Sorry for the delay in blogs everyone. We have had the last few days in Birmingham with a different set of experiences. On Thursday Margaret took us in to the city centre for some shopping and sightseeing. We parked the car in a centre carpark and went to grab a lift to the shops. As Margaret stepped up over a rise her shoe caught and she fell hitting her hip. We knew she was in trouble from the pain she was in. We called an ambulance and made her as comfortable...

Today we stepped back in time with a visit to The Black Country Living Museum. It is a recreation of the area from the 19th century during the period of mining and industrialisation when the area was covered in soot, hence black country. The site has had original buildings relocated brick by brick to recreate what the are would have been like during that time. We had a canal boat ride through the mines which was definately the highlight. To see the conditions the...

Today was the first day in a long time that we have just relaxed and and let our bodies and minds recover. We had a lovely snooze in and have just enjoyed tv and chatting and another awesome dinner from Margaret. Your cooking is divine and we can't thank you enough for spoiling us. A lot of the day was spent planning our next move after Amsterdam. We looked into buying a car and found plenty of great buys. Car values over here are so much better than at ho...

Well we've had our first taste of real UK winter weather today. We woke to 4 degrees but it soon rose to a lovely 5 degs. The wind was biting and it was raining. We had been lucky with the days so far but this gives us a taste of things to come. Oh well, at least we've only got 6 months of this left. We had a lovely sleep-in this morning. Margaret's house is so peaceful that it really doesn't feel like a city. We eventually arose as we had to supervise Jo's ...