We set off from home on the morning of May 13th and had four flights - to Auckland, to LA, to Oakland outside San Francisco and then to Spokane in Washington State. Our friends Jannan and Richard picked us up and then drove us for another hour and a half to their house in Pullman. All in all we had been travelling for 34 hours or so to get to our destination. After a good night's sleep and a leisurely brunch we went for a drive around Pullman and out to Washingt...

Peter's competition finished on Saturday with him coming 5th in Veterans, his best placing yet! He is also bringing home a silver medal in A Grade. On Sunday morning we got up and drove for an hour to Matamata to visit Hobbiton and see where The Lord of The Rings Hobbit village was built. The two-hour tour took us past various Hobbit homes including Bag End, through the vegetable gardens and orchard, onto the village green and under the party tree before stoppin...

We've been in New Zealand for nearly a week now and Peter has been competing in their Grand Prix and North Island Championships with the NZ Nationals to come in the next few days. On Sunday we started at Thames where the terrain was steep and hilly with targets fairly close. From there we moved to Hamilton and the Grand Prix at the Waikato Gun Club. The ground was flat and set in amongst fields of corn but there we're some great targets and the stands were in the...

Our last days in Bali were spent at Candidasa in a lovely resort called Sea Breeze which was a few km out of town. We ate out at some of the better known restaurants. Luckily they all have free transport so that made it easy to get in and out of town. The weather wasn't as warm and sunny for our last few days so this made it slightly easier to think about heading home. We arrived in Melbourne this morning to a temperature of six degrees so although it was sun...

We arrived in Candidasa this afternoon after a smooth crossing back from Gilli Air. A driver picked us up at Amed and we stopped at the Water Palace, Tirta Ayu on our way here. The fountains and grounds were lovely and the goldfish in the pools were huge. We enjoyed lunch at the restaurant that overlooks the gardens. Our hotel in Candidasa, Sea Breeze Villas, is a bit of a way out of the main village but is right on the beach. We were upgraded to villas rather ...