Moving on to host my own blog

I have decided to no longer use Blogger as to host my blog. I will run the whole show from my own website: Click here to view the website, and then go to 'New & Journal' to view the blog.

I haven't had any problems using Blogger, and recommend it, but I like the idea of my whole site hosted in one place. Also, I can now keep the formatting of my whole site consistent.

Been away from the blog for a couple of weeks, and what we did on Valentine's Day:

It has been a couple of weeks since I’ve written an entry to this blog. The main reason I haven’t been making my usual entries is that I have been spending a lot of my time on the weekends preparing my job application and learning the Acts and Awards that I need to know for work. I am enjoying working at the new job, and I’m doing my best to get the position permanently.

I’m taking a break from reading the one of the Acts, and also trying to distract myself from the heat of today, by writing this entry.

The last few days have been record temperatures. Yesterday was 41 degrees Celsius, while the thermometer in the bedroom just informed me that it was 42 degrees a couple of minutes ago. It has been very hard to sleep at night, and I’ve been getting up two or three times a night to have cold showers just so I can get to sleep.

Cathy has also been flat out writing reports for work and studying for an exam she has coming up.

With all this, we haven’t really done much worth mentioning recently, except for Valentine’s Day.

We went down the Gold Coast for the day, planning to go surfing. The wind had messed the waves up by the time we got there, so we decided to go to the movies instead. We saw ‘The Last Samurai’. I thought it was good, but Cathy wasn’t overly impressed. We got out of the movie around 9:30pm, bought got some Thai takeaway, grabbed the blanket and picnic basket out of the back of the car, and had a nice dinner on the beach. The wind had died down, and the white of the waves looked beautiful in the light of the full moon. We had taken candles, but the moon was bright enough to even be able to see all the other couples spaced about 50 meters apart up and down the beach. After we ate altogether too much Thai food, we had a short nap before driving back.

I’m writing this from one of our laptops (both of us had one to take notes when we were at uni), as the hard drive on the desktop computer is dieing. I don’t have my journals from my trip saved on this computer, so I won’t include an entry this week.

David:

Here are the entries for the last week:

Saturday: We went to Dom and Dee's engagement party tonight (click here for a photo). We thought that we wouldn't know anybody except Dom and Dee, and Cathy had a terrible sore throat so she didn't feel like talking much. We ended up having a good time though. Some other people Cathy knew from uni (and who I've met a couple of times before) turned up, and we all ended up chatting. We did come home pretty early though.

Monday: Work put on a motivational seminar this morning, with some breakfast (which I couldn't eat because I'd forgotten and had my usual breakfast before leaving for work). The speaker was Peter Bland, the first Australian to walk to the Magnetic North Pole. The seminar was interesting, and might have been motivational for some. I find, though, that motivational seminars that promote extreme levels of motivation (to the point of obsession) fly in the face of work-life balance. I also don't believe in the one-minded goal setting that Peter Bland appears to be promoting. I've seen too many people totally focus on one goal, only to have that goal slip out of their reach. I believe that if a person is too focused on one goal they: (1) do not allow themselves the opportunity to experience and enjoy other good things in life, and (2) tend to lose purpose if they realise that their one goal has become (or always has been) unachievable. I'm not saying that it isn't important to pursue goals (I certainly have), only that those goals should be placed in perspective with other worthwhile things in life. Here are some links to information about Peter Bland if you'd like to have a look:

Peter's ICMI profile

Life Matters - 19/2/2003: A Step Too Far: Peter Bland

Friday: I experienced my first HR Breakfast Club breakfast with Peter 1, Peter 2, Lara, Steve, and Cathy. The group catches up every once in a while to chat and discuss HR issues. The breakfast was a good prelude to work on Friday, and Cathy enjoyed meeting some of the people I work with.

I wrote a bit of a spiel above about work-life balance in my entry about last Saturday. I have decided to try something new: grocery shopping on the internet. I thought that shopping in this way might save me a couple of hours each week (so maybe I can find time to answer my emails!!!). I tried the internet grocer FoodDirect (http://www.fooddirect.com.au/). The purchasing interface was pretty good, and they deliver every week day evening. I've set it up so that the goods are delivered Monday afternoon. I'll write an update next week as to the quality of the service. If this works out okay then I might have a bit more recreation time.

Here is the next of the UK journal entries:

Friday 25/06/93 7:11 pm.

