Hey. Oh my god. It is Tuesday, yes, and we are in Cardiff, possibly the best city in the UK. I love it, really love it. It's adorable and cute and understated... well, Cardiff BAY is, anyway.

It was easy to get to our hostel, which is the most beautiful hostel in the UK (so that might be part of why we're loving it here so much), and then the woman behind the counter set us up for today and tomorrow. We went to Cardiff Bay and looked around, went to the Red Dragon (which is confusing to get into...) and went to the Doctor Who Exhibition. It was awesome.

I love it here. I want to stay. It was all sunny today (cold, but) which means we'll be back some time. Joel, on the other hand, has just fallen in love with Dave, the Sky channel. Well, he's fallen in love with Top Gear, and Dave just happens to have it on quite a bit.

The snow has disappeared for now, which is nice. I mean, snow is lovely, but when you're trying to explore, it's a bit of a hinderance. Getting places is also very hard when you have to wait four hours for a delayed plane (for instance...)

But it's lovely. Worrying, when we hear about the fires, but lovely here.

Anyway, I keep getting distracted, and my half hour is almost up. See you later!

Now that I have done some backdating (sorry guys for flist spammage)...

Dundee was a lot of fun. Rachel was beautiful and wonderful, and meeting her friend Adam was a lot of fun too. We went to Edinburgh, had too much chocolate and sugar, and generally just watched tv and hung out. Oh, and jumped in puddles of ice in and around Edinburgh zoo (TINY MONKEYS!!).

Did I mention that it's been cold here? It's generally a constant 0C or less.

We've been having some travel problems (more than just the flipping plane ones) but overall we've been lucky with everything else... money, documents, etc. *knocks hard on wood*

Anyway. Today we went to the Lickey Hills and went SLEDDING. We built snowmen, threw snowballs and generally got SOAKED with snow, ice and water. It was so much fun. I'm really tired now, though! Richard brought Rosie and the two dogs Tommy and Charlie over as well, so we raced and threw things (including snowballs) for the dogs. Getting dogs to fetch snowballs is funny.

All in all it's been a bit of a time, really. (*g*)

There was even a murder nearby today! How scary.

[backdated for 7th of Feb]

[10.40am]. And we're stuck again. (Joel just said that it should be 'Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand we're stuck. Again.' so there we go.)

It's not even the weather this time! Something mechancial has gone wrong with our plane, so we're no off it, delayed for 1/2 hour while we wait. Apparently we also have snow in Birmingham (what a surprise!) so landing could be a problem too. So overall it's quite difficult.

We woke up at 4.30 this morning to get to the airport from Dundee in time. In retrospect, the Dundee-Birmingham plane/train would have been better, especially as we could have had more time with Rachel. Oh and booking the MegaBus to Glasgow Airport not the city center would have helped. Oh well.

[11.40am]. So... our flight has been cancelled.

We will have boarding passes for... get this: 3.10. That's 5 HOURS after the actual flight. And that's not even dependent on weather. It's a flat 5 hour wait.

I give up... I'm going to go find a book.

[2.45]. Okay, so that could have been more enjoyable - time spent with Rachel, for example, or shopping, or flipping sleeping for goodness sake, but oh well. We're almost there now.

We spent most of the time stretched out on one of the sleeping chairs (they have those at Glasgow international[!]) reading a book or two. For five hours...

[the next day].
In the end, we got to the airport, caught a shuttle to Birmingham International Train Station, caught a train to Birmingham City Cross, got lost, and finally caught another train to Barnt Green. With all our luggage. /whine

[backdated for 2nd of Feb]

Birmingham airport is fun to navigate. I guess international flights are always difficult, but I can't for the life of me find my gate! I guess it only opens in 45 minutes, but it still makes me nervous.

(We later found out that they only tell you what DOOR and GATE it is 45 minutes before the flight. Just so if you ever leave internationally (I assume it's the same domestically) from Birmingham airport, this is what happens... don't panic if you can't find the door and gate (weird, huh?) number/letter on there, just keep an eye on the screens. It's very annoying though.)

