A seamless day, all connections worked out well. So no dramas and no stress. Everything was like the pre-COVID days. It felt great to be back travelling after 4 years.

We left home at 9.45am and were in our hotel in Auckland by 2.45pm using:

• Metlink bus Paraparaumu Beach to Paraparaumu Railway Station
• Metlink train Paraparaumu to Wellington
• Metlink Airport Express bus Wellington Railway Station to airport
• Air New Zealand Wellington to Auckland
• Airport Garden Inn shuttle Auckland Airport to motel in Mangere

The only hiccup so far has been in getting from London down to Paignton on the south coast of England. Two or three months ago we had reserved and prepaid a seat on the Great Western Railway train. Two days ago we received an email from GWR to advise us there is to be a general railway strike on Friday 1st September, the day we were to travel. We were offered a full refund or a transfer to another date. It was a bit tricky to change the date as we had hotel bookings in London and down south in Brixham. Also our walking tour started on Saturday 2nd September.

We opted to keep the travel date but use the National Express bus. The bus is actually cheaper by $30 but instead of taking 3hr 20min like the train, it takes 6hr 40min. Also the train left London at 9.30am but the bus doesn’t leave until noon so we will be in Paignton much later and still have to get a local bus to Brixham and walk to our B & B.

Not too much of an inconvenience. We just can’t wait to get to Brixham and start walking.

At the end of our visit to the United Kingdom in 2019 we had about £340 made up of £50 and £20 notes and coins. We opted to keep this and not convert ii back into NZ$. As part of our preparation for our 2023 trip to the United Kingdom we decided to buy some more pounds sterling and duly purchased some through the Westpac Bank.

We picked these up on Monday of this week and Barbara noticed that the £20 notes were different in feel, appearance and size to the £20 notes we had from 2019. We did not get any new £50 notes.

On Wednesday we were picking up some documentation from our travel agent and Barbara mentioned by chance that the new pound notes were different to our old ones.  Our agent said oh yes the UK Government had changed all their bank notes over the last couple of years and the old ones were no longer legal tender, ie they would no longer be accepted in shops, on public transport etc. She thought they could be exchanged at a bank like for example Lloyds.

Some searching on Google informed us it was not quite as simple as that. The old notes were phased out because they are paper and the new notes are polymer and have a much longer service life. The good news is that old notes can always be exchanged for new notes and there is no deadline.

There are a few options to exchange your old notes:

• At some post offices (five branches in London) and a limit of £300 in two years
• At your bank. They will credit the old notes to your account. We don’t have any bank account in the UK
• By post to the Bank of England. Mail them at your own risk and they can deposit into a bank account or mail new notes to you, can take up to 90 days
• At the Bank of England Threadneedle Street London. Join the queue. You will need photo ID and the usual type of document showing your current address. They will exchange old notes for new.

When we arrive in London we will try the Bank of England first and second choice one of the post offices.

The Bank of England in Threadneedle Street is the headquarters of the central bank of the UK and worth a visit in its own rite. The Bank of England was founded in 1694 and has been in this location since 1734. The present building dates from the 1920s, is in a neo classical style, and is the most iconic building in London’s financial centre known as “the City”.

We had only been home a week before we were making enquiries about going back to the United Kingdom in 2020 and completing the South West Coast Path.

Macs Adventures the company we used in 2019 to transfer our bags and book our accommodation along the path do not do the sections from Brixham to Exmouth.  However we found another company, Absolute Escapes, who did all the sections from Brixham to Poole and so decided to go with them.

By the end of October we had paid Absolute Escapes a deposit and made airline bookings for May 2020. We also booked accommodation in London and the Isle of Wight. We planned to spend a few days on the Isle of Wight after completing our walk as it is not too far from Poole, the end of the trail. We planned to leave home on May 8th and return on 9th June 2020.

And then COVID-19 arrived.

The first human cases of COVID-19 were identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019. The World Health Organisation  declared the COVID-19 outbreak a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” on 30 January 2020 and a pandemic on 11 March 2020. In New Zealand nationwide alert levels were put in place and set at level 2 on 21 March, Level 3 on 23 March and Level 4 on 25 March, setting all New Zealand in a nationwide lockdown.

