Our Final Blog

Thursday 10th December

Well we are writing this our last blog with mixed emotions – excited we are going home and also sad that this trip has come to an end for us.

We have travelled to 25 different countries and still can speak only one language.
We have driven 27,170 kilometres – Rae has driven 5 of them – yes that is right 1,2,3,4 &5
We have had 477 hours of driving
We have left our carbon footprint with approx 3200 litres of fuel with fuel cost of over $8000NZD
We still have our wing mirrors on the camper – been some very very close calls
Fastest we have driven in camper is 131km and the fastest we went with Roy driving on German autobahn was 180km – nearly turned into Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Latest night we had was 4.15am in Castlefinn, Ireland – great Irish hospitality
Earliest morning we had was 4.15am – Running of the Bulls
Most beer we drunk in one day was at Octoberfest, lost count.
Two of our favourite places were West Coast of Italy and the South of Germany – will have to return!
We have 92kg of luggage to bring back with us tomorrow and lots of goodies left in camper which we will pick up late February from Tauranga.
Tans have faded in the last two months and the kilo’s have gone on – winter comfort food.

We have been away nearly 8 months and we think of the changes that have been happened for our family and friends whilst we have been away – new additions to families, loss of loved ones, loss of jobs, new jobs, new business ventures underway, new houses and many other changes.

We feel that we have really lived in each of the countries rather than just visited them, because we have the camper we have shopped in the same places as the locals rather than just staying in a hotel.

We have seen some incredible things and been to some amazing places, we have also meet wonderful people along the way that have all helped to make this dream of ours complete.

We feel very fortunate to have had this trip and we will look for jobs again approx April so we can work for a couple more years and do it all again. Next time we think we will concentrate on a few different places rather than travel all over and also next time we won’t be gone as long….just for the summer months. That is unless we can persuade “Lonely Planet” to employ us as researchers and writers for their books.

We are going to be at Motunau for at least 5 weeks when we get back, before we take off as gypsies again so feel free to visit. We arrive back in ChCh Sunday 13th.

We are away to bed shortly has we have a 11 ½ hour flight to LA and we then have 5 hours there before we have a 13 hour flight to Auckland.

Thank-you all who have read the blog and we will see you all soon.

Brent and Rae

The Lights of London

Monday 7th December

Well the camper is all fixed and ready for its journey back to New Zealand. Rae spent quite a bit of time on the internet looking for some sunshine – the best we could find was in Mooloolaba so we ended up in a small hotel (Faulty Towers?) in Feltham, London last week. The temperatures in Spain were only about 15 and the weather forecast was for rain! We also looked at Canary Islands but it also had a rain forecast so we got out the sunglasses and spent some more time in London – true we did wear our sunglasses, very cool but had a couple of fine days!

We caught up with a couple of friends/cousins in the last week which has been fun and had some awesome meals. We had a great Thai meal one night and we also had a fantastic Indian meal – apparently the Indian meals in London are the best - better than India itself, guess that the best cooks live here!!

We walked over London Bridge – and no it wasn’t falling down! Had a look at St Paul’s Cathedral and also Westminster Abbey – both beautiful buildings however we didn’t go right in inside as we balked at the price!

Rae had a lovely time LOOKING around Harrods, she was hoping to see all the Christmas displays but they didn’t open until Saturday and then you have to purchase a ticket online to go in and they are all sold out for the year – amazing! She did manage to find the Christmas decorations and spent some time and money there. What did a good husband do whilst his wife is shopping……go to the Harrods bar of course! Both happy people!

We also made the trip down Oxford Street about 4.00pm to look at the most spectacular Christmas lights – whilst the photos look great they don’t really do it justice.

We picked the camper up on Thursday morning and decided to stay in a camping ground quite close to London – to cut a long story short we ended up only 70km from where we started and it was 4 hours later – wrong GPS co-ordinates, tried to find supermarket, narrow streets where we had to do u-turns as we were too wide to fit through the barriers, drove through some very colourful parts of London – only got really worried once when we saw signs for London Bridge!

We left London on Friday morning after another interesting drive out of there and headed to Nottingham where we had tickets for a Championship Division game between Nottingham Forest and Leicester City for Saturday. Brooke’s partner Jono used to live in Nottingham so we met a couple of his friends and went with them – what an afternoon it was – Forest was 4th on the table and Leicester City were 3rd, Forest wasn’t really expected to win but they did 5 – 1. Never before had we seen such strong banter between the two supporting sides, it is no wonder they separate the different team supporters. You could almost believe that they really do hate each other. The chanting was also something not to be missed. We thought that Kiwi’s were passionate about their rugby but these people even more so! We had a great night wandering around some of the very, very old pubs in Nottingham.

