(Just a note here–if you click any of the pics, you’ll get the larger version )

It’s hard to believe that we’ve only been here a week—it seems much longer for some reason! I’m totally loving seeing England, although there’s been times when I wished we could have spent more time in places. It’s one of the downsides of this type of tour, I guess–not that it would stop me from doing another one!

On day 6 of our travels, we left the stunning village of Broadway and journeyed through the Cotswolds district to the Lakes District. Our first stop of the day was Stratford-Upon-Avon, which is renowned for being the birthplace of Shakespeare. It’s also situated on the banks of the Avon river and filled with beautiful Tudor houses.

Here’s a pic of the house Shakespeare was born in:

Some Tudor shops in the town centre:

and here’s a pic of another Tudor house

Many of these old houses aren’t straight. In this pic, you can see the door going at a different angle to the wall:

Startford-upon-Avon also has some stunning churches. Here’s a couple of black and white pics I took (thought it would add to the atmosphere)

and here’s one in colour:

And finally, here’s the Avon river, complete with a couple of long boats and swans. We actually watched one of these go through the locks—it’s bloody hard work! (and please note here, it was the women doing all the hard work—the men lounged back in the pretence of having to guide the boat. I mean, it’s in a lock—it couldn’t exactly go anywhere!)

Our next stop was the Wedgwood factory, and although I could have done a lot of damage to the credit card here, I resisted. Mainly because I’m a clutz, and I could see me breaking whatever I bought in record time. I did, however, purchase a necklace–thought that was much safer. From there, we moved on to the stunning walled town of Chester, which was founded by the Romans back in the 7th century. You can still see remnants of the Roman walls in sections of the city, and in some places, you can see all three sections–Roman, Medieval and Victorian sections–quite clearly. I did get some pics of the remains of an Roman amphitheatre they’ve found, which is apparently one of the biggest outside Rome, but it’s on my other camera.

Here’s a pic of a clock tower in Chester (Taken from on top of the wall)

Another one from the wall, this time through an archway

Chester’s Cathedral—again, in black and white for the fun of it:

We arrived at our final destination in Bowness-on-Windermere in the Lakes district just in time to capture this stunning sunset:

Tomorrow we have a leisurely day touring the Lakes district

Day 5 of our UK & Ireland tour was—finally—an easy one. We toured the Cotswold towns of Bourton on the Water, Stow on the Wold, and Morton on the Marsh. We also detoured through the pretty town of Evesham, with its gorgeous little Tudor houses.

But first up, a pic of our hotel in Broadway

A Broadway house:

One of the many gift shops

Our first stop for the day was Bourton on the Water, a pretty town that had a wide but shallow river running through it. It’s one of the towns that features a lot in the travel brochures thanks to the many footbridges that cross the river, as well as the gorgeous little cottages and shops that line the river.

One of the many above mentioned houses:

The river, as seen from one of the footbridges

Fancy topiary on the river

A Tudor styled shop

The next stop was Stow on the Wold, which was no where near as pretty as Bourton. There were still a few pretty buildings, but it’s not a place I’d want to see again (although that said, I did buy some lovely jewellery here ): oh, and check out the tilt on the middle building:

and here’s one of an ivy covered inn:

From there, it was across to Evesham. Unfortunately we didn’t have the time to do any more than a drive through (we weren’t even supposed to go here, but our driver—Alan–said we couldn’t leave the Cotswolds without at least seeing Evesham’s town centre) And after seeing it, I would have loved to have spent several hours here. Here’s a couple of pics of the famous tudor buildings:

Then it was back to Broadway, and freetime. I spent mine updating the website them cruising around Broadway, checking out the shops and the many old houses. Here’s some shots I took

and finally, a couple from inside this amazing hotel

tomorrow is another long day, and includes visits to Statford upon Avon, the Wedgewood factory, Chester, before we end up in Bowness-on-Windermere, in the Lakes District

Day four was a bloody long day. We journeyed from our hotel in Mullion to our eventual destination in Broadway (Cotswolds) and we were travelling for just over 12 hours (including stops). In fact, we made our Broadway hotel with 2 minutes left on the driver’s clock—the tour buses here shut the engine down once the driver has driven a certain amount of hours. Any later, and we would have been stuck for a couple of hours until the bus decided the driver had rested enough.

Our first stop of the day was Padstow, which is Rick Stein’s turf (apparently he owns a good percentage of the eateries here, too). Here’s one of them:

and they like their hanging baskets here:

A old hotel:

next up was move Clovelly. This is a privately owned, car free old fishing village that tumbles down a 400 foot cliff, with cobbled streets and white washed cottages festooned with flower baskets. They used to used donkeys to tow supplies up and down the streets but these days the residents have access via back roads (although supplies for the main street shops have to be pulled in via a sled, because of the car free rule)

and here’s one of the houses:

our 4th stop for the day was the twin towns of Lynton and Lynmouth. Lynton, which is situated at the top of the harbour, is known in the area as ‘little Switzerland’. Lynmouth is situated around the harbour at the bottom of the hill, and is linked to its sister city via a water driven cable ‘train’.

