Ian will blog separately about his Hadrian’s Wall trail hike. To start it off, we drove to the tiny village of Bowness-on-Solway, on the southern edge of the Solway Firth. The landscape here was quite different – extensive grasslands and mudflats. Signs warned of flooding the road, but there was no water lapping at the […]
We left Newcastle mid morning, and headed west towards Carlisle. We had a couple of hours to fill before check in time, so we diverted into Scotland (as you do). This is border country, home to Ian’s reiver ancestors (although the Dodd reivers lived near Otterburn. The Armstrongs were the major clan in what was […]
Today we collected our rental car – a suitably British MG in basic black. In the late afternoon we headed south on the A1, to Durham, or more precisely Gilesgate, just east of the cathedral city. It all went well until it came to the fine navigation. Who knew there were two Church Lanes in […]
Beep … beep … beep … beep …beep … Crash!! Bang!!! Wallop!!!!! It was 7am when we were rudely awakened by the sounds of a truck being backed up the laneway, followed shortly thereafter by the din of besa bricks being dumped unceremoniously into the skip which was now parked right outside our bedroom window. […]
We have to address the elephant in the room. Captain Kumamon has been busy making new friends, and we are starting to collect a towel animal menagerie. We’ve had a dog, an elephant, a bear, and a penguin. They pretend to be napping, but we’re pretty sure that whenever we leave the cabin, a party […]
This is PNG’s “brochure destination” – you know the one with endless blue sky, gleaming white sand, palm-fringed beaches and turquoise seas – a tropical island made to order, with colours enhanced by the wonders of photo editing. This relies very much on good weather, so I tried not to picture it as too idyllic, […]
We were up on deck early again for the sail in to Rabaul’s harbour. We’d now sailed to 4 degrees north – not far away from the equator, and the temperature and humidity had reached the highest of the trip. Rabaul is dramatically situated inside a volcanic caldera, and we were able to pick the […]
We watched Alotau disappear as the sun started setting. Once out of Milne Bay we made a hard left turn, to continue north to our second port of call. We’d learned that Papua New Guinea has thousands of islands – there are 600 in Milne Bay alone – and they are home to a fair […]
We woke just before sunrise, and headed upstairs, camera in hand to capture our arrival into Milne Bay. A recent downpour had drenched the decks and we squelched up the stairs. The sunlight and storm clouds made for a dramatic display. By 9am we were standing on Papua New Guinean soil (or tarmac). We found […]
We’re on board the Carnival Encounter, an older and smaller cruise ship. Built in 2002 for Princess, it was handed down to P&O Australia in 2019, given a spruce up, and named Pacific Encounter. In 2024, it was announced that P&O Australia was being folded into Carnival Australia, and just last month the ship was […]
dipidydoo 