Heading Home

We have arrived in Brisbane.

We left our hotel in London at 6am on Tuesday morning for what turned out to be a very lengthy journey.

• Firstly we traveled by underground train out to Heathrow Airport, Terminal 4.  We each had a big suitcase and smaller "carry-on" suitcase to get on and off the train and made our way to the Etihad Airlines check in.
• Our first flight was on an Airbus A380 (for the children reading this, the A380 is the biggest general passenger aircraft in the world and has two levels of seating).  We`were on the lower level but not far from the front.  Our flight was over 6 hours long and we arrived at the big Abu Dhabi airport at about 8pm local time.
• Changing planes was relatively easy as the big suitcases were looked after by the airline.  We then flew on a Boeing 787, and older plane, for 13 hours to Brisbane, arriving here at nearly 6pm last night.  This was a very long flight and we were very glad to get to the end.  Mrs McLeay's sister and husband, Kathy and Kevin Drew, were waiting there to meet us and we are staying with them for a few days.
• This morning, I went and visited Cleveland State School and interviewed the principal.  It is a school of around 700 students and I really appreciated the time I had there.  Tomorrow morning I am visiting another school nearby.  This is the last week of term for Queensland and so I have had to get these school visits done immediately, even if I am a little jet-lagged (which is when your body has to adjust to a different time zone.  Last night we went to bed here in Brisbane at about the same time as we were getting up in the morning in London a few days ago!)
• We will be travelling up to Noosa next week to see our daughter, Dena, before flying home to Auckland and Kerikeri.

This will be my last blogg entry.  I hope those who have been reading it have enjoyed the photos and knowing how things have gone for us.  I have appreciated the many comments and feedback.  There is a great more deal to share at appropriate times than what is contained on these pages, but that can wait for another day.

Good-bye for now

K. McLeay

London - Day 2

A wet morning did not dampen the enjoyment we had of visiting the Tower of London, riding a tour boat up the Thames River and visiting around other parts of the city.

The first building we went to was St Paul's Cathedral.  It is one of the great cathedrals of England and is surrounded by narrow, busy streets that make getting a photo of the whole building almost impossible.  This photo shows just the dome on the top of the church.

We then went on to look through the Tower of London.  This was first built in 1083 by William the Conqueror (that makes it nearly a thousand years old!).  It is a very big place and there were literally many thousands of people there with us at the same time.  It was amazing to be in rooms where so much history has taken place.  One of the highlights was to go and see the crown jewels - including the crown and scepter used by her Majesty, Queen Elisabeth II.

Here is another photo taken on the walls of the Tower of London with the Tower Bridge in the background.  The Tower Bridge is probably the most famous bridge in the city because of the two large towers and the fact that there is a draw bridge that opens up for big ships to go through.

This photo of the tower bridge was taken while we were on a boat on the Thames River.  In the photo you can see a man with a mic talking to us about the bridge and other interesting places.  We passed under about 12 bridges as we headed up to Westminster.  One of these was "London Bridge."  This is the third, and quite new bridge to be called London Bridge.  The second one was slowly sinking and about 45 years ago was sold to an American man who moved it over to a place called Lake Havasu in Arizona, and a new London Bridge has been built in its place.  Mrs McLeay and I once drive over the old London Bridge in Arizona, about 34 years ago. 

From the journey up the Thames River you can see many of the city's buildings and famous landmarks.  This huge building is the tallest in London.  It is called "The Shard."  If you look closely the top of it appears to be a jagged broken piece of glass.  Of course, it is not broken glass, but just made to look like that. 

London

We arrived in London yesterday afternoon.  The day consisted of a final two hours in the canal boat and returning it to the base.  We then travelled into Wolverhampton by taxi, and caught a fast train into London.  Tim and I traveled with all our suitcases in a taxi to our hotel (in Earl's Court for those who know London) and the others all came on trains in the London underground system.

