so headed out to the buses again. A 138 came along right away and once more we were lucky enough to get a seat for the long trip back to the MRT, then two very crowded train trips home (it WAS rush hour by then!) When we got back, we showered and changed, and chatted to Cait who called on Skype, before heading out to Raffles for a Singapore Sling (my favourite) for me and an Erdinger Wheat beer for Lex. Glorious! (It would want to be - $56 SD for both drinks. We only had one each.) We came back to Lavender to look for a restaurant for tea but this proved difficult, as it isn't really a restaurant precinct, we discovered, and the bistro we ate at yesterday had just closed. So in the end, Lex went to the big Asian food court under the hotel and got a chicken curry, and I wasn't brave enough to take on anything from there, so I came up and ordered a teryaki burger on room service! It's been a BIG day, here's hoping we can sleep tonight....

Lex and Glen in the Leighton Buzzard town centre with the 15th century market cross

Abu Dhabi airport views - more building going on

Our hotel, the "V"

Me in Arab Street

Sunday 7th, Monday 8th & Tuesday 9th September

                                    UK to Singapore

Robyn writes: Oh, what a blur the past few days have been! As I write this, it's 10.30pm in Singapore and 3.30pm in London. Our body clocks have NO idea what the time is!

Sunday: Carol woke us at 7.30 so we could get a good head start on the day, and also attend a favourite UK pastime - the car boot sale! We grabbed a cuppa and a slice of toast before heading out to a field on the outskirts of Leighton Buzzard where many, many sellers and buyers were already assembled. We wandered around the sale for an hour and a half, vastly impressed at the range of things on sale and such cheap prices. We'd actually been looking for a new carry on port to replace mine, but the one and only one on offer was way too heavy, so it was rejected. Of course, we all ended up with one or two purchases and headed off just before 10.

As we'd had no luck with finding a bag at the markets, we went into the Leighton Buzzard town centre instead. This is quite nice - typically English town centre with lovely old market cross and some remaining old buildings that give it a very pleasant aspect (I sound like a Victorian travel writer there!) We tried a few shops and were about to give up when as a last resort we noticed an op shop was open, and hey presto - a very light bag was found for 7 pounds. We then headed back to do the big final pack.

Carol cooked us all a huge brunch, then Lex and I finally got down to the business of packing and weighing our bags. This all took quite some time but finally we had two big bags at 30kg each and two carry on bags at about 9 and 7 (Etihad carry on is 7kg). Finally it was time to leave for Heathrow, making sure we'd allowed lots of extra time in case of holdups, so we bade a fond farewell to Glen, Carol and Dave, and set off at about quarter to 3.

We had quite a reasonable run to the car hire return place - only took two or three wrong turns, and as we had plenty of time up our sleeve, this didn't prove too traumatic! After quite a cloudy morning, the sun was shining and it was a balmy 21 degrees as we drove through the English countryside for the last time on this holiday. A nice farewell. We handed our car over, then jumped on Europcar's shuttle bus which took us straight to Terminal 4.

Heathrow is such a huge place, it's sometimes overwhelming and it's always a good idea to allow plenty of time! We got to the Etihad desks to find that they hadn't opened yet, but were set to open in less than half an hour. Several people had already started lining up so we decided we might as well do the same (memories of in Japan where the same thing happened - we went away for a short time, came back and ended up in a huge line wondering if we were going to be too late!) We chatted to a NZ couple on the same flight while we were waiting. It eventually opened up and we booked in, holding our breath as we did. We'd noticed that for about the first time ever, they were weighing the cabin baggage. Bugger. Mine was fine, then we weighed Lex's. The lady told us to take some things out of his and put them in mine, then she let us through! (Huge sighs of relief.)

At last we could head into the departure area, so we lined up for security checks. This has got much more rigorous even than it was before, and took us ages. Both of our carry on bags were pulled out for extra checks, as they contained an extremely suspicious jumble of items (heaps and heaps of souvenirs!) All of this took quite some time, but we were finally released without a stain on our character. We headed to the food court area in search of some tea, and settled on a nice restaurant, "The Bridge", which wasn't at all like airport food (always a bonus!) We both had a very nice meal there with the last of our UK money. Then we headed down to the shops, where we met up with Rod and Rosemary, our NZ friends again. Rosemary and I went shopping in Harrods while the men talked jobs. Then we all wandered up to our gate to wait for our flight.

The trip from Heathrow to Abu Dhabi took about 8 very long hours. We were supposed to leave a bit after 9 but were about half an hour late in leaving. We were fed a very nice meal, then they turned the lights out so we could sleep. Well, as usual with me, that didn't happen! I think I got a grand total of about 1 minute's sleep during my second re-watching of "How I met your Mother". I just watched videos and read my book the whole time. In fact, I had just closed my eyes and was finally starting to drift off when some bastard turned all of the lights in the plane back on. It was 5.30am Abu Dhabi time and they wanted to give us breakfast! I turned it down and Lex resolutely slept through it anyway.

