Hello everyone!
Welcome to our travel blog! We hope that over the course of 2011 and 2012 we make you all very jealous of our adventures! We are still in the early planning stages at the minute but have done the following:

• Booked round the world tickets and paid deposit (route below). We will be paying the balance by the end of September 2010.
• Bought travel insurance

That's about it so far! We have started going for more walks to get ready for while we're away. And we are doing a lot of research into what we can do in each place. There will be a lot more of that research going on in the next 262 days! We have kind of put things on hold a little bit until our financial situation settles down again. My contract at NHS Middlesbrough has been terminated so I am in the middle of trying to find something else to keep the savings going until we go. Few things in the pipeline so we'll see what happens.

Anway our route is as follows:

1st June 2011 depart Newcastle to Heathrow to New York. Work our way overland to LA and fly out from there 2 months later to Fiji. Few weeks in Fiji (at the minute we're thinking 3 weeks), then onto Auckland on North island of New Zealand, 2 months there then fly out of Christchurch on South Island to Adelaide in Australia. Make our own way up the east coast of Australia then fly from Cairns over to Perth on the West coast (total of 2 months in Australia). Then from Perth to Bali when we will make our own way up to Beijing and fly home from there after approx 4 months in Asia.

The dates and times spent in each country are subject to change depending on budget / finding work / whether we like the country! We have paid a little bit extra for our tickets so that we can change dates without charge.

So that's about it for now. We will keep you updated over the next 9 months while we save and plan, and then over the year that we're away. We are both so excited and can't wait to get started. It feels like we've been planning this for the whole time we've been together (6 and a half years!!) and now it is finally happening. Eeeeeeeeeeek!!!

Laura xx