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I called up Flight Centre back on the 22nd June and followed up with an email to ask for a contact that was working the following day so i could email an urgent flight request through on the weekend.

Well today I finally got a response (31 JULY) which I found amusing because of the delay and what it said..

Hello Bronwen,

Just writing to follow up and see if you managed to secure flights to London. I just found your email and apologise for not being able to get back to you sooner..

Good thing i didn't wait around and booked them elsewhere or I wouldn't have been in the UK for the last 2 weeks :)

This morning we left Elspeth and Jeremy's place to have lunch with John's uncle (John) just outside of Salisbury.  Had a huge lunch and then went for a side trip to Stonehenge.  It was a lot smaller than i expected and there was soo many ppl there.

Then it was back for some more food before we left to take back the car.

Coupla weird things over here...

• They drive on the left (normal) but ppl tend to walk on the right side of the footpath
• No Limit sign doesn't mean No limit (like in NT) - it means max speed for the type of road you're on .. very lucky someone told us that one!
• Street signs are usually on some place on a building which makes it fun to work out what street you're on.
• Direction signs aren't consistent..one roundabout it might point to the more major road e.g. M4 with a major city name and the next will use a smaller road say A4041 with some little town.  It'd help if when you turn off they consistently had NSEW next to the exit.  Approaching exits will have M4 (N) etc. but when you hit the exit with both N&S options the direction is removed and a random town indicated.

Today we went to Bristol and caught up with Elspeth and Jeremy.  I'd spotted a jousting festival at a local castle but it had been cancelled due to the floods :( So we went on a wander around the town and through the Bristol festival, stopping for lunch and drinks along the way.

Then it was off to the butcher, wine shop and supermarket to buy ingredients for a roast chicken and veg dinner..mm...yummy.  The guys did well considering they are still jetlagged from being in Aus.

Today is a bit overcast..so not game to do a hike in fear of being rained on so we're off to do the Wild Wales Tour.  A longish drive across wales with a 2 way road the width of 1 car and grass high enough to be annoying so you can't see cars coming. 

Wales is soooo green.  We end up at Devil's Bridge which has a bit of a waterfall.  We're almost at the west side of Wales but John is determined to get his jacket back from the hotel in Shrewsbury so we drive for about 5 hours across wales to grab jacket and down to Aberganavy to our hotel.

We picked up our hire car today and off to Wales.  They all have their little scams...to have an additional driver (me) they wanted to charge an extra 25 pounds a day!  Which is mighty expensive when the car hire for 4 days was 85 pounds in total...coulda got 2 cars cheaper..weird.  So armed with our Peugot..off we went.

The day was pretty bad weather wise...but we crossed over to Wales and eventually found somewhere to stay.  Was a bit surprised everywhere was full on a Thursday night.  We stayed here which was nice but really expensive.  We got suckered by the bed, breakfast and dinner package..where you get a 45pound allowance for dinner which was very, very average.

We've spent the last 3 days working out of Tricky's office along with Neil.  It's been good to have everyone in the same place to go through a few things.  So we've got a few spare days so we're going to go exploring so will probably be offline for a bit.

Booked in a hire car and bought a map..it's like a scrapbook that has all the major roads for like 3pounds..pretty sweet.  So we'll see how lost we can get and how good we are at avoiding all the flooded areas and hope for fine weather so we can do a bit of hiking.  Should be catching up with Elspeth on Saturday, maybe see Stonehenge and have Sunday roast with John's uncle.

So just over 1 week left before we start the journey home.

Today we caught the train out to Putney to catch up with Graham and Roanne.  They took us out to Richmond Park.  It's MASSIVE! and so close to London.  It's full of wild deer which we were lucky enough to see.

We sat around the pub for lunch and then ventured back to London, then to Berkhamsted.  It was a good way to see a non-touristy side of the place.

Today we ventured into London and met up with Linda.  Everyone here seems to hate the underground and public transport.  I found it awesome! It's quick and it has great frequency.  We jumped on and off trains all day/night and never had to wait more the 3 mins.

We wandered around the middle of London, checked out the Natural History Museum (cool building), the science musuem and spent the night (what there is of it) taking night pics.  Not many came out too well cause of ppl putting there heads in shot, or being on a moving platform :(

Big Ben during the day.  This bridge is packed with people.  It rained a bit during the day (big surpirse) and it was umberella city...very dangerous for your eyes as most ppl are fairly short.

The London Eye at night.  This pic was taken very close to midnight and the sky was still very light.  How freaky is that? We thought about going on it during the day but it was packed.  There was a Star Wars exhibition next door that i had to stop myself from going.

We were supposed to Go Ape today but on our way there it was cancelled.  It rained pretty hard and a lot of roads got flooded.  Funnily enough, an hour later there was blue sky.  There was a lot of flooding all over the country.  The streets in town were flooded...water almost lapping at doors but a few hours later all the water was gone..very odd.

Today we went to Cambridge University to a GIS conference.  Cambridge is pretty cool..didn't get a chance to take any pics.  Lots of really old buildings etc.  We were in the conference hall and got to check out and hear about some cool stuff about GPS, and 3D mapping.

John showing off Via Virtual Earth

Jennifer Forsythe from Microsoft UK

Rod demonstrating a real estate system.

So now we're in Berkhamsted for a few days.