Monday: We arrived in Abu Dhabi at about 7.30am their time, 4.30am in the UK. A blast of heat hit us as we emerged from the plane (it was already about 35 degrees). We staggered through the airport security again and found ourselves some breakfast in "O'Leary's", an American baseball themed cafe. Lex had pancakes and I had some fruit salad and we both ingested caffeine, then we headed down to our gate to wait. Here we were told to go away and come back in an hour - the planes were running late, so we adjourned to the upstairs area where the aircon was working much better. I wrote a letter to my class while Lex had a nap. Finally our gate was open so we went back down, and eventually lined up to be bussed out to the plane. We eventually took off after 11. Another long seven hours then passed - this time I managed at least ten minute's sleep while watching a documentary on the Louvre! Lex napped beside me (I was rather envious of his ability to sleep by this stage.) On the plus side, I did get to watch the entire "INXS" mini-series, which was excellent. Finally, we arrived in Singapore at about eleven, quite a bit late. By the time we'd got through immigration and collected our bags, the MRT trains had finished for the night. We priced a hotel bus shuttle, but they were $9SD each and the next one wasn't for another half an hour, so we got a taxi. This was brilliant - straight to the hotel and at $31 wasn't all that much dearer than the bus anyway for that time of the night. We booked into our hotel, the "V" at Lavender, just on midnight.

Tuesday: We both had a very welcome shower and collapsed into bed. Soooo good after about 30 hours without sleep, in my case. When we woke up, it was to discover that we'd missed breakfast...and lunch. It was 2.30! I don't think we've ever slept that late. We wandered out in search of food and had a very nice late brunch in "The Lighthouse", a bistro across the road. Then we walked along Victoria Road to the Kampong Glan area which has Arab Street fabric markets and the mosque, then across to Bughis and the markets there. A very enjoyable long walk. It's lovely to be back in Singapore, which isn't yet too hot and steamy, and didn't even rain on us today! We bought a three day tourist travel pass ($20SD each) and travelled home on the MRT. The really good thing about this hotel is that it has the MRT station in its basement.

We got changed and headed out in search of tea - to go somewhere different, we took the MRT to the China Square Food Court, and found a Japanese restaurant, Shinkushiya, there. The food was nice but a bit pricey and (this has never happened before) they charged us a $5 service fee PLUS $1.50 each for the moist towelette that was on the table to wipe our fingers with! Never going back there again. We came back on the MRT and are now hoping that we're going to be able to sleep tonight - I certainly feel as if I will! Just hoping that dreaded jet lag doesn't strike in the middle of the night....hopefully we've walked enough and it's late enough to let us sleep.

　

Saturday 6th September                   YORKSHIRE  -  LEIGHTON  BUZZARD

Robyn writes:  We were up nice and early to start the packing, somewhat fragile from last night's excesses. Well, Lex was. Fortunately, I was fine, and after a few coffees he looked quite human. The Pocklington locals are certainly a force to be reckoned with! He has a gift of a genuine beer pump label and also had two bottles from the local micro-brewery pressed upon him. Lovely people.

It didn't take us long to pack everything, then we went in to say our farewells to Patrick and Helen, who gave us a bag of their delicious Victoria plums for the trip. I wish I'd taken a photo of the tree, these plums are just lovely (and I'm extremely fussy about my plums!) We got away at about 9.30 on our way south. The weather was suitably miserable and autumnal - quite rainy a lot of the way and it stayed overcast and misty all day. But it did get up to around 20 degrees at least.

We had a really good run on the motorways today, with not much traffic and no major holdups. A bit of roadwork but nothing too serious. We broke the trip in Nottingham, where we stopped at Wollerton Hall, an early 17th century beautiful grand house set in the middle of a huge estate and deer park. Although it's right in the middle of Nottingham, you have no idea that you're in a big city. The house is now a natural history museum and the stables have been converted into an industrial museum, so we visited both. Nottingham used to have a huge lace industry plus coal mining so there were lots of displays on these industries in particular. We had a lovely lunch in the café there - Lex had a baguette and I had an interesting and surprisingly tasty mint and courgette (zucchini to you and me) soup. It was a great place to break the trip and we spent a few hours there, leaving around 2.30.

Apart from an accident ahead of us in Nottingham (which we were lucky enough to be able to get out of our line of traffic and avoid the traffic jam), we had a smooth run into Leighton Buzzard and got here around 4pm. We were glad to flop in a heap and have a cuppa, but then began the massive task of tackling the huge pile of belongings which needed to be sorted and culled and packed and repacked! Carol now has a huge pile she has kindly offered to take to the op shop for us! There has been much weighing of ports and fingers crossed they'll let us on the plane tomorrow night...

Friday, 5th September                    YORK

Robyn writes: We're really pleased we chose Yorkshire for our last week in the UK - we had a great day today. This morning dawned cool and foggy, but the forecast was for an unheard of low risk of rain and 24 degrees, so I recklessly set out without my rain jacket! We headed out to the Park & Ride to go into York again. We got in there at around 10.30, got off at Picadilly and walked in the direction of the Railway Museum, which was across the river and through the city walls. It was free to get in, but we gave them a 10 pound donation and went off to explore the huge array of trains. Lex went off to a talk about the "Duchess of Hamilton" steam train first, and I went off to look at the royal trains - those which were used by Queen Victoria, King Edward VII and King George VI. We enjoyed looking at all of the trains and watched a display of their turntable, then had a nice lunch (vegetable soup) in their cafe. It's a wonderful museum, with so many different trains from the UK right from the very beginning of the railway era.