We had a long day in London today. We took the car back this morning, and booked a flight from Istanbul to Cairo for £275.10. Monique got hers for nearly half price due to her being under 24 years old. We got our French visas for £7 each for five days. There were absolutely heaps of people in the French Embassy. For some strange reason there was one que for Australians and the other ques were for every other country. There must be heaps of us going to France as no other country had been singled out like Aussies.

We met a lot of people there, an Australian couple who had been to Nepal and the USA, another Australian girl who had been to the US and was heading for Nepal after France, and we met a guy who went to school at Assumption College in Warwick who had been working in Los Angeles as an actor and a script writer. Normally, if someone had told me this I would have thought "Bullshit", but this fellow seemed to be modest about it, and what convinced me the most was that he said he was working in LA and didn't mention his occupation. It was not until I asked him what he did for a living in the States did he say he was a script writer, and even then he didn't tell me he was acting until I asked him how he got into script writing. He seemed more interested in our mutual acquaintances than talking about what he did for a living. Even with all this taken into account he still could be lying but he didn't come across as a typical "Bullshit Artist".

We booked a channel crossing for Wednesday next week and this cost us £30 which includes the bus from London to the ferry (2 hours), the ferry trip (1 hours) and the bus trip to Paris (3 hours) so I think we did alright there considering the cheapest flight to Paris is £90 and this doesn't include the bus trip to and from London and Paris airports.

8:00 pm.

David:

Sunday: I had an absolutely terrible night's sleep last night. I was planning to go to bed about 9:00pm, and then get up at 6:00am to work on my job application. Cathy was working on her assignment here, in the spare room, and I was watching a DVD when a huge storm hit and cut all the electricity. We lit up some candles, and Cathy wanted to play a board game. I wasn't feeling up to it, as I'd started to get a cold on Friday (someone at work had it really badly on Thursday) and I wasn't feeling very good at all. We both decided to go to sleep early.

It was a sticky hot night, and because the power was out we couldn't use the fan. I can't sleep when I'm feeling too hot, so I just lay there. This wasn't helped by the fact that I had a sore throat and couldn't breathe properly. I dozed in-and-out of sleep (I think that I only would have got a few minutes) and eventually got up to sleep on the lounge. It was cooler on the lounge, and the power came back on about 2:00am. By then I was wide awake, so I did got on the internet and stuffed around for a couple of hours. I'd taken some asprin at about 3:00am, and when I eventually went to bed I was out like a light until around 8:30am. I've been feeling pretty ordinary all day, but a good night's sleep tonight will help I hope.

I should really mention more about the storm, as there was one this afternoon that was almost as bad as the storm last night. While the storm was coming down last night, it poured rain in through the windows. We didn't realise until it was too late, and a lot of stuff got wet. The water even blew far enough across the room to wet the bed. The bed is located in the centre of the room!

Monday: I spent most of the day today laying on the lounge reading books. My body is aching all over, but at least the sore throat has gone. Hopefully I can get a good night's sleep tonight so that I feel better at work tomorrow. I don't want this bug affecting my performance at work.

I bought one of those Netguide Magazines the other day, and it had a couple of programs on the attached CD that might be really useful. One of them is called Boldchat, which is a chat client that only one person needs to have (as opposed to the way MSN Messenger works). Boldchat works from a link on either a webpage or within an email. When the person clicks on this link a window pops up, and the owner of the link is notified by a similar widow popping up at her or his end. The two parties can then chat as they would with MSN Messenger or in a chat room. This is, potentially, a great idea as the two people don't need matching software, or any software at all. I've placed an icon with the link on the main website page and also on the panel to the right. This is what is looks like:

Chat via Boldchat

I'll give it a go for a while and see if anyone uses it.

Wednesday: A huge storm hit today as I was on my way home in the bus. There were tree branches strewn across the road. The storm just finished as I stepped out of the bus, so I hardly got wet. As I was walking back from the bus stop, I saw a wheelie bin that had been blown half-way across the road.

When I got home, Cathy told me that she had a sore throat. She must have caught it off me.

Friday: I spent my work day today in a workshop about Indiginous issues. It was an excellent workshop, and the food was amazing!

Another storm hit just after the workshop, as I was getting ready to go home. I stayed in the office. The rain was so heavy that we could hardly see the offices across the road. The storm was spectacular. Like the Wednesday storm, though, it only lasted about half an hour or so.

