After many farewells with our family and friends up in the north of England we headed down to London ready for our flight from Heathrow. Luckily Graham's brother Steve, and his girlfriend Steph were able to give us a lift so we did not have to negotiate the train changes and the underground with all our luggage. Packing had been quite a challenge, as the straight through flights we had booked only allowed us 20kg of luggage each, so a few things had to be left behind. When we travelled the world last year, we only took about 12kg of luggage each, but as I will be teaching for the year I needed to take more stuff with me. So, I'm afraid you'll be seeing lots of photo's of Graham wearing the same clothes again, as he lost out on luggage space!

We spent our last night in the UK with Graham's parents in Purley, Surrey. The following day we went out to a good old British pub for a farewell meal and last pint of proper British Ale. We went to the Wattenden Arms in Kenley, and they had one of Graham's favourite beers on draft as a guest ale - Tribute. As you can imagine, Graham was in his element, so it was a good farewell to the UK.

So it was off to Heathrow - we had to be there at 5pm on a Friday, not a great time to be on the M25! We checked in, went through to the departure lounge and waited for our flight to be called. Only then did it hit us that we were really leaving for another year.

Maggie x