Dartmoor and London

On the last full day before going to london, I went with my uncle and cousin (Sarah) and kids to a town called Taunton and then to Dartmoor, another National Park similar to Exmoor. In a last post I mentioned how there were farms and villages in the middle of the National Parks, well in Dartmoor, I found the kicker: a prison. There's a prison in the middle of a National Park.
Anyways while we were in Dartmoor I hiked up to the top of a nearby torr and admired the awesome view. I took some photos of both the view and some nearby Dartmoor ponies before hiking back.




On thursday I took a bus to London to stay with my cousin-in-law, Justin (I think thats the connection anyway) for a night. I got to his house at about 3 in the afternoon not realising that he'd be at work on a thursday afternoon. Luckily there were painters in his apartment and I was able to drop my rucksack there and then wander around london for a while. I walked up and down Oxford Street for a while and managed to work out the london underground so it wasnt a bad day.
In the evening, Justin had a party which was good fun. It was good to chat to some people closer to my own age. It was a good night.

For the next week Ill be staying with Anna, the daughter of a friend of my mums from way back. It was kind of amusing meeting someone for the first time and then staying at their house for a week. Anyways she's a cool and we get along well so it should be a fun week.
Today I did some touristy stuff around london, took a sight-seeing bus tour, went on a cruise up the thames and almost went on the london eye, except the lines were too huge. One thing is for sure though, london is definitely an expensive place. I think Ive spent around £100 in the last few days! Im definitely gonna be cutting down over the next few days, concentrating on the more free touristy things :P.
The bus tour took us past the famous sights of london: Buckingham palace, tower of london, big ben, houses of parliament etc etc. It was a really cool tour. Apparently the business section of london, a perfect square mile houses over 200 banks which make more than Chicago, new york and tokyo combined in a day!

Anyways heres some photos of london.

















London Bridge

















The London Eye.






















A statue of Achilles placed in Hyde Park by George IV.

a little more wandering

Well Ive done a few other things since I last posted, one of which is get a new camera after I slipped over and fell on my old one at Tarr Steps. Unfortunatly this camera has a pretty stupid way of interfacing with computers and I cant seem to access it, so no photos for today.

Last tuesday, my cousin Philip, his girlfriend Tracy and I went up to Ilfracombe with the intent on taking a ferry over to Lundy Island (the island to the west of Ilfracombe). Unfortunatly, due to the ferry leaving 10 minutes early we missed it and spent the day looking around Ilfracombe itself which also had a lot to offer. We took a ferry ride east along the coast before going and having some lunch and visiting the Tunnel Beachs. The Tunnel Beaches are a series of tunnels carved out of the cliff that link to several beaches on the other side; they were built in the victorian ages, back when men and women had to have seperate areas to swim in.
We finished the day by taking a walk up to the point that overlooked the town, giving us an awesome view of the Ilfracombe itself and its surrounds.

Last friday I came up to Chichester in Sussex with my aunt and uncle and cousin, Sarah (plus kids). Chichester is my uncle Barry's hometown and is where his father founded and built the Chichester Festival Theatre. Its main theatre houses about 1400 or so and has showed plays starring actors such as Patrick Stewart and plays directed by Lawrence Olivier. As an early birthday present my aunt and uncle bought me two tickets to plays they were seeing; an experimental one called I am Shakespeare and another more traditional play called Hobson's Choice. Both were comadies and I enjoyed both tremendously.

Over the weekend Ive been to a couple of dinner parties with uncle Barrys family which has been pretty cool. They're all a very nice bunch of people. The location of one of them (Justin's (Im not going to even try and work out how Im related to him) 29th Birthday) was in this awesome bar/cellar area, my description of which would not do it justice without photos; in a word: awesome.

Anyways by next weekend I will hopefully be in London, providing I can contact my contacts there. :P

Hope everythings all well back home. Have fun.

Maize Maze and Tarr Steps

The first of my touristy trips was to a yearly attraction called the Maize Maze with my cousins Helen and Sarah (the latter of whom is visiting from Ireland) and their children. The Maize Maze is, quite obviously, a maze mowed out of a field of maize. Every year has a different theme based on important events or milestones and as this year is the Centenary of Scouting (join SA Rovers: Go Hard or Go Home) the maze was in the shape of the man himself, Sir Baden Powell and the Fleur De Lys.
The aim was to move through the maze and find 9 brass rubbings that spelled out a message; there were also questions that gave directions if you got them right. Twelve years of Scouting helped a fair bit and there was even a question about Australian Scouts :D. (What is the youngest section of Scouts called in Australia).

Yesterday we (Sarah, her children; Martin and Rebecca and I) went up to Exmoor to see Tarr Steps, an ancient bridge made of large slabs of stone. An interesting thing about National Parks in England is that because the country side has been farmed for hundreds of years it has become the 'natural' state of the land and that is what is protected by the park. This means that the parks are full of small farming villages like the ordinary country side, although they have regulations that must be followed and only livestock may reside on the moorland.


Tarr Steps and the country surrounding it is awesome. I took a walk for a couple of hours up the river through some really thick, lush forest.
I took some pretty nice photos and walked pretty far before meeting a uni student and walking back with her and her aunt (or something).