Cathy and I went to dinner with Brett and Andrea and Grant and Penny at the Glen Hotel. We ended up chatting until about 9:00pm, but poor Cathy was suffering a bit with her sore throat.

After leaving the Glen, we went and watched Cathy's mum line dancing. Cathy's mum was really pleased to see us there. The people there were from a whole different culture from what we are used to. Neither Cathy nor I have had much to do with the country music culture (exept for the ten years I spent in a country town [when I was trying to avoid becoming too 'country']), so it was a totally different atmosphere to what we have experienced.

Here is the next UK journal entry:

Thursday 24/06/93 Essex near London 11:12 pm.

It's been a long day. We are back at the first campsite we were at when we first arrived in London and the people that work here remember us.

We saw the original King Arthur's round table today, and in the same town (in a large cathedral) was the grave of Jane Austin the famous writer who died on July 18th 1817 aged 41. I can't remember the name of the town off hand; I'll ask Monique when she returns from the showers. (Winchester)

We went to visit Monique's uncle Jim at a friend of his house. We had a good afternoon and talked for six hours. He seems a nice fellow with some interesting experiences under his belt.

It's a bit sad to have finished our trip through the UK; in our four weeks of driving we covered 4,300 miles through some of the narrowest and windiest roads I've ever driven on. We have stayed in the windiest of campsites, driven through the foggiest of moors, and have been rained on by, maybe not the wettest of rains, but still rained on.

We will be taking back 'Old Smokey' in the morning. It will be like parting with a friend. It's been a good car and hasn't let us down once even though we have driven some hilly miles in it.

Had to exchange the new beard trimmer I bought the other day. The new one works well but I'm getting sick of nothing working when we buy them. Everything we get at the moment seems to either break or not work in the first place! Luckily we have been able to get most things replaced so we haven't lost a lot of money, but you still loose a lot of time getting things replaced. The mallet we bought for the tent pegs is falling to bits. These sorts of things can be very annoying at times.

11:38 pm.

David:

Sunday: Not long before Cathy and I got together (almost two years ago) I took her to a friend's birthday party down the coast. I have known this friend of mine, Des, since my late teens. Cathy only got to meet Des, and his partner Vic, that one time, and then they headed off overseas. They came back a few months ago, but we hadn't got around to catching up until today. We got up early and drove down the coast to see them both before Vic headed off to work. It was excellent to see them after so long, but a shame that we couldn't spend more time with them. Des and Vic also have their own website (click here to visit it).

After visit Des and Vic, Cathy and I went for a bit of a surf. The wind had picked up though, and the waves weren't very good. We went for a walk to Surfers Paradise afterwards, stopping to have some gelato. We bumped into Matt and Jo from acrobatics as we were walking back to the car.

Monday: A woman from Norway sent me a message today from my website. I will have to respond this weekend (the only time I get a chance to answer my emails nowadays). Taking a look at her website (click here to see it), I found out that she was originally from Australia. It was interesting to briefly look through her website (I'll have a better look this weekend). The page showing pictures of her family, progressing from her childhood to her grandchildren, was particularly interesting. I always find it facinating to see people's personal websites.

Saturday: Time to relax; it's a long weekend ... not really! Cathy has an assignment to do and I have to work on my job application. Even though I am working in the position I have at the moment, it is only temporary until they go through the whole recruitment and selection process before placing someone into the position permanently. I am enjoying the job very much, so I am going to do my best to get the it. I admit to being worried that someone with many more years of experience in the area will apply and I will miss out on the job.

Here is the next entry from my UK journal:

Wednesday 23/06/93 Near Portsmouth. 9:23 pm.

So far the new tent seems to be going well, although we had no wind or rain to test it last night.

We visited the small castle near where we slept last night. This one was one of two we visited today built by Henry VIII; busy man wasn't he.

The best parts of the day were the visits we made to two pet shops. The first one we visited before we took a tape tour of an old merchants house (13th century). This pet shop had many different animals you don't usually see in your local pet store; e.g., chinchillas, chipmunks (both white and brown with stripes, the later were really tame and would grab your finger with their little paws and nibble your finger nail), an assortment of lizards and snakes, and (much to Monique's discomfort) they had two giant tarantulas for sale for ?35 each. Imagine spending ?35 ($70 Australian) on a big hairy spider.