By the middle of March virtually the whole world was going into lockdown and we had decided to postpone our walking holiday. On 15 March we advised Absolute Escapes we wished to postpone our trip as the New Zealand Government had strongly recommended that all non-essential overseas travel should be cancelled. At this time the government had introduced a 14 day isolation requirement for all people entering New Zealand. As it happened also at this time the United Kingdom introduced travel restrictions and Absolute Escapes advised us that all walking holidays in the UK were cancelled.

For several months we were distracted by the world wide catastrophe of the pandemic but also wondered what we had lost through all the travel restrictions and disruptions. Eventually we received a full refund of our airfares, accommodation in Auckland and the Isle of Wight. Absolute Escapes said they would honour the deposit we had paid and could use it for any future trip.  Expedia gave us a credit for our accommodation in London to be used within a year. This was later extended to two years but we never got to use it, So overall we were not unhappy.

The COVID-19 pandemic took its tragic course and we did not consider any overseas travel for the remainder of 2020, or for 2021 and 2022. By the beginning of 2023  the world was pretty much back to normal and we were getting itchy feet. We decided it was now safe enough to go to the United Kingdom and complete the South West Coast Path.

Over two years, 2018 and 2019, we have walked from Minehead in Somerset, the coast of North Devon, the entire coast of Cornwall and the coast of South Devon to Brixham, 780 kilometres of the 1020 kilometre South West Coast Path

The question for us is: do we return and do the remaining 240 kilometres from Brixham, the coast of East Devon to Poole in Dorset?

The remaining section is more urbanised than North Devon and Cornwall, being the “English Riviera” with major seaside towns such as Paington, Torquay, Teignmouth, Exmouth, Lyme Regis and Weymouth.  But there are also quiet undeveloped areas and the 150 kilometre Jurassic Coast, England’s only natural World Historic Site, for fossil hunting, along with the highest cliffs on England’s south coast.

This section contains rocks, cliffs and fossils from three geological eras: the Palaeozoic (570-250 million years ago), the Mesozoic (250-60 million years ago), and the Cenozoic (65 million years ago to the present day). This results in a wide range of geographical and geological features including red sandstone and mudstone cliffs, marsh-fringed estuaries, sand bars, bright white chalk cliffs, the single largest shingle ridge in the world at Chisel Beach, an ‘almost’ island of hard limestone (Isle of Portland), sandy beaches, off shore rock stacks and arches. And there is the fossilised record of mammal evolution with the fossils of fish, amphibians, reptiles and dinosaur footprints.

As if this isn’t interesting enough, there are also attractive Georgian sea fronts, inland pastoral countryside, Norman castles, elegant Regency towns, grand terrace housing, charming picture-postcard villages, picturesque fishing villages, working harbours, the most scenic part of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Western Railway, caravan sites, golf courses, amusement parks, military airfields and firing ranges.

Going back would also give us the satisfaction of having walked every inch of Britain’s longest national trail.

Last day of our holiday. Met up with Tom, an old school friend, who took us on a tour of Kings Park and the Botanic Gardens. A very pleasant space, nice and cool under the trees and with great views down over the Swan River and city of Perth. In the afternoon we did a self-guided walking tour of ‘Art City’ Perth.

We did not have any internet on Rottnest Island, hence no posts for a few days.

I won’t post any photos of the wedding as Simon and Dez can decide which ones they want to go out into the public domain when they get their “official” photos from the wedding photographer.

We arrived on the island on Thursday morning and it was sunny and very hot. In the evening the weather deteriorated and overnight it rained. Wedding Day Friday started out cloudy and windy and it deteriorated during the morning until it was gale winds and heavy showers of rain. So much for a beach wedding at Fay’s Bay. The wedding planner was earning her fee as plans were revised from an exposed beach to a sheltered beach, then a sheltered verandah and finally inside in an historic cottage. Dez and Simon were fantastic, they were the most cool, calm and collected, just going with the flow while everyone else was losing their minds. The late ferries back to Freemantle were cancelled due to the weather and so some had to leave a little earlier than they wanted to. It was a lovely wedding, we all enjoyed ourselves and Dez and Simon were very happy.