Today Mrs McLeay and I are back by ourselves and we spent many hours looking around London.  Here are some of the things we have seen:

We walked down the mall to Buckingham Palace and watched the changing of the guard.  The flag was flying above the palace.  Do you know what that means?   There was a very large crowd of people.  One of the things we noticed was hearing so many different languages.  In fact, it seemed quite unusual to hear English from time to time.

Here I am with two famous London things behind me.  The big red double decker bus and the Nelson Column.  Last night we traveled by double decker bus over to Regent Street and there were thousands of people on the streets.  This is a very big city and there are soo many people.

Big Ben is probably the most famous clock tower in the world.  We walked for many kilometres around the city and it was great to see Big Ben as a land mark.

The "London Eye" is a wonderful way to see London from way up high.  It took us about 30 minutes to go around once and from up high we could see all over the city

Canal Highlights

Let me get my wifi grump out of the way.  This is the first chance I have had to get on-line since my last entry a week ago.  Most nights I have tried to get on line in various locations but without success.  I was even in a school this morning (250 children) and the school and town library did not have wifi connectivity!  However, I am now able to get another entry on this blog.
Please also note that my last entry ended up with many mistakes.  This was after no less than 10 tries at publishing the post, each one cancelling out before editing could happen.  In the end I chose to publish with the mistakes rather than not put anything on line.  Hopefully most of these errors are now corrected.

Our Canal journey finishes tomorrow.  We have had a marvelous time and I have visited three schools along the way.  The highlight of the time would have to be at the end of the journey to Llangollen in northern Wales.  See the photos below.

This is the Chirk Aqueduct.  The canal goes across the lower of the two bridges and I had to take the narrow boat over it.  It sounds a bit scary but all you have to do is make sure no one is coming the other way and then steer your boat onto the aqueduct (bridge) and it will keep you going straight to the other side.  There are no sides on the bridge so you have to be careful.  These bridges are over 200 years old and are amazing to see.

This is another, and even bigger, aqueduct - the largest on the canal system and is in north Wales.  It is called the Pontycysyllte Aqueduct.  It was opened in 1801.  It runs over the River Dee and is 126 feet high (nearly 40 metres) and 1007 feet long (over 300m).  As you can see in the photo there is a footpath and rail on one side and no rails on the other.  It was a Sunday afternoon and there were lots people from the towns on each side of the valley walking across beside the boats.  We were part of a group of 5 boats going in one direction and when we had finished there were boats on the other side lined up to go the other way.

One of the interesting things about canals is that they run at an almost flat level.  The water does run down hill but only at a very gentle pace.  The main way to get higher or lower is through using locks.  Another way the builders used was to build aqueducts (see above) or to cut big valleys through the higher land.  Here is an example.  The valley we were in was made by men with picks and shovels about 200 years ago.  The huge bridge above simply joins the flat land on both sides!

Sometimes we find interesting things blocking the road - like car bridges.  At this bridge Andrew (Mrs McLeay's brother) has had to get off the boat and raise the bridge for us to pass through.  He then had to lower the bridge back into place before we moved on.

At one of the locks we found ourselves at the back of a long queue, with eight boats ahead of us.  Each boat takes about 10 minutes to get up one lock, so we had to wait about an hour and a half to get to the front of the queue.  However, this was the only time we had such a hold up.  Most of our journey has been really straight forward and the weather has been great.  It has been very warm some days and very cold on other days, but we have had very little rain.

Canal Boat Adventures

We have now spent five nights living on a canal boat and travelling through the English, and now Welsh, countryside.  This is my first opportunity to be "on-line" with wifi in a pub close to the canal. We have traveled from a marina just north of Wolverhampton to a canal that will tale us to a Welsh town called Llangollan.
Each day is busy and fun as we negotiate our way past other "narrow boats" travelling through the canals and going up and down locks which requires lots of manual effort winding the gates open and closed.   They really are narrow boats. We sleep across the boat and it is not as wide as I am long; however it is 70 feet long (about 22 metres), so takes a lot of maneuvering as we negotiate our way along.  I really enjoy being at the helm.   We travel about 20 to 30 kilometres each day of which we estimate we walk a third.  It is great exercise and lots of fun.