Yesterday we came back down to St Albans (just out of London) to visit David, Helen and Annabelle. David is the son of a friend of ours. Annabelle is 7 months old and very cute. We had a wander around St Albans with them and we both really liked the town.

We have today driven to Oxford and we are waiting for the rain to abate a bit so we can go into the town for a look around. Tomorrow we are heading back into London as we need to pack everything up on Wednesday to be able to drop the camper off in Southampton on Thursday and for us to head to a hotel at Heathrow and then board our plane on Friday morning. We are both quite excited about coming home now and can’t wait to see our girls, grandson, family and friends.

We will update blog again before we fly out on Friday morning.

From the Bonny Highlands of Scotland

Friday 27th November

From the Bonny Highlands of Scotland

It is 4.00pm here and it is totally dark outside, it won’t get light again until 9.00am – we are told that in the summer here the people can read their newspaper outside at midnight – if they so desired!

We enjoyed the rest of our time in Ireland and really enjoyed the green countryside – there is a reason why it is so green!

On our way to Belfast we had stopped in a wee place by the sea to have some lunch when a man John who had seen our New Zealand sign on the back of the camper pulled over to talk to us – John and his wife are going to New Zealand in January for a holiday, so we ended up going back to their place for a cup of tea. They live in a cottage that is 300 years old and he is 6th generation to farm his land – interesting people.

We had a great day sightseeing in Belfast and it was interesting to see some of the places we all came to know about in the 80’s with all the fighting there. Whilst of course it is now not fighting there are reminders everywhere of the turmoil endured by the people of Belfast. The peace wall is still there which is the divides Falls Road (Catholic area) and Shankill Road (Protestant area) and the gates are still locked each night at 11.00pm. There are many peace murals lining these streets which all have some lovely sayings on them. Belfast is also the place where the Titanic was built – we drove down to the port and saw the shipyards that once had 35,000 employees and now has just 250.
Last Friday we had an uneventful ferry crossing from Belfast to Cairnryan in Scotland, just a couple of hours this time.
Saturday afternoon saw us in the teeming rain dressed in our All Blacks jersey’s heading to a pub in Balloch to watch the All Blacks vs England rugby game. Of course we are in absolute football country so we had to wait for the football to finish before someone would change channels for us and then we were the only ones watching it – fair to say not quite the atmosphere we had wanted especially when it was such a good score for us.
On Sunday we travelled through to Comrie to Ken and Jan’s place for a couple of nights. We met Ken and Jan earlier in the year at White’s Bay – Blenheim and Ken was really helpful to us when we were trying to buy a camper from New Zealand. This wonderful couple, with their 9 cream dachshunds, made us feel very welcome in their

home. We had a good day sightseeing around their area which they have lived in for 40 years. We visited Rob Roy’s grave (fighting Clansman), Deil’s Cauldron – which is a big waterfall that looked like it was bubbling away after all the rain and also Falls of Dochart – lots of beautiful places to see in this area. We arrived home to a traditional evening meal that Jan had made of Haggis, mashed potato and mashed swede – we both really enjoyed it!
From Comrie we travelled up to Braemar stopping off at Blair Castle on the way. Blair Castle is a working castle that is 740 years old – amazing old place and especially beautiful as it was all done up with Christmas decorations – it was lovely standing by the fireplace sipping on a glass of mulled wine admiring all the old Victorian armory. Braemar is not far from Balmoral Castle – where the Queen and her family spend their summers, unfortunately it wasn’t open for us but we did see the beautiful gates with the royal emblem in gold on them. Braemar village very nice and a lovely wild-camping spot behind the Tourist Office in the centre saw us wander over to yet another local village inn for a wee dram or two.
From Braemar we then travelled up to Spey Bay which is on the North East coast of Scotland. We had the most amazing wind up here, very exposed to all elements – we were definitely rocked to sleep that night wild-camping behind a closed hotel overlooking the sea.
We spent last night in Inverness and had a great spot down by the loch – shame it wasn’t summer! We had a great night out on the town and listened to some Scottish Music – well it was suppose to be – sounded more American but still enjoyable. Just managed to get the last bus back to our camper so not an early night.
We have today travelled down Loch Ness – whilst we were on the lookout for Nessie she didn’t appear for us until we glanced back on our way out and managed to snatch a shot of her. Had an interesting tour around the Loch Ness Exhibition Theatre – this is where they really quashed all our dreams of seeing Nessie – lots of theories and reasons why there never was a monster!
We are now in forest car park, (wild-camping again) not far from Fort William and have had a big change of plans today and are now heading straight down to London to be there for first thing Monday morning. The camper has gone really well for us and we have had no problems with it but there are two quite major problems with this make of camper and whilst Fiat will fix them under warranty which is only valid in UK/Europe so once we take the camper back to NZ we lose the warranty. So thanks to Ken (again) he has managed to book the camper in for us in London on Monday morning. This also means that we are without accommodation and vehicle for 4 days. Rae had (still has) great plans of jumping on a plane and travelling down to the South of Spain to some sunshine – Brent thinks that a B&B around the corner from the camper is a better idea……..watch this space! So the next couple of days will be driving for us – about 9 hours.
Brent also thinks that it is good that we only have two weeks left of our trip as the camper is getting absolutely full of lots of goodies! Nay bother, Brent will just have to find some more space.
Rae is especially enjoying all the Xmas decorations in the streets and shops – so very pretty and of course the Xmas lights go on about 3.00pm – no having to wait until at least 9.30pm!