Wouldn’t you know it the next day was warm and sunny although still a bit windy. All our immediate family were on Rottnest, Barbara and I, Clare and Dave and baby Andrew, Susan and Mike, in a 3 bedroom chalet at Geordies Bay and Dez and Simon in a “honeymoon” chalet about a hundred metres away in Longreach Bay.

Rottnest Island (also known as Wadjemup, and Rotto by locals) is 18 km off the coast of Freemantle WA – a 30 minute ride on the ferry. It is a sandy, low lying, limestone island, a nature reserve, and is 11km long, 4.5km at its widest and the highest point is 50 metres above sea level. There is no private ownership or leasing of land. It is administered by the Rottnest Island Authority under its own act of parliament. It has a permanent population of about 300 but 500,000 visitors a year and up to 20,000 on a busy day in summer. There are no private vehicles just a few service and emergency vehicles used by the Authority, but the roads are excellent. There is a good bus service, a one carriage train, a small landing strip and almost everyone brings their own, or hires a bicycle. It is wonderful cycling, dozens of beautiful bays and beaches, inland salt lakes, no hills of any significance, no vehicle traffic and many, many kilometres of smooth sealed roads. There are hundreds of chalets for accommodating 5,500 visitors, quite a large settlement at Thomson Bay (where the ferry jetty is) with stores, cafes, restaurants, etc. There is a good grocery store and excellent café where we stayed in Geordie Bay.

There were no inhabitants when Europeans arrived but Rottnest had been inhabited by aborigines from 6,500 to about 50,000 years ago. The island has an interesting history of salt harvesting from the salt lakes, an aboriginal prison, a reformatory for boys, an internment camp in WWI and WWII, a military installation of 9 inch and 6.2 inch guns in WWII and Battery Observation Post (BOP) and Signals Building to co-ordinate the aiming and firing of the guns. Today the island is largely devoted to recreational use with swimming, fishing, snorkelling, surfing, kayaking, sky diving, use a Skegway, tours of historic and military buildings, weddings etc.

Rottnest is known for its population of Quokkas, a small native marsupial found in few other locations. The island’s name comes from the Dutch for “Rats’ Nest Island” after the quokkas. On the way over from Freemantle to the island our ferry stopped so we could observe some humpback whales and dolphins. The whales migrate up and down the West Australia coast.

We loved our time on the island. Just enough things of interest to see and explore and it is very, very relaxed. A large part of the laid back feeling comes from there being no vehicular traffic. Everyone walks, cycles or takes the bus.

Freemantle

A relaxing day in sunny, warm – almost too warm – Freemantle , or Freo as some call it.

With Clare, Dave and Andrew we visited Freemantle Prison, Western Australia’s only World Heritage listed building. In 1850, the first of almost 10,000 male convicts arrived as a labour force to help build the Swan River Colony. Their first project was to build their own home – the Convict Establishment – later renamed Freemantle Prison. The convict era ended in 1886 and the prison became Western Australia’s maximum security gaol for men, women and children until it was decommissioned in 1991. We took a guided tour: “Convict Prison” which took an hour and a quarter and was about the time from the 1850s until 1886.

From the Prison we went to Little Creatures Brewery where we met up with Simon and Dez, Susan and Mike and Dez’s family Ruth and Craig and their seven children for a very nice lunch. Later in the day Dave and I went for a walk around Freemantle looking at the lovely old buildings and checked out the Roundhouse Precinct on the shore near Bathers Beach where a canon is fired at 1300hrs every day.

Tomorrow we all head down to the Rottnest Express Ferry to go over to Rottnest Island for the next three days.

London Heathrow to Perth

This was a big transition day, northern hemisphere to southern and half way round the world, 9009 miles, 16hrs 15mins non-stop. A cruisy start to the day, awake at usual time, casual breakfast, 5 min walk to Paddington Station, 30 min on the TFL train to Heathrow Terminal for a departure 10 minutes after noon. Qantas absolutely on time as usual. At Heathrow it takes twenty minutes of taxiing before you get to actually take off.

