We have had the full range of English weather; hot sun, wind, rain and cloudy.

Have had a real blast of a weekend!

Country Cruising, originally uploaded by landofshane.

Sarah and I went out for a Drive on Saturday. Theres something fantastic about driving just to explore, rather than driving to get from A to B.

We woke up to find a ‘top down’ day waiting for us, so after a lot of trying to work out where to go, when had a new idea.

A few months ago I was filling in a travel survey (as you do) and something made me stop dead and think.

What an amazing concept. An inspiring sentiment that after 2 months I still haven’t been able to shake.

The question was a simple “What sort of traveler are you?”. And it had the standard responses; adventurer, explorer, cocktail by the pool, sporty etc etc.

But one was different. It jumped off the page and riveted itself into my brain.

A single word, that in the right context opens a word of ideas.

“Foodie”

Traveling just for food?

France for Croissants

Basing your destination not on where it is, or time of year, or sights, or events, but on tastes?

The idea hit a chord with me. Theres something romantic about it I can’t place my finger on.

Vodka in Red Square

So anyway, after failing to find any sights nearby we were both feeling a little frustrated…

And then the idea struck back. Something grabbed my brain and yanked it back to the basics.

It doesn’t have to be about where, it can be about what!

Coffee…

The coffee in the UK has been appalling. Good coffee has been impossible to find.

Haggis

We have our espresso machine, but have been using Starbucks beans in it to date as its all we could find. (It pains me greatly to admit).

A quick look online lead us to The house of Coffee… So off we went…

Bluff Oysters

It was a couple of hours north, so we threw the Coffee Perk and camping gas burner into the back of the car and headed off.

It was a fantastic day, fresh coffee beans, a picnic and coffee by the river, and a slow winding trip through a number of small English villages.

This food based travel is a fantastic concept… and one that is likely to stick

Must do Coffee in Italy

Here is a couple of videos showing the extent of the damage. The first video is one I took just after escaping, the second is of the water flowing into one of the basements which I believe held files of important documents…

The water was rising at an amazing rate… It was pouring inside as I left the building, and the level inside was rising quickly.

These pics were taken while I was deciding whether to leave, or just shelter inside. There was only a couple of inches of water inside at this stage, but as you can tell that wasn’t going to last. The water on the other side of the window was squeezing through the seal around the wiindow… how it never broke I have no idea!

By the end of the day there was around 18 inches of water in my building. Everything on the ground floor was completely ruined.

The best way to explain it is to visually show the speed the water was rising, so heres a couple of shots an hour apart…

The first was taken at 12:30 just as the lake was bursting its banks.

The next image was taken just under 1 hour later after I had evacuated out of the building.

The most important bit of this shot is the same life ring that is pictured above. Below is a crop of the photo that shows the life ring at full size…

Thankfully, our house at home was fine. Work is slowly getting back to normal, but the downstairs area (I’m on L1) feels like what I would expect after a nuclear bomb. Its not destroyed, but not intact either. It just feels cold and empty. It almost feels like the sort of scene you would expect in a ghost town… everything has just been left to the elements.

The area around our home is under a lot of water in parts. The Ford down by the pub normally has around 6 inches of water flowing through it. Friday night on our way home our Sat Nav sent us past the ford (ok, so it tried to send us through the ford) but there was 4 1/2 feet of water in it. By the time we went back Sat afternoon to get some pics, the 6 foot depth marker was nowhere to be seen!

Fantastic.

Crowded House were there.

Back together. I’m not sure when they split.

But it was still the same old Crowded House.

Fantastic.

Neil Finn is a star. A natural.

Enjoyed the support acts too… some band called The Feeling. English, but looked to have a real following.

Halfway through crowded house the sky just opened. Not just wet, but torrential. My umbrella was so wet it was dripping through.

Even my Canvas Pants were wet through. I don’t even thing the washing machine gets them wet through.

We skipped out after Crowded House.

Someone called Peter Gabriel was on next. I’m sure your laugh but we don’t know who he is.

Apparently hes big.

Went to Frasers instead. He was having a BBQ. Got home around 3.30am.

