Wednesday 17th April Carthage is a suburb of Tunis & here we drove up to the main hill where the Romans had built their forum over Carthaginian houses & the site was excavated in the 1920s & 30s. It overlooks the sea & the Tunis lakes. Carthage was founded by the Phoenicians who fought the Romans in the Punic wars which they lost eventually in 146 BC. The city then had a population of about 100,000 & later, in Roman times, this grew to 500,00...

Tuesday 16th April Left the hotel at 7am on way to the first Roman site travelling down through the hills & forests on to a fertile plain. Chemtou was a town built around a marble quarry from which marble was shipped by river to all parts of the Roman Empire. A German group is working there excavating & there is a small theatre & an excellent museum of the area showing how the marble was mined & shipped. We then drove south to Bulla Regia a Num...

Monday 15th April The coach left at just after 7 & we drove out to Bizerte, a former French naval base with a picturesque fishing harbour & old 'medina' which turned out to be the old walled town. The streets are all narrow alleys as in Mykonos with many deserted houses but one which was being renovated was for sale & we had an inspection. Luckily we didn't like it even at about $250K so it is still going begging. We then wandered into the fish marke...

Jane packed & we walked across Green Park & along various streets & alleys passing a film crew shooting 1950s vehicles for something. On our way back to the unit we spotted a Guards band returning to the barracks. We set off for Gatwick at about 1.00pm with plenty of time in hand but at Victoria station the Gatwick Expresses & other trains were all held up as someone had gone under a train in South Croydon. We were told a couple of platform numbe...