I have visited two schools in small villages on the canal and have two more to see early next week.

Here are a few photos:

Here I am standing beside our home for the two weeks we spend on the canal.  Isobelle is 70 feet long and has three bedrooms, each with a small bathroom.  There is also a small dining room and kitchen,  She is 7 feet wide (just over 2 metres) on the outside and less than that on the inside.  6 of us are living here for 14 days.  We are all good friends now and hope to still be after 14 nights living so close together!!

The Harecastle Tunnel is 2.6 kilometres long and I had the challenge of guiding our canal boat through this in a convoy of 4 boats.  It took about 45 minutes and apart from the light on our boat it was pitch dark.  The tunnel was very low at times - so low I was down on my knees to keep from getting hit on the head, and still having to guide the 70 foot long boat from hitting the sides.  This was a neat experience.  Mrs McLeay took this photo as we exited from the tunnel.

Each afternoon we tie the narrow canal boat up to the side of the canal and that is where we stay for the night.  We usually do this near a small village and either go into the town for a meal or cook our own meal on the boat.  Last night we used a "throw away" BBQ designed to use only once and cooked up lots of chicken to go with vegetables cooked in the boat's kitchen.  Here we are enjoying the meal on the back of the boat.

A Wonderful Day in Oxford

Last night Jan and Tim Cooper (the "chef and chauffeur,"  with Jan being Mrs McLeay's sister) and Andrew (Mrs McLeay's brother) and Janice Yeoman all arrived here in Oxford and the 6 of us will be together for the next two weeks as we start our canal trip tomorrow.

We spent today exploring the city of Oxford - the home of the oldest English speaking university in the wold.  We traveled around on top of a double-decker bus with no roof on, listened to a great commentary about the city and university, then walked for hours seeing so much that I cannot even begin to share it all with you.  Tonight we went to an "Evensong" service in one of the many campus chapels which was led by two 6 part male groups of singers which was absolutely amazing.

In a nutshell I would summarise the city centre as being characterised by amazing architecture, a long long history, crowded streets, many buses, and thousands of bicycles.

Here are a few photos that might be of interest to you:

This is one of the 38 Colleges that make up Oxford University.  Each college has it's own living accommodation for students, food hall, chapel, etc,  Most of the buildings are very old, some dating back over 800 years.  This is Christ Church College, one of the most famous, and its' huge dining hall was actually used for the dining hall for the Harry Potter movies.  Unfortunately the dining hall was closed for repairs so we could not go in.

This is a little "pub" in Oxford, one of many dozens.  You can buy a good meal and spend time meeting people in these pubs.  This one has an interesting history.  It is called "The Eagle and the Child" but people refer to it as the "Bird and the Baby."  The reason it has become famous is that two now famous authors were both professors at Oxford and would meet together regularly in this pub to discuss what each was writing.  They were good friends.  Do you know some books each of these two men wrote?  Their names were J.R.R.Tolkein and C.S.Lewis.  I wonder what each of then had to say about the other person's writing!

Another famous author was based here in Oxford.  He used to visit this Candy store regularly and it helped him become inspired to write "Alice In Wonder Land."  Do you know the name of this author, and what his real name is?

There have been many other famous people who have gone through Oxford University and it is regarded by many as the finest in the world.

To Oxford

Yesterday we drove through about 80 miles of English countryside to the city of Oxford.  This was very picturesque, and along the way we found a place called "Broadway Tower," which is the tallest tower for many miles around.  We`stopped and visited this building which is over 200 years old and from the top one can see all the way to Wales.  It is very unusual in that it has three stairwells, and each level has only one room.




During World War Two a Lancaster bomber, with 5 crew on board, was out on a training flight and it was very foggy and the plane crashed only a few hundred metres from the tower.

We drove on into the city of Oxford.  We had some hassles finding where to deliver our rental car as the company had changed locations, but all the information we had was from the old address.  No one could help us until finally some fellows in a car wash place gave some help.

