|
We are taking a gap year and spending it travelling round the world.
Ray has given up his career in marketing for a year, Charlotte (8) is
missing all of Year 3 at school and will return to Year 4 next year.
Emily (4) will miss pre-school, and will start in Reception class when
she returns.
Our itinerary is:
Whale watching, hiking and lots of fresh mountain air.
During this time, the BBC Holiday programme filmed for 10 days, for
a part of a programme in the Autumn series on BBC1. We expect it to
be shown sometime in October, but we don't know when exactly - nor do
we know what's in it! But fortunately we'll be on the other side of
the world when it's shown, so we won't see ourselves!
Doing "the big drive" - We drove down
the coast to San Diego, then inland to Las Vegas, via Joshue Tree National
Park. Then we went further inland to Kanab, for the Grand Canyon, Bryce
Canyon and Zion Canyon. Then we headed west to Mammoth Lakes, Yosemite,
Lake Tahoe before hitting the coast again at San Francisco. We finished
with the famous coastal drive, then 5 (yes, five!) days at Disneyland,
as early birthday treats for the girls.
After a day in town of Nadi, we took the Awesome
Adventure catamaran out to the Yasawas Islands. We spent the 10 days
on two different islands, staying in bures, which are huts made of wood
and grass. They were pretty basic, with no electricity, no hot water
and there were only cold rainwater showers.
We've flown into Sydney, and hired a camper van
to go up the East Coast to Cairns (barrier reef & the rainforest)
and back to Sydney by December. Then we crossed to Melbourne to meet
up with Sarah's parents for a month around South Australia.
On the South Island we spent two weeks on the
coast and seeing the mountains. In the North Island we visited the volcanoes
and hot springs of Rotorua, the coast and the Bay of Islands. The highlights
of New Zealand were definitely the farm stay hostels, where we all appreciated
the green fields and clear air.
We started with a few days in Singapore, as an
easy introduction to Asia. Then it was up the peninsula to Malaysia,
further north to Thailand, and then to Laos and then Cambodia. In between
we made a programme with the BBC Holiday team in Bangkok, and had a
two week holiday with friends on Koh Samui. At the time of writing,
we're just about to head back to Cambodia and then onto Vietnam, before
going south to Borneo
We had originally planned to head down to Africa
for two months, but during our trip we extended our stay in Asia, as
we were enjoying travelling around it so much. So now, we're likely
to just head down to France for a month or so, before finally settling
down at home when we get our house back from our tenants in July.
|
Email
us - tell us what you think
Back to Home Page
|