Watch this space

Top of the Morning to Ya

Tuesday 17th November

Top of the Morning to Ya!

Ireland (Republic of ) – Wow, from beautiful scenery to learning another language again – yes Irish! We absolutely love the accent but find it very hard to understand at times!!

We spent a couple of nights in Dublin where we had a great day sightseeing on a beautiful clear Sunday. We had lunch at the Temple Bar – one of Ireland’s oldest pubs, watched numerous street artists perform before heading off to the Guinness Factory – this factory is shaped like a giant pint glass. After learning all the history and how to make Guinness we were treated to the best tasting glass of Guinness we have had, at the top of the factory is a bar with 360 degree views over Dublin. We also had a glass of Guinness Foreign Export – it is the oldest of the Guinness range and is mainly imported to Cuba – fair to say we have tried but won’t be trying again – not for us!

From Dublin we headed south to the Blarney Stone – you will all be pleased to know that we both now have the ‘gift of the gab’ after kissing the stone. We were both surprised how far back you have to lean to kiss the stone – Rae reckons that the old fellow at the top that was helping everyone to lean back thoroughly enjoyed his job!!

We then stayed the night in Tipperary (not a long way for us) before driving through to Limerick which is where Angela’s Ashes was set. We then carried on driving through to Doolin on the West Coast which had the most amazing huge seas crashing over the waves. We then drove to see the Cliffs of Moher which are a massive 203metres high. We went for a bit of a walk along the top of the cliffs as the day was just perfect. Had a great look around the villages in the area but unfortunately most of Ireland closes down for the winter so many of the restaurants and shops were closed. We ended up staying in a carpark in a tiny place called Tracht Beach – we were the only people there and had great views over the water to Galway.

We also had a fantastic night in Cong. Cong was the setting for the old movie The Quiet Man which John Wayne features in. We had a great night in a wee pub here – sitting by a fire talking to the locals and listening to three men who had later came into the pub for a spontaneous get together with their piano accordions and guitar – great night.

We spent the weekend in Castlefinn at Joanne and Winston’s house with their children Robert and Allanah. We had a great weekend with them – went to the local pub on Friday night where there was a X factor competition then karaoke - wow, the Irish can really sing. The kiwi’s Joanne, Brent and Rae were very quiet listening to those that could sing. At the end of the night we headed upstairs to the Church Dance and finished off the night about 4.15am. Saturday saw us having a quiet day although Joanne, Allanah and Rae did head out for shopping in the afternoon. Winston was trying to persuade Brent to dig up a paddock of potatoes – he wasn’t quite persuasive enough. Robert 8 and Allanah 6 are great children with lots of personality and lovely Irish accents. Joanne used to live in Dunedin and Winston after travelling with Joanne is now settled back on the family farm.

From Castlefinn we went through to Northern Ireland and stayed the night in Ballintoy before going to Giant’s Causeway yesterday. Giant’s Causeway is an area that has approx 38,000 columns of rocks – legend has it that Finn McCool the giant built this causeway over to his rival in Scotland, Benandonner or the other story or reason is the rocks are formed due to ancient volcanic activity in the area 60 million years ago. Anyway the rain stopped long enough for us to walk down to them.
We also visited the Carrick-A-Rede Rope Bridge – which is a bridge built over to the island that the salmon fisherman use to use – thank goodness we also stopped raining whilst we were there and also that it wasn’t windy when we were on the bridge.

