Well it is that time of year again, Marion and Nigel are off on holiday and as usual you will be able to keep up with our progress, experience and photos on our blog. This trip will be the longest time that we have ever been away from home, for almost seven weeks. As you can imagine packing is some task particularly as we are anticipating hot weather. Despite the appearance of spring today it will be important not to take too many jumpers or as Marion puts it to me all your heavy trousers.
This year we are travelling to Australia, completely new territory for both of us, bar a brief business trip to Sydney five or six years ago. This was probably the most difficult trip that we have ever had to plan because of the obvious; Australia is so big, even in six weeks we had to decide what we were going to leave out, which basically is the interior. You can see from this map what our itinerary will be.
On Friday we fly to Perth from Manchester via Hong Kong a twenty-six hour journey including a seven-hour lay over between flights. We are starting in Western Australia on the recommendation of some Australians, who we met on the Antarctic cruise. When we said we wanted to visit a wine producing area and suggested the Barossa Valley they recommended the Margaret River area south of Perth as producing some of the best Australian wine and also being a beautiful area. So we are starting in Perth and after a day’s rest drive to furthest southeast coastal town, Esperance. From there we are driving around the coast back to Perth.
The original plan was to take the train from Perth to Adelaide, but it only runs once a week is very expensive, and the scenery restricted, so we are flying. Our exploration then takes in the Great Ocean Road, the Snowy Mountains, Canberra, and the Blue Mountains before our arrival in Sydney for three days. There I am sure one of the highlights will be an outside performance of West Side Story at the Sydney Opera House.
The final part of the holiday will be cruising on the Seabourn Encore off the East Coast of Australia. We are looking forward to exploring the Great Barrier Reef, before landing in Bali where we stay in the interior for two nights before flying back to the UK. With such a great sounding itinerary I am sure that there will be much to relate on the blog, and hopefully lots of great photos. As usual we would love to hear your comments, polite or otherwise.
Marion and Nigel