The second pet shop we visited was advertised as the ultimate pet shop … and it was. They had the usual different animals here, but the biggest attraction for us was two brothers we made friends with there. Their names were Bubble and Squeek and they were South American Marmoset Monkeys.

These little fellas (and it was very obvious that they were fellas) were the most intelligent looking animals I think I've ever seen close up. If you can imagine a squirrel with a human face and eyes then you've got these two. At one stage we were letting them feel our hats as we leaned towards the cage, and they would peer under the hat at our eyes. They would look you in the eyes and tilt their heads from side to side trying to work you out; you almost felt like you were the ones in the cage with them looking in at you. They also like looking through the lenses of Monique's sun glasses. These two were not for sale but you can buy them from breeders over here. I want one!

One thing I almost forgot was that Monique managed to get her finger bitten (drew blood) by a hamster … HA, HA, HA luck it wasn't a tarantula (editing note 24/01/04: Our relationship was obviously going pretty poorly by this time).

We also visited Portchester Castle, which had a very high keep with timber floors and large dining halls. One of the floors was above an extremely tall hall making for uncomfortable thoughts of coming crashing through the floor into the hall below. We saw a real fool in the car park who made a few silly comments and had a drugged out smile you could just step on. He gave me a stupid wave as he drove off so I blew him a kiss.

10:03 pm.

David: Well this is my first weekly (rather than daily) entry, so I have created a new system. I'll write entries as per the days of the week.

Tuesday: This was my first day back at trampolining after the Christmas break. It is funny how you can improve sometimes after you've taken a short break. I was planning on taking my time before getting back to the more complicated (for me!) skills. After a warm up, though, I felt like doing a backflip and just kept going. I ended up spending much of the night doing backflips.

Today was also Cathy's first day at work in her new job. She was a bit nervious at first, but it seems that the people there really like her. I'm not surprised.

Friday: Instead of going to gymnastics on Thursday, I decided to go to acrobatics on Friday. Cathy is still going to gymnastics, but we go together to trampolining and acrobatics. I much prefer acrobatics to gymnastics. One of the main reasons is that I'm not really built for gymnastics. I weight nearly 100kg, and the impact of landing out of some of the skills would not be good for my joints. On the other hand, Cathy and I can use large the weight difference between us to advantage with acrobatics. She is not that much more than half my weight, which makes it easier for me to lift her. Even so, we were both a little sore from the skills we were doing last night. I will have to remember to take the digital camera on a Friday night to get some photos.

Saturday: I've spent most of this morning replying to emails and paying bills. I've also been working on a job application for the job I am already working in. The position is only temporary at the moment, and I have to apply for it again at the end of this month. I hope that I get it, as I'm really enjoying working there.

Here is the next of the UK journal entries:

Tuesday 22/06/93 in a cave near the Isle Of Whight. 8:14 pm.

When we got up this morning our tent was starting to bend the same way the last one was, so we took it back to another Black's Camping Store and informed them that this style of tent was no good. We ended up getting a different style of tent in a better quality with thicker material and stronger poles. I hope this one works out alright as it is the fifth tent we've had since coming to England. So far it seems alright, even though the site we are on at the moment is rock and we couldn't get the pegs into the ground properly.

From the entrance of the tent where I'm sitting now I can see out on the past the Isle of Whight. The water is at low tide at the moment but when high tide comes it will be only 15-20 meters away from us.

I can see sailing boats on the water, and a while ago we saw a very large ferry (almost the size of a cruise liner) go past close to us, the bay must be very deeply dredged.

We spent ages looking for some burial mounds and a stone circle called Winterborne Abbas, only to find a very small circle of nine stones hidden on the side of the road.

As we came to the first town in New Forest we saw quite a number of wild horses wandering the streets. All the forest (and it's very large by English standards) is full of wild horses, and after walking through the forest and a lot of smelly mud we found a wild doe, which was quite a sight as I got within a hundred meters of her and I had my binoculars ready for a good view of her as she grazed then ran a bit when she saw me trying to get too close. There is another spot in the forest where you can view some semi wild deer. There were quite a few deer here, and as we looked around a black cat befriended us. As we were patting the cat, we discovered it had a tick on the side of its head. It was quite content to let me pick it up and pull the tick out without a hint of fuss. It followed us for a little while before going about it's own business (probably chasing the heaps of rabbits that are around here).