And here is a random photo of me and two of my cool little second cousins in my aunt and uncles spa, just to make you all jealous of the awesome weather we're having. Hannah 13 and Rebecca 8. :D

Cheriton Fitzpaine

Im here, I finally made it. The bus journey was fairly uneventful, I spent some of the time reading and some of the time thinking up plans as to what I would do if no one was there to pick me up. I realised on the plane that I hadnt actually received an email back from my aunt after I asked her to pick me up from the bus station, leading me to believe she hadnt got it. Luckily she was there when I got off the bus and all was fine.

From Exeter we drove back to the small village of Cheriton Fitzpaine where my aunt and uncle and two of my cousins lived. While Im here Ill be staying with my cousin Phillip and his friend in my grandmothers old house right in the middle of the village. Just so you know, Phillip is the youngest of my three cousins on my mothers side and is almost exactly 18 years older than I am. My other cousins Helen and Sarah are both married and have 2 kids, the oldest of which (and the only one I have met so far) is Hannah at 13.

Ive taken a couple of walks around Cheriton Fitzpaine and its surrounds and while the surrounding fields bordered with their high hedges is very different from home there's a familiarity about it I cant quite place.

The roads or lanes around Devon however are shockingly different. The roads that surround these small villages are, in most places lined by high hedges, some even taller than I am. This is not because the hedge is so high but because over hundreds of years of use, before it was bituminized, they have sunk lower and lower so that the surrounding fields are all at a higher level than the road itself.

The lanes themselves are all very thin, and only in some cases can you pass an oncoming car. It is common occurrence to meet a person coming the other way and have to reverse until you find a spot wide enough to pass each other.

Here's a couple of random shots I took on the flight, these are a couple of the reasons I love flying so much.

The second pic is of a salt lake although I'm not entirely sure which one.

Ive also found out that I am almost completely unaffected by jet lag :D. I think it was nightfill that did that for me.

Until next time, have fun.

Long flights

Well its 6:30am local time and Im here at Heathrow paying WAY too much for internet. The flights werent too bad everything considered. On both flights I managed to score a spot with an empty seat next to me which made things much more comfortable. First there was the 7 hour flight to Singapore (yeah I made a mistake in one of my previous posts) and then the 13 hour to London. I even managed to score a bit of sleep on the Singapore to London flight though it was very uncomfortable; a body like mine doesnt curl up well on economy seats, even when there is a spare one next to me :P.

The approach to London was fantastic. It was just starting to get light as we flew over London and the lights were awesome. String of lights snaking there way away almost as far as the eye could see. It really shows you how big London really is.

Anyways my time is running out so I bid you farewell, Im now going to find a way to whittle away the time before my bus.

Driving and interviews

So yesterday (Friday) we cruised up to Melbourne, pretty uneventfully really. We stopped to check out some of the wind turbines in Victoria which were pretty cool, but other than that not much happened. Im glad I dont live in Melbourne, the highway getting into Melbourne itself was crammed and it took ages. I still havent found this fantastic shopping people keep telling me about, maybe Im going to the wrong places.

Anyways I got up at 6:30 this morning to get to my interviews. After a presentation I had my two interviews, both pretty early compared to some of the others. Gotta love the special treatment because we had to come from Adelaide. My Kicking Horse one was first and that went ok and I got offered a job as a lifty which is what I was looking for at Kicking Horse. Fifteen minutes later I had my one for Panorama, the one I was really hoping to get, but sadly didnt because I dont have enough experience with customers/clients or something.... Shouldve highlighted the Easter Venture thing more, I really need to work on my interviews.

Kicking Horse should be good though. Its the youngest resort in Canada only being 6 years old and is fairly small. It has some good runs on it by the look of it and is close to others around Banff National Park so we can get to the other resorts pretty readily.

Anyways thats it for now. My flights on Monday so Im here till then.

Until sometime soon. Have fun.

And he's off

This is it boys and girls; tomorrow morning at the ridiculous hour of 6:30am Ill be driving to Melbourne with my parents for my Canadian job interviews on Saturday.
Ill be meeting with 2 employers: Panorama Mountain Resort and Kicking Horse Mountain Resort and talking to them about the possible jobs I could get.

I'm definitely hoping to get a job at Panorama over Kicking Horse. From what Ive seen from good old Google Image Search Panorama is a beautiful place and from the employer booklet has a lot more to offer than Kicking Horse does.
On the other hand Kicking Horse has the steepest ski runs in British Columbia so Ill definitely have to visit them at some stage.

After the interviews Ill be in Melbourne for the next two days and am flying out on the Monday afternoon. I'm very glad its an afternoon flight. From Melbourne I'm flying to Hong Kong for a stop over and then onto London where my flight will be getting in at 5am local time. Hooray for me. After a couple of hours at the airport Ill be catching a bus down to Exeter and then move onto a small village called Cheriton Fitzpaine where my aunt, uncle and a couple of cousins live.

However, I'm sure you'll hear from me before then because I will undoubtedly get bored while waiting for my next flight or bus or whatever and find a computer somewhere.

Until then, have fun.