Me with one of the first trains built in 1829, just after Stephenson's Rocket

The Mallard, the fastest steam train ever

Can you see Lex dwarfed by this huge steam train made for China just before WWII?

After lunch, I left Lex to the trains and headed off into the city again. The fog had cleared and it was beautifully sunny and warm. Then I walked to the city walls and then up along the closest wall until I got to the building at the gate where the Henry VII museum is - I had an enjoyable time looking at the exhibits there. Then I went into the town to have a wander through the markets and shops until it was time to meet Lex at 3 - we'd arranged to meet up and go on an Ouse river cruise. Well, 3 o'clock came and went, but my husband didn't! The cruise went off upriver, and I got an icecream and a text to say that he was running late. I decided to have a cuppa while waiting at a nearby cafe out on the cobblestones near the boat dock, but everyone else (the sunlight had brought out all of the tourists in droves) had the same idea. After standing in line for fifteen minutes, I realised I wouldn't get served before the next cruise even if I did get a table, so I gave up and went to wait at the boat, which was ready for the 3.30 cruise. Lex then finally turned up, so we bought our tickets and went on board.

The cruise was very relaxing and enjoyable - we went upstream then turned around to go back through the city centre again. It was nice to see York from the river, and to take the weight off our feet for a while!

Cruise boat on the Ouse

Relaxed tourist

Clifford's Tower (lots more spiral stone staircases to climb!)

Me at the top of the tower

After the cruise, we walked around to Clifford's tower, the remaining keep of York Castle, which is on a mound near the river. This is English Heritage, so we got in for free and climbed right to the top of the tower to see the view from there. It's the last remaining part of York Castle and was built by Henry III in the late 1200s. The roof has been gone for centuries, but English Heritage has saved and stabilised the tower. The view was great.

By now it was about half past five, so we walked back to the bus stop and luckily, once again there was a bus waiting there. We hopped on and we were back at the Park & Ride before 6. When we got back to Pocklington, we popped into the Co-op to get some groceries for tea, then came home.

It seemed like a good idea to go for just one drink at "Toddy's", the little pub across the road....that's until we were hijacked by the locals! We were soon chatting to everyone, and I had just finished my glass of wine, when the barmaid topped it up and informed us that Steve, the local school principal, had just bought us another drink each. Some time later I tore myself away, said my goodnights and reeled out, callously abandoning Lex to his fate - I just had to come home and cook some tea and eat. One good square meal later I was recovering but Lex didn't turn up until after 9 - bearing two bottle of "The Hop Studio", a local porter, and a pale ale pressed on him by one of the locals who works in a microbrewery near York. He has since had tea and shows signs of recovery!

Herriot Country - beautiful views in the Yorkshire Dales

Lots of stone fences

It's autumn and the farmers are making hay while the sun shines....

Thursday, 4th September                                                              POCKLINGTON - YORKSHIRE DALES

Robyn writes: Another big day in Yorkshire, and the weather continues to be kind to us - it's been a warm (over 20 degrees!) day with no rain at all. Overcast, of course, for a lot of the day but very pleasant.

Today we set out to explore 'Herriot Country' - the Yorkshire Dales area made famous by James Herriot's books and TV series "All Creatures Great and Small". It was about an hour's drive to the north-west from here. James Herriot was the pen-name of vetinary surgeon Alf Wight, and we travelled to Thirsk to visit "James Herriot's World", the museum which has been set up in the original house and surgery where he worked and lived for so long. It's all set up just as it was in the 1950s when it was their family home as well as the surgery. Lex wasn't keen on seeing it, so he set off for a walk around the town while I enjoyed myself immensely looking through the house. Having read all of his books, it was wonderful to be able to see where it all happened in real life. They also had a movie about Alf Wight's life and several of the sets from the BBC TV series made in the seventies. I spent a very enjoyable hour and a half there before having a walk around town and meeting up with Lex at one o'clock. We decided to have lunch at the Black Bull pub there before heading out of town again.

The surgery at Skeldale House



The kitchen

Me in the lounge area of the house from the TV series

In front of the surgery

Lex in front of the Black Bull

We wanted to see something of the Yorkshire Dales, so headed west out of Thirsk towards Aysgarth, up in the national park. Unfortunately there was a lot of haze around so our visibility wasn't great, but there were some glorious views as we hurtled along the tiny lanes enclosed by stone walls. Then we went south right through the national park to Skipton and then home again via the ring road around York. Lots of traffic once we got to near York but we finally got here around six. Again a lot of driving but worth it to see so much beautiful countryside.

When we got back to town, we popped into the Co-op to get some groceries for tea tonight (chicken nachos) and headed home, glad to relax. Tomorrow is our last full day in Yorkshire so we will hopefully have a nice day in York.