We had booked this flight in trepidation as it is advertised as 16 hrs 45 mins long and would be the longest flight we had ever done. However it turned out to be pretty comfortable. This was preferable to say two flights of seven or eight hours with a two or three hour stopover between. We didn’t sleep, just watched heaps of very good movies: premieres, classics, award winners, European, Australian, Hitchcock, Marvel, Harry Potter etc. Michael Cain, James Stewart, Paul Newman, and wasn’t Grace Kelly absolutely beautiful and talented.

We had pre-booked a shuttle from Perth Airport to Freemantle, about a 45 minute drive. The company, Perth City Shuttles subcontracted the service to an Uber driver so we had a very comfortable and chatty ride in a Kia Suv for just the two of us. Dave had booked our accommodation and was to be sent a code 12 hours before arrival as the apartment is often unattended. They were an hour behind us arriving in Perth and had booked their own transport. On our arrival the apartment was ready and there was a concierge who accepted our creds and gave us swipe card and key so we could check in.

Now in Freemantle in a very spacious and modern serviced apartment sharing with Clare, Dave and grandson Andrew. It has three double bedrooms, two huge ensuites, another wc, full laundry, masses of storage, large kitchen/dining/ living area, a pool, gym, spa and parking. Our ensuite alone is bigger than our room and bathroom at the Shakespeare Hotel in London. And it is amazingly cheap for the five of us. We are here two nights before getting the ferry over to Rottnest Island.

Went for a walk around the block from our hotel and found a lot of interesting places to eat.

Later this morning we head out to Heathrow for our 16 hr 45 min flight to Perth. Oh joy! Think I would swap my airline meals for any of the places above.

Oxford – The City of Dreaming Spires

Today we decided to go to Oxford, about an hour (80km) from Paddington on the train – £54.80 return for two. We also booked a walking tour with Oxford Official Walking Tours for £17.00 each. The tour didn’t start until 1.00pm so we retired to a coffee shop on the third floor of a book store (remember those!) to study our map and fill in a bit of time. We walked slightly out of town to the banks of the River Cherwell where they do the punting. It’s is also the location of the Botanic Gardens and a lot of sports grounds belonging to the colleges.

There were 18 in our tour group led by a very nice gentleman named Iain (very easy to remember – he has two eyes). He was in his sixties and a graduate in French of Jesus College. Very articulate, funny and related to and interacted with the group – mainly Americans and Canadians – very well. The tour took two hours and we walked less than a mile, Oxford is very compact. Iain was very knowledgeable and gave us the history of learning at Oxford and explained the system of Colleges and the relationship with Oxford University. However I would only rate the tour five out of ten. Their advertising said we would visit colleges and the entry fees were included in the tour price. In fact we went into only one college, Wadham where entry was free, and then we only visited their fairly ordinary chapel. We didn’t see any of the more notable college quads, chapels, dining halls or libraries. We didn’t even go near the Bridge of Sighs. So for me who was interested in the architecture it was a bit of a let-down. They don’t teach architecture at Oxford, or in fact any useful sciences. There are lots of different tour companies and we should have researched a bit more before going with the one we chose.

The name Oxford comes from the Fording of the River Thames by Oxen. It is a beautiful university city home to the University of Oxford, which was established in the 12^th century and is the oldest in the English speaking world. There are 38 independent colleges and six “dependent” ones. The six are made up of three Roman Catholic, two Anglican and one Baptist college answerable to their church hierarchies. The other thirty eight are completely independent with their own buildings, student accommodation, chapels, banquet halls, finances, traditions, rules, choose their own students, choose and employ there own tutors etc. The University of Oxford is a separate governing body that sets the curriculum and sets and marks the exams each year, also providing the largest libraries and lecture theatres. You can for example study French at any number of the colleges, and live and eat and pray in that college, but at the end you are examined by and get a degree from the University of Oxford, not your college. There is no failure rate as the student/tutor ratio is 1 : 2 or 3 and the tutor knows how you are progressing all the time. Of course competition to get into the colleges is high and the colleges also compete to attract the brightest students. Fees are about £9,500 per annum for UK and European students, £25,000 for others. The Americans thought this was very cheap.

The weather wasn’t the best, warm and often sunny but also frequent heavy showers, so lots of sheltering in doorways – because we didn’t go inside!!!!! Coming back to London the train was packed, standing room only for the hour journey. Overall an interesting day and glad we went.