London - Cambridge - Chester - Macclesfield - Manchaster - Garstang - Edinburgh

OK - so it's been a few days since the last update, but we've been all over the country. This'll be short due to the late hour, but may be added to later.

We left London by train. Met up with Libb. We all went out for lurvely food, ate far too much, watched the Mitchell and Webb stage show and wound up at Libb's house. From there we picked up a hire car and drove over to Chester where we visited the zoo and aquarium.



From Chester we dropped by Macclesfield and watched the mighty Macc Town and their shiny new manager, Paul Ince, throw away a 85th minute lead to lose 3-2. Luckily we were scheduled to stop by Manchester to stay with (my other sister) Mary and managed to drown our sorrows in curry.

On the way back to Edinburgh, we stopped at Garstang and visited my grandmother, her cat (Jasper), cousin (Damien) and uncle (Paul) - all of whom seem to be doing pretty well.




We managed to get back to Edinburgh in time to return the car and fall into bed.

London - Brighton - London

Just a quick post before we leave London.

We took a day trip to Brighton yesterday and took in some sights. I bought myself some shoes at veggie shoes.



We're off to Cambridge this evening to see Mitchell and Webb (from Peep Show). We have already taken in a couple of shows in London (Avenue Q and Spamalot) so we are really turning into patrons of the arts.

More when we get to Cambridge.

EDIT:
Now I have more time (like a month later...) I can add that we did get to the Natural History Museum and saw the blue whale exhibit as well as dinosaur bones and even the remains of a dodo:

Norwich – Cambridge – London

Well, the wedding went very well I thought. The food was good, the drink plentiful and everyone had a great time. I was off the sauce for the night as I was taxi-ing people about – we even took Nick and Sarah to their hotel. I thought that the best man's speech went well enough. I had to read it off a sheet of paper because I didn't have the time to learn it properly, so it ended up as more of an essay... Anyway, everyone laughed at the right places so that was nice. The phone/camera ended up not working (ran out of juice) so I don't have any pics of the actual wedding, but I do have a picture of the peacocks who live at the reception venue.



After the wedding we stayed the night with my sister Liz and her other half James. In return I updated their PC and ironed out some issues. I do hope it's still working...

From Cambridge we got the train into London, got the last course of vaccinations against rabies and Hep B (ouch), and ended up at Nick and Sarah's house. We'll be here for another week or so – kinda looking after stuff (and Mr. Cat) until they get back. We were able to help them book their flight back from their honeymoon the night before they left (eek – typical Noden organisation there I feel).

Anyway, since then we've been chilling out basically. Yesterday we went to the British museum and spent the whole afternoon there. We saw Greek and Roman sculptures, Egyptian mummies, Assyrian statues, Japanese samurai armour, Viking loot, Polynesian artifacts and everything in between. My favourite bits were the Rosetta stone (the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics) and a huge Easter Island statue.



We're planning trips to the Tate Modern, St Paul's, the Natural History museum and the National Archives – so more about that later.

I have been trying to think about some sort of theme for the trip. I was introduced to www.wherethehellismatt.com recently and liked the so much that I was trying to think of something we can remember each place by – some sort of running theme. More on this later I suspect.

Edinburgh - Lincoln - Norwich

I'm writing this from Norwich Library.

We finally managed to get everything out of the flat by 12:30 on Friday. This involved some last minute furniture disposal, a hurried trip to the storage placey and a final carful of stuff, but we finally managed it.

It all happened so hurriedly that it didn't really sink in until we left for the last time. In fact it's still a bit weird even now.

We stayed with Craig and Kerry overnight on the Friday night and left in the morning. We spent half a day in Lincoln - visited the castle (pic below) and saw one of 4 remaining copies of Magna Carta - and finally made it to Norwich Sunday evening.



We managed to sleep for the first time in ages without having to get up early or having urgent stuff to do first thing. We did, however, manage to speak to the solicitor who told us that everything went OK on Friday and the flat was indeed sold. We'll still have to wait until Thursday for the money and Friday till we are finally officially in the clear repair-wise.

We've spent today in Norwich and will be here for the next few days until Nick gets married. Time to swot up for the best man's speech etc...

A moving experience

This will probably be the last post from our home of 4 years as I'm not sure how much longer we have Internet in the flat. Anyway, everything's packed up and we're ready to kick off moving all our stuff into storage. It still feels like we're just spring cleaning or going on holiday... I guess it'll become a whole lot more real when there's nothing left.

We got rid of some more furniture today. Hopefully the rest will be following it out of the door tomorrow. It may be another late night tomorrow as we need to have everything out by friday morning.

Unfortunately as well as having to move everything out tomorrow we also have appointments for MORE vaccinations and I have to go visit the dentist - as if it wasn't going to be enough fun already...

Packing it in

Since leaving work, the majority of our time has been spent packing our worldly posessions into small boxes.





This has been going OK so far. We have gotten quite brutal about deciding what we really do need to store - especially as extra storage costs a LOT more than what we are already going to have to pay.

We've also been to the travel clinic again to get more vaccinations. More rabies and yellow fever pumping through my veins. Must remember not to bite anyone...

More packing awaits this afternoon - as well as picking up some antimalarial pills. Can't wait until this is all done and dusted. Just a few more days now. Still keeping fingers crossed.