We`are staying here in a B&B, which means a "Bed and Breakfast" place.  It is like a small hotel, and the price is a bit cheaper than a hotel and includes a nice cooked breakfast. There are 13 rooms in this B&B!











After lunch we headed off to have a walk around.  During our stroll we saw some Television trucks on the street ahead, and a film crew working away.  As we got closer I took a photo of the main actor, sitting outside a cafe across the street.  Can you guess who he is?  (Hint: look back at my last blogg entry). He is the man in the suit sitting down. What a neat surprise for us!

Travelling South.

At last the poor weather is clearing up and the forecast for the next week looks much more like early Summer.

Yesterday we traveled south from Glasgow (it took nearly an hour in pouring rain and heavy traffic to get out of the city) to Lancaster in England.  On the way we visited three famous places: Gretna Green, Hadrian's Wall and the Lake District.  These were all very interesting and photos of each are included below.

Initially we travelled on the M6, one of the many great motorways of England.  However, we were keen to get out into the countryside as much as possible.  Some of the roads we got onto were little more than one way lanes, but vehicles still traveled in both directions.  I am very pleased that our rental car is still free of scratches or dents.  Some of the lanes have stone walls on both sides of the road which would be very unforgiving!

This morning I spent several hours at Nether-Kellet Primary School, with around 100 students and 5 excellent teachers.  Since then we have traveled south and we are in south Wolverhampton for the night.

Tomorrow we will travel some more back roads from here to Oxford.  In our hotel room we are currently watching an episode of "Lewis" on TV (one of my favourite programmes) and it is set in Oxford. Tomorrow, we will see the amazing buildings with our own eyes!

Gretna Green is famous around the world for being the most romantic place in Great Britain.  Many years ago the legal age for people in England to get married was older than the laws allowed for in Scotland.  Gretna Green is just on the Scottish side of the border and many young people in England would drive up and get married at Gretna Green.

This carving of hands together is in the middle of Gretna Green.  If you look closely, there is a piper, playing the bagpipes just past the sculpture.  As we watched, a young couple came out of one of the buildings - having just been married, and were being piped out by the piper.

Hadrian's Wall (left) was built nearly 2000 years ago and is 120 km long, running right across England from one coast to the other.  It was built by the Romans and was the northern border of one of the greatest empires in history.  The wall was about 4 metres high.  This picture shows how wide the wall was (more than two metres) although it is now only just above ground level.  We visited a museum which told us a great deal about the wall and its history.  Below (left), I am standing inside what was once a small room the guards would live in for weeks at a time as pat of their duties.

The photo above / right is one of the streets we passed through as we visited the Lake District.  It is very beautiful, but there were very few places where we could stop and enjoy the views.  Driving the roads also required a great deal of concentration.

To the right is a photo of all the children at Nether-Kellet School, with the Headteacher (Principal) and myself behnd them.

A Cold and Wet day in Glasgow

Hi Everyone.

We are currently staying two nights in a small hotel in the southern part of Glasgow in a suburb called Giffnock.  It is close to a train station which runs regularly right into the central rail station in the heart of the city.  This morning I headed in to the city centre and had an excellent 90 minute meeting with two senior managers from "Education Scotland," the equivalent of our Ministry of Education.  I returned to the hotel to join Margie and this afternoon we headed back into the city to look around and visit some shops.

Heading home late this afternoon the rain started pouring down and it was very cold.  We got soaked returning to the hotel.  There seems little point in trying to get out again tonight, so we will rest up and prepare for our journey south.  Over the next three days we will drive down to England and plan to be in Oxford by Thursday afternoon.

This photo is the top of Buchanan Street, the main shopping street in Glasgow.  It is closed off to traffic and a very delightful place to stroll and look in shops.

This clock tower is one of many that we saw in the city.  Another observation was seeing large numbers of young people smoking in the streets or using e-cigarettes.  It seems our anti-smoking campaigns in New Zealand have had some very positive effects, even if there is a long way to go.