We are today staying in a place called Newcastle – we have spent the day today having a look around the area and went across from Strangford Lough to Portaferry on a ferry and had some lunch. The weather today whilst it hasn’t rained it has been bitterly cold – I guess that being by the sea the winds are always cooler.

We are heading through to Belfast tomorrow for a couple of days and then heading back over the Channel to Scotland.

We have also confirmed our flights home and will be arriving back on Sunday 13th December – only just over three weeks left of our trip………..

Until next (Guinness) time…

Old Stones (not rolling) and Beatles

Saturday 7th November

Hi everyone,
Well we enjoyed Padstow, another fishing village on the Cornish Coast – this village is also made famous having the Rick Stein’s restaurant there – whilst we didn’t eat at his restaurant we did buy a lunch from his delicatessen. From Padstow we drove through to Stonehenge – well everyone has seen the photo’s of the old stones in a paddock – true you do wonder how they got there and why are they there but while they are large old stones they are not as big as we thought they would be – but hey we got the photo’s to prove we were there.
From Stonehenge we drove through to Bath and had a couple of nights there – we enjoyed wondering around the old town and whilst we didn’t have a soak in the Roman Baths that are 2000 years old (they are only for looking at now) we did have a soak in the new Baths that are the only natural thermal spa in Britain. We also visited Sally Lunns house which is the oldest house in Bath being built in 1480. In 1680 Sally Lunn moved into the house and started baking and selling her famous Sally Lunn Bun. The house and recipe for the buns are protected by the Heritage Trust – we can recommend the bun with melted cinnamon butter on it – very nice.
From Bath we drove east to Devizes which is known for its canals used by the narrowboats and for having 29 locks stepping up a reasonably steep hill – we watched a narrowboat going through a couple of locks and fair to say you have to be pretty fit to do this and it is definitely faster walking. We had watched a programme on TV a couple of years ago about the amount of people hiring boats and cruising the canals, after now seeing them it doesn’t seem to be a relaxing time on the water.
We then drove through the towns and areas of Hereford & Gloucester into Wales. In Wales we spent a couple of days in Llandudno a popular seaside town and also Conwy where we enjoyed exploring the castle which is 800 years old.
We then drove through to Liverpool and were down a dead end road, rain pouring down, starting to get dark and no campsite until a kind English guy told us where there was one and he even escorted us the 7 km’s to the gate, we’ve met some awesome people on our travels. We stayed in Ainsdale , between Southport and Liverpool, a 40 minute train ride into Liverpool central. We had a great day yesterday at the Liverpool Maritime Museum which had a great area devoted to the emigration of people from throughout Europe through Liverpool to places such as New Zealand, Australia, America and Canada in the 1800 & 1900’s. We also visited a Slave Museum and no trip to Liverpool would be complete without a visit to the Beatles Story. The Beatles Story was really interesting and fun – we now know all there is to know about the Beatles and their songs…Did you know Hey Jude song actually started off being Hey Jules but didn’t sound as good – it was a song written for Julian Lennon (John’s son) when he found out his parents were separating – some useless info for you!!!
We are now sitting on a ferry travelling from Liverpool to Dublin, Ireland. The trip is 8 hours long and unfortunately will arrive ½ an hour after kick off for the Rugby – All Blacks vs Wales match. I am sure we will be able to find a bar in Dublin and watch the end of it. We have had a bit of rain in the past week or so so hopefully Ireland can come up with a little better weather.
A little about driving:
We have a big New Zealand sign on the back of the camper and it is amazing how many toots and lights flashing we get as we drive by – we even had a car start to pass us on the motorway, matched our speed and when we looked closer there was a young wee fellow holding up a soft toy kiwi at the window. A couple of cars flew past us in the Czech Republic motorway beeping and waving. We also have people walk up to us in carparks & camping grounds all over Europe asking “are you actually from New Zealand”, a question we have heard so many times. In Wales we got lots of extra toots with the rugby playing today. We have discussed this phenomenon with several locals and they agree it is better to travel Europe with an NZ sign than let people assume you are just another Brit on holiday.
The narrow roads can cause some eye-blinking when we have to ride up onto footpaths, many many times pull both mirrors in, wince when trucks come past at speed and then realize your mirror is still intact. We spoke to a guy who bought a brand new camper a week ago and his mirror was already taped up after being clipped by a truck. Yes we did get through the archway in the photo, yes we did meet an oncoming car in the hedge lined lane and yes driving is a little stressful at times and is not for the faint-hearted, especially in a wide camper.

