We were incredibly lucky with our trip to Hilbre this year, despite coming unseasonably early in mid April the weather was fabulous and we had a week of uninterrupted sunshine. It was a mix of old timers and first timers. For the first few days we enjoyed the company of our regular Hilbre buddies, Nicola & kids + Gavin, kids & Buster the dog. For the second half of the week it was new comers Jon, Heidi & Benjamin + Dave, Louisa & Jasper the dog (...

We have been a bit remiss about updating the blog of late, but here’s a concerted effort to catch up. We flew out to Los Angeles to meet up with Pam’s parents not knowing what to expect out of our first cruising experience. A short stopover and a train ride later we were in San Diego boarding our ship “Radiance of the Seas”, bound for the Mexican Riviera. The ship was massive and seemed to dwarf everything around it and on board accommodated over 2000 p...

The journey from Sikkim to Delhi was a long one, after we rattled out of the mountains on our rickety bus we boarded the train for a marathon 30 hour journey. With our ticket not fully confirmed and initially only one seat between us we had an eventful journey that saw us sharing our cramped berths with a multitude of fellow passengers along the way. A family of three had also been allocated my seat and were eventually moved on by the ticket inspector at 1am. ...

It took us a couple of days to travel up to the ancient Himalayan Kingdom of Sikkim, sandwiched between Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan and West Bengal. The capital Gangtok was our first destination where we were lucky enough to arrive just before the Tibetan New Year festival of ‘Losar’, for which there was some special dances on at the monastery in nearby Rumtek. We then headed out west to Pelling, which provided a base for several days of trekking through the mount...

Our journey up the East coast of India has been a whirlwind, covering about 2000km in a shade under 2 weeks. First port of call was Madurai, whose main attraction is its massive temple, Sri Meenakshi, which rivals the Taj Mahal as one of India’s great wonders. Next stop was the French colonial town of Pondicherry, where we enjoyed ambling through the shady streets enjoying what’s left of the Gallic heritage. From Pondy we had a long train ride north into O...