Boys trip

A couple of weeks ago, Kerstin was in Germany with the kids, so it was only common sense to head off on a boy's weekend. Nick and I took the Friday off, and decided to head down south as we had seen some nice piccies of the south coast near Seaford and figured that was as much planning as we needed.

On the Thursday night, Nick came out to Maidenhead and we set off to Brighton as the first stop. As Nick works at Tesco as a buyer, he insisted that we camp the night at 'his place' - the Hove Tesco extra. It proved the perfect spot, with lots of parking, nearby food shopping and petrol.

On Friday morning we went into Brighton for a quick look-see, visiting the tacky Brighton Pier with its fascinating games (there were literally hundreds of these).

We quickly decided to move on somewhere more interesting, and biked back to the campervan and escaped! Our next stop was our main (only) goal - the Seven Sisters Cliffs. Much like the more famous White Cliffs of Dover, but without the eyesore of Dover in the middle :-)

We found a great spot on the east side of the Seven Sisters and had a quick look - and went for a run in the freezing wind.

We then hung out in the car park for a few hours utilising the campervan soundsystem until teatime. For dinner we headed back to a pub we had seen on our way over, and then spent the night in a quiet spot with panoramic views nearby.

On Saturday, we headed back to the cliffs and spent a few hours looking around in detail, as it was low tide which gave us a great opportunity to look around. The shoreline is fantastic, with the views of the chalk cliffs with their lines of flint, plus the patterns made in the chalk and flint on the 'seafloor'.

We then walked east along the cliffs to see it from above, where the views were amazing.

Next on our tour, we had spotted that Battle, as in 'Battle of Hastings' was fairly close, so decided to head there. It was interesting to learn the history in more depth - Nick had seen a re-enactment a couple of months earlier, but was also interested in seeing the site in more detail than possible when mobbed by thousands of people.

We decided to start heading north, as I needed to pick Kerstin up from Stansted airport the following afternoon (north of London). As we had just joined the English Heritage Trust, we used that as a way to pick our route. We discovered that Darwin's house 'Down house' was on the south side of London, and almost directly on our route, and decided to head there the following morning and therefore camp somewhere on the way for the night. Our route took us to Penshurst where we overnighted in the scenic grounds of Penshurst Place, completing a trio of 7 Star accommodation for the weekend.

The following morning we drove to Down house, and because it only opened at 11am, went for another run while waiting for it to open. Because of the timing of Kerstin's flight, we didn't have nearly enough time to go through the house and garden in detail. Because they have attempted to recreate many of his experiments etc, so you can see how he came to his conclusions, it requires more than the hour we had, before hooning north to pick up Kerstin.

All in all it was a weekend well spent - On Monday I had the eerie feeling I had been away for a week...

Kiwi Reunions

We recently had two kiwi reunions at our house. The first one was in early October with Matthijn, Nick, Clare, Cynthia, Ben, Matt and Jo; and the second one was in late October with Cynthia, Steve and David.

Kiwi Reunion Number 1
When everyone, except for Ben, had arrived at our house, we set off in three cars to a small town called Bourne End. We walked over a railway bridge and on the other side of the Thames was a pub called "The Bounty", which is only reachable by boat or on foot. We had a couple of drinks and the kids played on the playground. It was just warm enough to sit outside. Ben met us at the pub on his bike.

Matt and Jo had to head back to Bath, but the rest of us enjoyed a warm soup at our house and participated in a chocolate tasting. We did a blind tasting of both milk chocolate and 70% dark chocolate. The winner for the milk chocolate was Lindt, which was surprinsingly the loser in the dark chocolate category. There the winner was Marks & Spencers followed by Tesco Finest.

On the Sunday only Matthijn, Cynthia and Ben were left. Cynthia, Ben and Kerstin went for a bike ride to the Jubilee river, where they met Lindsay, Matthijn and the kids, who had taken the car and brought the kayak with them. While two people got to kayak on the river, the others biked along side. A pizza in our sunny back yard rounded up the weekend.

Kiwi Reunion Number 2
The second reunion took place at Halloween. We didn't really celebrate, but we carved out a pumpkin and made pumpkin soup. Instead of a chocolate tasting, we had a whiskey tasting. And our outing was to Windsor.

Lindsay, Kerstin and the kids took the campervan to the Great park. Steve, Cynthia and David biked and we all managed to eventually meet up after a few misunderstandings. We then walked next to the Long Walk (you are not allowed to bike or PUSH a bike along it!) into Windsor and had a meal in a pub there.