USA and United Kingdom–5 October to 14 November 2011

We returned to Washington for some meetings and then flew to London, in John’s quest to see a bit of the world which he had visited so often he thought it was all airport lounges and meeting rooms. 
In London we visited the National Art Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, saw a west end show and caught up with friends.
We visited our friends in Bristol, doing among other things, a lovely walk through the Welsh country side with a great pub lunch and visiting Tyntesfield a grand mansion, now belonging to the National Trust.

We then followed the Capital City route through the North of England. This is from the Lonely Planet Guide.  All the cities, Cardiff, Caernarvon, Manchester, York, Edinburgh and Stirling  were capitals at sometime. 


Travelling south we visited Castle Howard, Goathead Rail Station [made famous by Harry Potter]  and Whitby. Having seen many of Captain Cook’s destinations we wanted to see  the town closely associated with him and his ship Endeavour. It was a gray and misty day and quite different to Cooktown half a world away.


We spent time in Oxford with John’s Aunt Mollie and catching up with friends who were over from Australia. While there we visited Blenheim Palace and  Bletchley Park where we saw the home of the Enigma machines used to break the German codes in World War II.  A lot of things happened at Bletchley and it provided a fascinating day. The first computer in the world was built there. A lot of the actual machines were destroyed after the war but they are being returned to working order by a band of enthusiasts.

Christmas – 3 December 2009 to 12 February 2010

On the 3rd of December we left Perth to visit our children for Christmas. We had a layover at Bondi an iconic Sydney surf beach and a great swim  before flying to San Francisco to visit Alex and Sophie. 

From there we flew to Los Angeles to visit a friend in Santa Monica and then connect with the Qantas flight to New York.  This was by far the best flight across the USA we have had in more than twenty years of flying the route.  Qantas certainly beats the US carriers by a long way on cabin cleanliness, service and comfort.  
In New York we visited more friends and saw the musical 'Wicked.'
Although New York was cold we were back in Virginia in time to enjoy “the Blizzard of 2009”, not really a blizzard but the press does hype things up. We enjoyed the blizzard thoroughly, feeling quite smug because we had done all our shopping.  We then spent a white Christmas with our daughters.   Chris, Monica and Jeremy came down for New Year. 
We left Washington on the 20th of January for the UK to visit relatives and friends. This meant we missed the two even larger snow storms in Washington, which the press, now struggling for  superlatives, named “Snowmageddon” and “Snowpocalypse”.
During this time John’s uncle died so our stay in the UK was extended.  We saw various abbeys [Tintern Abbey in Wales – shown left], churches and stately homes while we were  there. We also saw the SS Great Britain, a technological marvel for its day which subsequently transported a lot of migrants to Australia. Trish found two of her family names although we do not know if they were ancestors. 


We enjoyed Bristol in particular seeing how people live in a city where you can walk almost everywhere, a very pleasant way of living.  We returned to Perth on the 11th of February at 1.00a.m.
Our caravan was onsite courtesy of the staff at The Perth ITP and we fell asleep in clean sheets in our little pod.
We spent the next two days unpacking, washing and shopping before heading south to Margaret River.