That all for now…. Update again soon…. to be sure, to be sure, to be sure (in an Irish accent of course).

Channel Hopping

Friday 30th October

Hello Again

From Villers Sur Mer we carried on around the Normandy Coast visiting the D-Day beaches of Juno Beach & Sword Beach then drove further up to Gold Beach or Courseulles. The D-Day landings were the largest military operation in history. Early on 6th June 1944 (WW2) the allied troops stormed ashore along the 80km stretch of beaches – this then resulted in the Battle of Normandy and the re-occupation of allies on the French soil. We also visited a 360 degree cinema showing original footage and photographs of the landings on the Normandy beaches, in Arromanches. We also saw the remnants of the makeshift harbor at Port Winston.
We stayed by the beach at Courseulles and walked into the village and bought some fresh scallops and oysters and cooked them up for tea in the camper…..oysters were great…big and juicy…scallops were good but not quite as sweet as the ones from Marlborough Sounds.
We also spent a couple of days having a look at the top of the Normandy Coast and went to Cap de la Hague, the point where the Altantic Ocean and the English Channel meet. A very rugged rough coast line which we had a great walk around or should I say were blown around!!
After a final grocery shop of the great French food we headed to Cherbourg to board our ferry to Portsmouth….we didn’t have to worry about being late….it seemed that the clocks had changed for daylight saving to end a couple of days before and we were oblivious to it, so after a bit of a laugh and an extra hour wait, a six hour ferry ride we were back in the UK. Driving on the correct side of the road again took a bit of getting use to but great to be able to read and understand the road signs, things we are buying the supermarket and of course being able to converse with most people. Hard to believe that we had six months in Europe! Off the ferry at 4.30am and then found a quiet carpark to sleep for a few more hours.
We have spent the last five days around the Devon and Cornwall Coasts. Seeing places such as Weymouth, Plymouth, Penzance, Lands End and St Michaels Mont. We also had a great visit to Polperro – an old fishing village with a natural harbor that you walk about 1.5km down to – we could have taken the horse and cart but needed the walk. The town is full of very narrow lanes which are lined with café’s and shops selling all the gear for crabbing – a popular thing to do here. We walked around the cliff top and got some great views out to sea as well as over the village. We enjoyed a Devonshire Tea and Cornish Pasty here – hence why we needed the walk!!
We are now at Padstow on the west coast of Cornwall – the time is 4.45pm and it is almost dark here !! We are probably heading towards Stonehenge tomorrow and will find somewhere to stay near a village pub as it is Halloween and it looks like everyone here celebrates it.

Until next time…..

High on Life

Friday 23rd October

High on Life

Well Amsterdam – how do we describe it to those of you who have never been here – to start with we had two nights out on the town here! Very lively place with a definite distinct “odour” in the air! Lots of coffee shops here – not quite the menus we have back at home – things on these menus included expresso, latte, lady joint, foil, skunk joint & hashish to name a few. Signs in lots of pubs windows saying smoking allowed in here – cigarettes and joints! Seemed quite unreal with the police riding their bikes around and seeing people in the coffee shops and pubs smoking marijuana in full view of them. The other exciting (not quite the right word) part to Amsterdam is the girls in the windows – Brent called Rae naïve as she didn’t quite expect to see so many girls flaunting their wares right in front of you and then watching men enter their rooms. These girls obviously are the Dutch welcoming party as they smile at everyone, chat to the many men and we think invite them in for a 20 minute cuppa. We didn’t get tempted though ‘cos a cuppa can cost 50 Euro or more and there’s a lot of wine drinking in 50 Euro. They are treated well these girls with nice warm rooms behind their glass windows, someone should look at their thermostats though as obviously too warm and they have to peel off sooo many clothes, better than freezing I guess and also keep’s the cuppa’s warmer longer. At any one time there is on average 380 girls working so lots of window shopping here!! Apparently some men tried to set up their own business in the windows but after three days and no sales they decided to leave it to the girls!!!! Amsterdam is also home to quite a few museums. We visited the Torture Museum, Hash Museum and Sex Museum – all very unique and nothing much has changed over 150 years. We also saw Anne Franks house – this was the house where she wrote her famous dairy during the war years. The other thing we couldn’t believe about Amsterdam was the huge number of bikes here – everyone bikes everywhere, the bikes rule the road. There are about 150,000 bikes stolen each year but Brent reckons they just forget where they left them!
We have done a lot of sightseeing in the last week in both Holland and Belgium. In Holland we visited –
Madurodam which is a miniature Netherlands – the area of this place was 18,000m2 and took us through old Holland/Netherlands right up to some of the modern architecture. Everything in the place was operational but obviously in miniature. The airport had airplanes going down the runway and also had an operational baggage carrier. The boats that were cruising around the canals had to wait for the bridges to lift for them to go under. The church even had bells that rung on the hour. We bought a souvenir pair of clogs from the mini clog maker – we could hear them being made, next thing a mini truck pulls up at the clog maker and the clogs are dropped into the back of the truck and the truck then drives around to us for us to pick up our pair of clogs – amazing.
We have also visited Kinderdijk which has 19 working 18th century windmills. It was a very crisp fresh Sunday morning when we biked to see the windmills and unfortunately there was no wind so there were none working for us, however one of the windmills is open to the public so we walked around inside it – hard to believe that this windmill housed a family of 10 back in the early 1900’s.