At the campsite we are at now there is a castle near the water. We will visit it in the morning. It opens at 10am. The castle is about a hundred meters from us and on the other side of it are two seaplanes, a small one and the other very large.

10:51 pm.

David: I have been trying to keep this blog up every day, but it has been a struggle with my new job. I'm usually doing overtime most days, and then by the time I get the bus home and then go to the gym there's not much time to write before I go to bed. I also need to spend some time with my lovely girlfriend. It is not so much the daily entries that take time; it is the entries for my trip journals that are time-consuming.

I've decided to post to this blog once a week now. I will write it early each Saturday morning, before Cathy wakes up. She usually gets up an hour or two after me, so I should have plenty of time. I will write about the whole week.

This will also give me more time to answer the much neglected email stockpile. I've got many social emails at the moment that I need to pay some attention to.

The page counter for this blog indicates that there are some people visiting here regularly. I imagine that these are friends who are visiting to find out what we have been up to. I hope you continue to check the page even though the entries will be weekly rather than daily. It is nice to know that people are interested in what we are doing.

I know that I've written this before, but we would love to read about what our friends are up to (especially the ones we don't get to see as often as we would like), so if you have a blog or a website (or are interested in starting one) then please leave the URL on the message board (or email it to me).

As for today, we managed to finish a large project at work. It was a bit of a rush, especially with they fellow who hurt himself on Friday being off work, but we got it done. It was great to be part of getting this project running.

We thought that our budgie Chloe was a bit sick today, but it must have just been the heat. She seems fine now.

Here's the next of the UK journal entries:

Monday 21/06/93 Somewhere near Exiter (it's sunny) 10:01 pm.

It's just starting to get dark again, so I am writing by torch light once more. It has been an interesting day even though we didn't visit many things.

Our first stop was the most interesting. We found the entry path toward Holliggye Fogu (in use between 200 BC - 400 BC for unknown purposes) on an estate in the middle of nowhere. There was about a mile walk from the road. On the way, we met two goats who we managed to befriend and untangle their chains, before a quick walk to the site.

On arrival we could see a narrow set of stairs descending down beneath the grass paddock and as we reached the bottom to the door of the tunnel it was obvious we would have to use our torches. The tunnel we first followed in was about 15 meters long before it split into two three-foot high tunnels. One tunnel only went for a couple of meters but the other we could see went quite a way. We decided that I would go in first and have a look around before we both went in so I gave Monique my backpack and proceeded down the dripping stone tunnel.

To my relief the ceiling lifted from it's three foot height after a couple of meters to a height that I could almost stand comfortably. As I followed the passage down I discovered a section that let a stream of light in through a hidden hole. This reminded me of one the first scenes of the movie 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' when they are in a tunnel in South America; there are other parts of this story that are reminiscent of this scene, but you can wait for that bit.

After passing this brief glimpse of light I walked quite a considerable distance until I reached another small alcove similar to the one where Monique was waiting.

Turning back I paced out my way back to the first tunnel estimating about 31 meters for this second tunnel. After reaching the first tunnel and getting my pack, we decided to both go and have a look back down the tunnel. Monique led the way this time stopping when we reached the rise in the ceiling.

At this point we noticed by the light of our small torches two cocoon like objects on the wall near the corner of the stone ceiling. On closer inspection they turned out to be egg sacks with two extremely large, and I mean extremely large, brown, black widow type spiders dangling an inch or so from the ceiling protecting their unborn babies. Monique immediately took a major step back to keep away from them, as she is the personification of arachnephobia.

We at first assumed these two where alone but after a quick inspection we discovered a number of these large spiders.

Upon seeing this Monique screamed "OH shit! Get me out of here!"

By the time I had turned around and said "Don't you want to go to the end?" (of the cave) she would have been well on her way out of the first tunnel.

By the time I reached the top of the steps, she was already checking her hat and pack for freeloaders; so I followed suit.

Once heart rates had returned to normal, we took a photo of the entrance and fed our goats on the way back (click here for the photo).

We took a look at Pendennis Castle, built by Henry VIII, later that day. In the courtyard there were men in period costume putting school kids through their paces with the pikes and muskets to the sound of drum beats. The pikes looked very realistic but the muskets looked fake until the resounding yell of "bang" came from each finely ordered line of helmeted school children.

As we were driving around one corner a car came flying around from the other direction and began to drift across the road towards us. On the other side of the road was a red and white steel post. How I managed to dodge both the car and the post at that speed I don't know; maybe the post got scared and jumped out of the way!

