In a couple of days, I set off for an all-American adventure! It's my first visit to the old US of A, and I'm very fortunate to be travelling courtesy of the United States Department of State, through their professional exchange program. I'm travelling in my capacity as a local government professional, and will be spending four weeks learning about local government in the United States, alongside two other Kiwi's, and 7 other local government professionals from...

It's just over 24 hours since we arrived in London from Chatham, and we're still here! We set off with GPS programmed for the London City Airport (where we had to drop off the rental car), and managed to get there without any real deviations or hitting traffic. With the car dropped off, we had our first real culture shock when we spotted a couple of cops with machine guns at the ready, outside the terminal. Definitely not in Kansas anymore, Toto (I'll come back ...

We arrived in Chatham, Kent, on Saturday. It was about two and a half hours from Bedford, and the GPS was supposed to take us around, but not THROUGH, London. But as the photos of our car on the Woolwich Free Ferry crossing the Thames near Greenwich attest, we found ourselves perilously close to London. After a brief period of nervousness where we didn't know whether the ferry was even crossing on Saturday, and wondering if we would need to swim, we eventually...

Too much stuff! We have seen so many things, it's impossible to find the time to write about all of them, so I've decided to cheat and do a catchup post about the things we did since we left Swanage: 1. We drove from Swanage to Basingstoke on the 27th, taking a small detour via the National Car Museum at Beaulieu in the New Forest. It wasn't cheap to get in, but there was lots to see - an exhibition of cars from the James Bond films over the last 50 years, a De...

The main purpose of staying in Swanage was to visit places where my family lived. Specifically, the Bridles (my grandmother on my mother's side). My grandmother was born in a place called Worth Matravers.  It's a tiny village, with some lovely old houses and a church that dates back to the 13th century. We also found the house that my great great great grandfather bought, called Seaview, but which was renamed by the subsequent owners as "Bridles", in honour of t...