This little thatch was sitting opposite the bus car park in Lynton:

and here’s the flower filled walkway down to the train:

Lynmouth Harbour from Lynton (the tide is way out!)

This is Lynmouth itself

and the river running through it

The next stop in our journey was Bude. We were too late to check out the castle, but I got these shots:

and this pic of the steepish street up to the castle

then it was the long drive to Broadway. The hotel is totally amazing—so damn old you can feel the history leeching out of the walls. I think the driver said it was built in the 17th century, but given how tired I was by the time we got here I won’t guarantee that information. But as much as I would have loved to have fallen into bed after dinner, I wasted hours trying to get onto the website trying to update the blog. I figured there was something wrong there end—despite their claims to the contrary—and it turns out I was right. Their system had to be rebooted. Wish they’d realised that last night, so I could have gotten to bed earlier!

Tomorrow its a tour of the Cotswolds!

Sorry for the lack of updates, but getting internet access in this part of the UK is proving more difficult than I thought it would be. As a result, I’m several days behind, but I will try to catch up. On to the tales of day 3….

A full day of touring, some mayhem and misdirection, and a hotel that reminded me so much of Faulty Towers that I expected John Cleese to come walzing around a corner pretty much sums up the day.

The day started with a journey to the town of Penzance, which, despite its name, has nothing to do with the opera or pirates. It ‘s located in Mounts Bay, and is famous for the nearby St Micheal’s Mount, which is a tiny rocky island which is linked to the mainland by a causeway that is only usable for 4 hours during low tide. Penzance itself is a pretty town, full of steps, cute shops and quite a few rather large seagulls.

Here’s one of the many laneways

The harbour

Then it was on to St. Micheal’s mount itself. There’s been a monastry and castle on this island since the sixth century, but it’s been the traditional home for one family for over 300 years. They still live there today. Here’s a pic of of the castle:

Inside the castle church. Apparently they found a 7 foot skeleton of a man here, but have no idea who he was, why he was there, or where the hell a 7 foot man came from in a time when people were traditionally much shorter :

As I said, the family does still live here, so there were many parts of the castle we had no access to. But here’s one of the few we did see:

Then it was on to Truro and a ferry across to Trelissick, which according to the brochures is one of the finest gardens in England. I can’t actually say whether I agree with this, as we never actually got there. The ferry guy forgot to stop and let us off, and we ended up on a place called Falmouth—a pretty large fishing town half an hour away from Trelissick. Of course, the bus was meeting us at Trelissick, not Falmouth, and it was peak hour by then and the traffic was horrible. We passed the time strolling around, and were totally entertained for a good 15 minutes watching a double decker bus trying to get through a gap that no double decker was ever intended to get through—not when there were cars parked on either side of the road. In the end, several rather large and burly men walked around to the problematic car, and bounced/lifted it out of the way.

Here’s a pic of me in Falmouth

And here’s some of the shops:

And here’s the afore mentioned bus, You can see just how close he is to the car. You can’t see the traffic in this one, but cars were queued up for miles

And finally, here’s a couple of evening pics of the Pollurion Hotel, the Faulty Towers hotel of Cornwell:

Tomorrow we’re off to the Cotswolds!

Day 2 of our journey started off so warm and sunny….NOT. It rained. Then it rained some more. And then later in the day, just for good measure, the weather gods threw in a pea souper fog. So of course, it’s wet, it’s slippery, and you can guess what I did. Yep, fell over and cracked my head on a concrete step. Clumsy, thy name is Keri. lol.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We left Bath at the rather decent hour of 9, but weren’t really looking forward to the 4 hour bus journey to our first destination in Cornwell—Fowey. And it was so damn wet it was hard to see anything out the windows. But I can now understand why, in all the British lifestyle programs (location location, relocation, escape to the country etc) it can take hours to traverse what might appear to us to be a relatively short distance. It’s roads and events like this:

And because it’s summer holidays here, it was inevitable that we’d hit a caravan on such a road. There was, quite literally, less than an inch between us and the van.

Of course, no one can move over any further, because while the hedgerows on either side look pretty, they conceal rather massive and immovable Cornish stone walls.

Thanks to the brilliance of our bus driver, we did eventually make it to Fowey. It was a town I would have liked to have seen more of, because it was very pretty, but it was so damn wet it just about made sightseeing impossible. It’s also the place where I fell over, and ended up with a bump the size of an egg on the back of my head. I did manage to get some pics though:

This one is of the Fowey harbour:

This one of the the local church:

Here’s one of the pretty Fowey houses:

From Fowey, we moved on to the seaside town of Charlestown. Again, another extremely pretty town, but given it was right on the edge of the ocean, a freezing cold gale was added to the rain and it made life bloody unpleasant. I didn’t get many shots here—I was worried about water damage to the cameras.

Here’s a pic of the tall ships anchored here:

And here’s a pic of some Charlestown houses taken from down at the harbour:

I spent most of our time in Charlestown inside the pub drinking a sinfully large hot chocolate From Charlestown we continued on to our final destination for the day—Mullion. And the narrow streets really came into their own in this place. Check this out:

Yes, that’s a cat sleeping in a window sill that is less than an inch away from the side of the bus. Even getting into the driveway of our hotel – the Pollurion – was a major event. No wonder the bus driver need several large beers at dinner time!