11:06 pm.

David: Today is the first time in almost two years that we have been together that Cathy and I have spent most of a weekend just relaxing and watching movies. I did have a bit of work for my old job at uni, but aside from that we watched 'The Good Girl', 'Garage Days', 'Full Frontal' (all pretty ordinary movies), 'Shrek' (a classic), and 'The Four Feathers' (very enjoyable). We were going to go surfing today, but one look at the webcams from down the coast put us off. It was good to take a bit of a break.

Here's the next of the UK journal entries:

Sunday 20/06/93 Lands End ( Windy ) 9:38 pm.

We did it! We have driven from the most northerly point of Britain to the most southern: from John O'Groats to Lands End. It's almost sad that we have done it and now; all we have left in this part of the trip is to get back to London. I'm looking forward to getting to Europe, but in a way I don't want to leave here. Not that I'd like to live in England, it's too cold, windy, and wet, and the endless green country could get on your nerves after a while. I'd like to see a dried out sun scorched piece of grass for a change.

Okchamption Castle (12th century) once owned by the powerful Courney family until one of the family was beheaded by Henry VIII and the king had the castle stripped and left to become the ruin it is now.

We saw an interesting burial mound where I managed to fall knee deep in thorn bushes.

Penzance had a castle near it called Saint Michael's Mount that is situated on an island in the middle on the bay. It is quite a spectacle.

We are camped about ten minutes walk from the beach near Lands End, so this afternoon I went for a short, cold swim in the surf here.

Too tired to write anymore. If I think of anything else I'll write it in the morning.

10:04 pm.

David: Yesterday was an interesting day at work. I was sitting in my supervisor's office with a woman from another department when my supervisor bent over the arm rest on his chair to pick up a piece of paper. The arm rest pressed into his ribs, and when he sat up he said that something in his chest had popped, somewhat surprised but not in much pain. Over the next 20 minutes or so, he began to feel increasing pain. Eventually, I had to accompany him to a local hospital until his wife and son turned up. This whole process took from about noon until after 3:00pm, so I didn't get very much done that day.

Cathy ended up coming in to meet me at work around 4:30pm. This was the first time she'd been there.

I started to do some work for my old job this morning, only to find that I didn't have a necessary file on the home computer. Cathy and I drove to the uni to get it, and decided on the way that we'd both better get some more clothes for work. Also, as I'd been paid for some work I'd done for the uni a long time ago, I decided to buy a DVD player. We were both sick of using my laptop for watching DVDs.

While we were there, we saw an indoor fountain for about $20. We've been trying to find something like this for the birds to use as a source of water for drinking and bathing. The bath and the water container that they used to have would get hot and dirty looking in the scorching summer we've been having. We thought that the flowing water from the fountain might be more appetising for them. I've uploaded a few photos of them on it (click here).

Here's the next UK journal entry:

Saturday 19/06/93 Honiton in Devonshire. 9:20 pm.

We saw a few interesting things today, the first was a visit to the town of Bath. This is an interesting town, with most of the large buildings having Victorian style columns and are made of light coloured stone. There is an ancient Roman bathhouse in the middle of town that is fed from natural hot springs. It cost us �4 each to get in, and even though it was interesting, it wasn't worth anything near that much. The ancient Roman baths, after being discovered, where excavated and built over in a vaguely Roman/Victorian style by the people of the Victorian era; but all the lower section of the bath and pool were completely Roman. When we first arrived, we sat next to the pool and naturally we felt the water, only to find out from a guide later that you shouldn't touch the water, as there is a particular germ in it. So we ended up treating our hands like lepers until we could find a place to wash them. The Romans used to throw curses written on lead into the main pool to ask a goddess to harm people who had done something to them. Some of these were quite interesting to read as they asked for some horrible things to be done to people for very simple crimes.

Stonehenge was our next visit and I was a bit disappointed, not in the stones but in the way they are being treated as a money maker. The entry to get fairly close to the stones was �2.70; which was pretty reasonable considering the amount of people employed on the site, but we didn't have to pay anyway due to our English Heritage Pass. After passing through the gates, from the large crowded car park, we had to walk under the road to get to the site. As we entered the tunnel under the road, they had a sign that read something like "Now you are heading back in time", and on the walls were little plaques reading from 2000 AD to 2500 BC as you left the subway on the other side. They had plaques on the other side telling you how it was made all those years back (Stonehenge not the subway), and these where sensible enough; it was just this silly time tunnel thing that spoilt it and made the whole thing seem like Disneyland. Well the stones themselves were a grand spectacle, especially with some dark clouds as a backdrop, and the two burial barrows nearby set the atmosphere even more (if you could manage to ignore all the people). There was absolutely no emphasis put on the barrows, and I don't think that most of the people there would have thought they were anything other than small green hills.