Driving home the sky was blue and a red sunrise appearing. All I could think was how jealous Mayo would be of being able to get sunset and sunrise pics only 5 hours apart.

Looked at the camera but went to bed instead.

Today we went hunting.

Car hunting. Had one good one on the list to see.

Rang a few with promise, but prices weren’t realistic. So headed to see the one we had found on Friday.

MX-5 2004 1.8 sport.

Limited Edition… but half the MX-5s are.

This one had only 2000 made. Quality sound system, sports performance, limited slip diff, and a bunch of toys.

Best of all, heated leather seats in red and black.

After a fair bit of negotiating we now have a car.

I love it. Sarahs still in top ranking, but the cars a close second.

Actually, second equal with my laptop.

Mmmm, red and black leather.

Its a convertible… and this is England… not the smartest choice…

I’m an optimist. But optimism doesn’t change the rain outside today.

I’m sure tomorrow will be a top down day.

Theres only two of us, so we decided it was right to get a sports car just for us.

Another Mazda. But slightly more up market than squirtle was.

Happy Shane ans Sarah.

I had a bad Train Day.

This mornings 7.26am was cancelled. I consequently missed my connection to work… another 30mins lost to public transport.

Tonight my train was late… I’m pretty sure I’ve missed my connection… Another 30 min lost to public transport.

As much as I enjoy public transport, this is not helping. It has also not helped that tonights train is chocca… So I am standing for the 30min trip.

Our plan was to get by without a car for a few months… That is rapidly going out the window!

I think its just that I (or most likely we) have been so focused on just getting into a flat, as then things will get easier. Today I realised that in reality things are going to get harder first,

Although we now have a flat, we don’t have anything in it… Our gear won’t arrive for probably another 4 weeks. So the house is pretty barren… Not quite home yet.

Plus now money is starting to come into play… We sold up all our big ticket material items at home, ok, so mainly the tv and the car, so now we are trying to work out what to replace…

Do we need a car? Is a TV a priority? How can we get internet up and going so Sarah can apply for jobs? Do we replace the laptop now or later, especially given we can’t sort wedding photos until we do? Where do we start? How far does our money stretch???

Tonight its still just a whole lot of questions…

Tomorrow we’ll start at the start, same as we always do. Start with the basics, we need coathangers, and go from there…

Adventures arn’t meant to be easy, otherwise they wouldn’t be as satisifying – so its just time to keep plodding.

Bed time for me now, but make sure you don’t miss our last update as I have done 2 today. Its still raining so I expect the pirates to arrive tomorrow morning.

They aren’t coming for the gold, they certainly aren’t coming for the tea or coffee, and its a safe. bet they arn’t coming for the beautiful virgins…

They are coming for one reason… Its easy pickings.

You see, it has rained so much over the past 3weeks that invading pirates can simply sail straight up to our back door… No coast line to worry about.

If this keeps up then we’ll be living in something resembling Venis any day now.

I remember reading a study a few years ago that showed the impact humans have on weather… I’m not talking macro level global warming stuff, I’m meaning micro ‘what’s the weather going to be tomorrow’.

The managed to prove that the weather works on roughly a 7 day cycle.

The is nothing in nature that would cause a 7 day cycle, the only thing that works on a 7 day cycle is man.

It turns out that the polluion caused from the old Monday to Friday grind has a dramatic impact on the weather. Cars, factories, etc. Pump pollution for 5 days a week, this pollution travels into the upper atmosphere and waits.

These particles of dust, smoke, CO2 give water molecules something thing to attach to, encouraging cloud formation, and eventually rain.

By chance, it takes around 6 days for the cycle to build up enough to encourage rain.

Rain formed by this method takes only a day or two to fall to earth carrying the particles out of the atmosphere back to earth… Leaving bright sunny skies again.

And then Monday starts the cycle again.

So next time you see the weather report predicting a fine week, with rain forming on the weekend, its actually not murpheys law.

Now I never saw this cycle in NZ – not enought pollution I suppose. But the cycle has repeated itself every weekend we have been here so far! I guess its just a testimate to how much cleaner NZ is.

The one advantage of all this is that at least the days that its easiest for pirates to invade England are the same days that I’m at home and can defend the fort.