We also had a tour around the Delta Works which is a massive dam built to protect Holland against flooding after the big floods they had in 1953 which killed 1900 people. The Waterland Neeltje Jans is where the tour starts and is right by the main surge barrier. We walked inside the barriers pylons and could see how the whole thing works – if the sea-water gets rough & rises more than 3 metres then the barriers are automatically shut and the water would then flow back out to the North Sea and not into all the canals around Holland. They needed to do this as at least 40% of Holland has been built below sea level. The Delta Works took 20 years to complete and is seen as one of the world’s greatest engineering works. The Oosterschelde which is the area of the Delta Works is now a National Park – we had a boat trip out to the Oosterschelde but realize how lucky we are back at home when people on the boat were disappointed not to see any seals!! The Dutch really treasure their National Parks but I suppose when you live in a country that is the most densely populated in Europe you would too. New Zealand has 6 times more land area than Holland but Holland has 4 times the population.
From Holland we drove through to Bruges in Belgium. Bruges is another pretty wee town but this time with lots and lots of chocolate shops! Belgium is known for it’s beer, chocolate and mussels. We went to a shop in Bruges that stocked 350 different types of Belgian Beers. We did sample some of the chocolates (very nice) and a couple of the different beers. Rae liked the raspberry flavoured one (1.9%alcohol) and Brent liked the Duvel (8.5%alcohol) – Duvel is the name Belgium name for devil. We also had a great pot of steamed mussels.
From Bruges we travelled up to Ypres – which is where hundreds of thousands of soldiers fought over this cramped corner of the Western Front for four years of concentrated warfare during WW1. Ypres and his surrounding areas (Flanders Fields) were where 103,000 New Zealand soldiers fought during WW1. 60% of these men lost their lives here and considering we only had a population of one million at the time it is the greatest loss of lives in New Zealand history. Flanders area includes the famous Passchendale fighting grounds. The total loss of lives for the Commonwealth was 185,000 so this is aptly been assigned the memorial area for our WW1 troops. The Menin Gate is a memorial for the soldiers that passed through it daily on their way to battle on the Western Front. This bridge is in Ypres and every night at 8.00pm the Last Post is sounded here. The traffic is stopped and the night we were there, there were 500+ people attending including some school groups who laid wreaths. A very moving ceremony. It was surprising for us whilst visiting the bridge in the afternoon and reading the names of 54,000 soldiers who lost their lives we saw a fresh bouquet of flowers from “From the Parliament and People of New Zealand”. Whilst this place serves as a memorial for all the lost Commonwealth Soldiers, the New Zealand soldiers are named in another well known memorial cemetery at Tyne Cot. We visited Tyne Cot which also had a very informative information centre – the names of the 47,000 commemorated there are continually read out over loud speakers and in the centre their photos are displayed accordingly on screen. From Tyne Cot we then went to Polygon Wood Cemetery and Buttes New British cemetery where the New Zealand memorial stands. The weather was very dull and dreary and it wasn’t hard to imagine the conditions the soldiers fought in. We then left Belgium and drove into France and we went to Anneke Cemetery where Rae’s Great Uncle is buried – a casualty of WW1. Rae felt very privileged to be able to visit Harry Gilchrist’s grave on behalf of the Parke Family. All in all a very sombre couple of days but also very gratifying.
We are now in Villers Sur Mer which is on the Normandy Coast of France where we are intending to visit the Normandy D-Day beaches in the next day or so.

Au revoir