I had one Japanese tourist here call out "G'day mate" to me and when I turned around he was videoing me and then he said "thank you". We often get people saying "G'day mate" to us as we walk around here. It's amazing how silly it sounds coming from anyone but an Australian.

At Old Waldour Castle we found what looked like a man made cave with stalagmites and stalactites. The interesting thing was that the cave was built, not dug from rocks. The castle itself was destroyed in some places by the two sieges held there, but a lot of it is still in good condition and you can get to the top up four floors. This castle is more a large building than a traditional castle. One of the interesting things about this castle is that at the front the widow areas are surrounded by chipped holes made by balls from what must have been embryonic Muskets. (Editing note: I found out later on that this castle was used in the filming of the movie 'Robin Hood Prince of Thieves' Staring Kevin Costner, and that the place I took the photo of the castle from was exactly the place they had filmed Robin's father's grave in the movie).

Both of us are starting to get sick of the English roads, and the crazy English, drivers though in a way it'll be sad to give back old 'Puffin' Billy' (we called the car this due to the copious amounts of smoke that comes out the exhaust) on Friday.

10:14 pm.

David: What a dreadfully hot day it was today! On the news they said that it was the hottest day of the year. Once again, it wasn't too bad for me, considering that I was in an airconditioned office, but Cathy spent the day here today doing uni work (or trying). It was 38 degrees here in the house when I got home at about 5:15pm; no wonder Cathy didn't get much uni work doing today. The sweat was pouring off me at the gym tonight.

Here is the next UK journal entry:

Friday 18/06/93.

We are in a very muddy tent site near the area of the Avebury Stones (that are older than Stonehenge), Silbury Hill (4600 years old (man made)) and West Kennet Long Barrow (3500 BC). It feels strange to be sitting dry in the tent when the ground outside is so muddy and wet around it.

I discovered last night, when I went to go for a shower, that I had left my toilet bag at the last campsite. Most of the stuff in it was of little worth, but my battery powered beard trimmer was in it. We worked out that a new one would cost less than the fuel to drive back for the old one, and the trimmer was getting a bit long in the tooth anyway. Gives me an excuse to buy a new one.

It's getting dark, so if you'll wait a minute I'll just find the torch.

There that's better; now on with the story.

Goodrich Castle (12th century) is built on a rock base surrounded by a cliff creating a moat. We had this castle to ourselves, so after we went up the highest tower, and were descending the tight, narrow, steep , dark steps, I managed to get ahead of Monique and lock the door at the base of the steps then proceeded to explore the castle. I only left her for five minutes or so, but when I returned and opened the door she was sitting on the steps ready to give me a good thumping. I bet that's the first prisoner to be held in that tower for a long time!

Blackfriars Priory (1239 AD) was closed, after much trouble finding it.

Belas Knop Long Barrow (2000 BC) was an interesting burial mound, though it was a long muddy walk to it.

As we were driving looking for a campsite, we came across a town surrounded by lots of monstrous standing stones called Avebury Stones.

Near there is Silbury Hill, which is an impressive man made hill built about 4600 years ago. As we were standing looking at it, about twenty cows from the field around it came to the fence to talk to us.

Our next stop, at nearly 8 pm, was West Kennet Long Barrow. It was a fair walk to this one too, and we had to literally push our way through a group of steers to get to the path to it.

The entrance to the burial mound is surrounded by large stones, the largest of them was about ten feet high and at least that wide. Behind this stone is a small round entrance area leading into the burial passage, which is about fourteen meters long and has five burial chambers leading off it; the largest at the rear with the four smaller ones leading off the sides of the passage.

You may be able to imagine the way it felt walking into a 5500-year-old burial mound at this time of the late afternoon with no other people to be seen. It was quite eerie.

These last three places, and another area we stopped at, that used to have standing stones are all within sight of each other and would probably have been used by the same people ( tribe ) over a thousand years or more.

10:22 pm.