But the hotel itself is stunning. We’re right on the edge of a cliff, and our rooms overlook the ocean:

It’s an early start tomorrow—we’ve got to be on the bus by eight. Fingers crossed we get better weather!

Hey all, sorry if you’ve been hanging about waiting for an update, but internet access in Kuala Lumpur was pretty damn expensive, so I’m hitting you with 2 days of pics in the one post. Day 1, as you may have guessed was Kuala Lumper, which as hot and muggy as hell. In fact, as much as the heat was a nice respite from the Melb weather, I got over it really quickly. We only had one day, so we a tour in the morning, taking in the major sights–the massive war memorial, a chinese temple, the amazing all metal twin towers and of course, the shopping districts and China town. Can I just warn everyone that China town can be a real money pit? lol Of course, every thing there is real! (real fakes that is.)

This first pic is of one of the dragons at the Chinese temple:

This next pic is the KL war memorial. It is truly massive (and made by the same guy who did the similar US one):

Next up is the Twin Towers–these things were amazing–and shiny!

After a long day touring around KL and getting hit on by the many Chines traders desperate to sell you cheap DVDs and ‘real’ Prada bags, we got on the plane and did the long haul to England. The plane food was pretty much average for plane food–although I asked for no seafood, and for some reason, they seemed to think that also meant no cake and chocolate. Keri was not amused!

We hit the ground running at Heathrow, skipping out of London and heading for Salisbury Cathedral. It was bloody awe inspiring. I got tons of shots here which I’ll load up on my flicker site at a later date, but here’s a couple to get you through:

The next shot is the cloisters at Salisbury Cathedral:

We also found the cutest little tea shop just down the road from the cathedral, and they had the most amazing hot chocolate. They also didn’t do a bad line in shortbreads. I resisted their evilness because I had the hot chocolate. I shall not be resisting the Devonshire tea when we have more time for it

Oh, and on the way out of Salisbury, we saw Stonehenge. Most disappointing! Aside from the people that where everywhere, it’s basically on a little bit of land stuck between two main roads. Not what I expected at all. I did get a pic, but its on my DSLR.

Which leads us onto Bath. It is truly a beautiful town–so old, so graceful and oddly peaceful (aside from the idiots on four wheels. Honestly, Brits are crazier than Melburnians behind a wheel, and that’s saying something!) We did a walking tour this afternoon, checking out places like The Circus, Queens Square, the Avon River weir, the Roman baths, the Assembly Hall, as well as all the quaint little side streets. Again, I’ve got a ton of pics on my main camera, but these are some I took with my smaller camera:

First up, the famous Bath apartments:

Next, the main dining hall inside the Assembly Hall:

another smaller hall:

They also have a fab ‘clothing through the ages’ musuem in the hall (which included Diana’s clothes at the moment. Man she was tall!). Here’s a random pic of gloves:

and finally, the main pool of the Roman Baths. Unfortuantly, the bloody battery in my camera died in here, and I didn’t have my DSLR with me, so I haven’t got as many pics as I’d have liked on, although I did get a couple of good ones with the iphone:

I think it’s down to Cornwall tomorrow, so internet connection willing, I’l post more pics then. If you’re on twitter or facebook, you can see more pics there

I’ll be doing a live paranormal round table tomorrow (Thursday, August 19, 2010) with Kelly Meding, Stacia Kane, S.A. Swann, Shana Abé, Jeannie Holmes, and Robert Masello at Suvudu, 4pm EDT time (US), which is 6 am Friday Australian time. Just head on over to Suduvu. com to sign up and join in!

In other news, well, I guess its no news that I haven’t been active on the blog much, but I’ve been busting a boiler trying to get all the edits done, as well as trying to get as close to finished on Risa 2 as I could. I’m three-quarters of the way through, which is close but not close enough, given I leave for my UK holiday on Sunday. I’m just hoping that I don’t loose the flow with the 3 weeks break. But I’m intending to blog about my adventures over there–putting up some pics of the places I’ve been. I’ll also be twittering and facebooking, so you can catch me there too

at least when it comes to updating this site. But I have been flat out–I’ve done several lots of edits on both Mercy Burns and Darkness Unbound (and currently have yet more edits sitting here for Mercy), all of which had to be done ASAP (not sure why considering they’re not out for another year, but strange are the ways of publishing). I’m also desperately trying to get the second Risa book finished before I go away on holidays in 3 weeks, but any hopes of that happening basically slipped away 2 lots of edits ago. Still, I’ll probably get to the 300 page mark, so that’s not too bad. Now, as much as I’d like to say I will update more in the coming weeks, we all know that’s just not going to happen. But I do have a sweetener. I’ve just put up the Riley Jenson short story I did for Bantam a while ago, so for those who never saw it in the spectra pulse newsletter, head on over here to check it out (it’s pdf format)