Ireland - Cork

We arrived in Cork about lunchtime. The place we had booked was pretty good, but its never nice to go back to sleeping in dorms.

We spent the afternoon checking out Cork city. Its the second biggest city in Ireland and has a population of about 120,000 people. Dublin has over a million. Like the rest of Ireland, and the UK there are lots of Eastern Europeans here. There doesn't seem to be quite enough work here for them all as there is quite a lot of begging in Cork. Cork's city centre isn't that unique, it has the same chain stores as every other big city in Europe. We did however find a cool English Market selling organics, cheeses, and meats (nice but a little out of our price range), and a good park to eat our reduced price goods from the supermarket.

We packed a lot into the second day to make up for being wiped out on the first day from the bus trip.

We went to Blarney castle, about 8km out of Cork. The castle is famous for housing the Blarney stone, which is said to give people who kiss it the gift of the gab. The castle was really cool, its in a state of semi-ruin, with no roof, and most of the floors missing in the main hall.

You climb up the stair cases through the side rooms to the top, where you lean backwards over the side of the battlements to kiss the Blarney stone. We both did it, but still seem to sound the same. At the bottom of the castle there were dungeons, some so small, you can imagine how horrible it would have been.

Kissing the Blarney stone, and the dungeons.

The castle grounds were really fantastic. When we arrived in the morning they were covered in a thick Irish mist. We walked for about an hour around the woodland trails, and paths. We saw rabbits, robbins, and 4 red squirrels. We're not sure if they're rare here, but they are in England and we hadn't seen one before. They are very red, and fluffier than the grey ones. There was also an old witches cave, and a druids den.

Rita in Witch's Cave, Tim peeking out of Druids Den

In the afternoon we went out to a small coastal town called Kinsale (25km south of cork). We wandered along the edge of the harbour, and around the town looking in the windows of the nice antique and homeware shops. then went in search of a good Irish pub. We found the perfect place, with some tables outside in the sun. The pub was built in 1690 and we each got a pint of Murphy's Irish Stout (which is like Guinness but more popular around here).

England - London

As part of our saving money on travel we took a bus to London, spent the day there, and then caught another bus to Ireland. This may seem like quite a good idea, but actually the bus from London to Ireland passes about 30min drive from Newent, and if we had gone straight from Gloucester to Ireland we would have saved about 8hrs travel and 7hrs in London. But .... we didn't because we managed to save £60 (the tickets only cost £20) by doing it via London.

So we had 7 hours in London. We walked across Hyde park in the sun, stopping at the new ANZAC memorial on the way. There were lots of spring flowers out and the park looked very beautiful. We ate our packed lunch at the Prince Albert Memorial, its very impressive, with statues depicting the different parts of the commonwealth.

Then went to the Natural History Museum. The museum was really good. It had an interesting collection of stuff, from really cool looking minerals, to old stuffed birds, and other animals. There is a huge number of dinosaur fossil, and lots of reconstructed dinosaur skeletons (Marli would have loved it all). The building was also really impressive with lots of carved marble and stone work.

We went into Harrods department store to have a look around. We felt well out of our league amongst the $1500 hand bags, diamonds, and general opulence.

The bus trip over to Ireland was pretty gruelling. 16hrs with interruptions to change onto the ferry, and very little sleep.
Great price, crap trip.

England - Newent

Steve, Teresa, Elli, Chloe and Rita

We ended up staying in Newent for a total of one month. The Blisses were so fantastic to have us for that long. Rita ended up getting a little over 2 weeks work doing mainly data entry at a company in Gloucester, and I did one day of outbound calling at a company also in Gloucester. I spent the rest of my time putting together a website for Steve ( www.stephenbliss.co.uk ).

For the last 2 weeks we didn't do much sight seeing as we were working, but on the last weekend we stayed with Susanne and Roger. We had a very nice meal there, and the next day went to the Forest of Dean to look around the sculpture trail.

Because we didn't do quite as much work as we had planned we've changed our flights around and we're now coming back to NZ on the 26th of May (three weeks early).

It was great having a place to settle for a month, and its made coming home seem that much more appealing.

England - Northern Cotswolds

Day two of our tour round the Cotswolds. We we're lucky to take advantage of the good weather and time we had. Because Rita has now got a few days work.

British spring flowers

First stop was Boughton-on-the-water.

Babbling brook passing through Boughton-on-the-water

After a nice cup of coffee and a christmas mince pie on the brookside we headed on to The Slaughters (nicer than the name sugests).

The old flour mill of Lower Slaughters.

We walked across the countryside from Lower Slaughters to Upper Slaughters. There are public access footpaths all across the English countryside. Some of them pass along the back of houses, and others go through farmland. They're are great for seeing a few out of the way places.

Some of the beautiful houses that are found around the Cotswolds.

After The Slaughters we drove on to Stow-on-the-wold to see another of the small villages around the region. The biggest of the towns we visited had only 3000 people and both Upper and Lower Slaughters combined only had 400 people.

Quaint pub in Stow-on-the-Wold

England - Southern Cotswolds

Painswick's main drag

We are still in Newent. Signed up with a couple of agencies and seeing if anything comes up while Tim is also doing a website for Steve (who we are staying with).

We got car insurance for a week (it is illegal to drive without insurance here) for Steve's car, and today was our first day out. It was good to have a car again.

We went to this really cute village called Painswick first, under 2000 people live there and all the houses are gorgeous.

Countryside surrounding Painswick

After wandering around we went to the Rococo gardens there, which surrounded an impressive house which was private and not part of the entry unfortunatley.

The manor house

Little 'folly' in the grounds where the ladies used to have cups of tea

Then we drove through another couple of towns, had only vague map in our Lonely Planet but managed fine, and only got a little lost.

Dymock a little town about 3.5 miles from Newent where a fat donkey and a goat grazed in amongst the gravestones of the churchyard, and the above cute house.

England - Newent

Here are some photos from our walk yesterday around the country lanes near Newent:

A thatched house we thought was pretty quaint

Sheep eating swedes and cool looking brick house

The main street of Newent

This is the Bliss' house from the front and rear

We took this from the window of our room

Not all the houses in Newent look like this but there are lots of cool ones.