There was powder snow all last night... London is pretty much completely blocked, but Birmingham Airport is still open, and the roads weren't too hard to push through, though the front window kept fogging up. No, not fogging, icing. Hard as, well, ice. But the defrosters were frozen (ironic) so they were no help.


...about an hour later... (9.45... our flight was supposed to actually LEAVE at 9.10)
They've closed the airport. We were on the plane waiting to be de-iced when they closed the runway for "an hour". Which probably means about three hours or possibly more. I'm possibly going to call our hostel soon, just to find out what we should do in the event that they close the runway for the rest of the day.

God willing, we're on the plane in about an hour. Oh hooray for the snow.

[9.57]. Joel is sick, poor baby, so we've dosed him up, and are now trying to get lunch before we get back on the plane (!) The restaurant we're at has gluten free options which is exciting (expensive) so we're going to settle in for a while.

( ...eleven-oh-five... )

At Rachel's, and alive. So she's you know, not a serial killer. Or if she is, she's very good at it.

Just so's you know. AND IT HAS STOPPED SNOWING!

We're in Glasgow. Yesterday was OH so much fun. I mean, it's great to have snow and all, but four hours of sitting in an airport terminal is not so fun. Even when you have gluten free nachos and a little bottle of Bailey's. Not that I drank it all. Lightweight.

Getting to Glasgow, once we finally got off the ground, was good, but then turned to bad as the snow got harder while we walked to our hotel. And then momentary relief until we realised that we needed food and had no idea how to get any, or where any was. So we went BACK out into the snow (Joel has a cold, which didn't help) and went to an overpriced hotel restaurant down a steep hill.

Ugh.

But we're alive, and on our way to Dundee. So, hooray... right?

Rachel, if you're reading this, we're at the coach station so we should get there alright. Especially since the snow has stopped.

WE JUST SAW JOHN BARROWMAN IN PANTOMIME. WE WERE TEN METERS AWAY FROM HIM AND IT WAS AWESOME.

Hello guys. I hear that Australia is suffering from the heat! It's been about 3C everywhere we go lately, which is fun for us, though I much prefer it to even a 30C day there. So it's been fine, really. Apparently it might snow down here while we're in Scotland... much good that'll do US, but hopefully it'll move up to the North in time. Fingers crossed, alright, guys? We may as well, since the cool has to have gone somewhere, right??

We were in Whitby today, after leaving Midgely - that's actually where we were staying, look it up, it's near Luddandan and Luddandan Foot, which we think sounds like London for someone with a stutter, or a young child saying London. Whitby was... a seaside town. Shocking, I know, but I'm fairly sure Joel got a lot more out of it than I. The Abbey was beautiful though, and we went to another ruined one earlier. And then we drove back to Bromsgrove. Pamela drove 8 hours today, bless her.

I say today, but really I mean yesterday since it's 2am here on Friday morning. We uhh, got invited for a late private showing of Twilight by one of Pamela's (obsessed) workmates. It was awesome because it was just three guys that work there, plus Pamela and I, all mocking every single scene. It was AWESOME, okay? Okay.

Tomorrow (today??) we're going to see John Barrowman in Panto doing Robin Hood, and that'll be awesome, and on Saturday Pamela's taking me to the soccer (okay, okay, football) to see Man United play. He're hoping they win, or she'll be in a really foul mood. Sunday I'm seeing eeveekitty85, which is heaps exciting, and then heading off to Glasgow on Monday. So that'll be nice and action packed.

And I'm falling asleep, so I shall say adieu. Adelaide contacts, feel free to hand this around to OTHER Adelaide contacts, okay?

Hello all... I'm in Leeds, staying with Pamela's brother Morris, his wife Sally, and his three sons, Oliver (who's the youngest, and quite sweet), Frank and Michael. Pamela, her mother + Joel and I are going to York today and having a look around, and I think heading up to Whitby. It can be quite confusing sometimes. But in any case, we're hopping into the car and heading somewhere today.

This place is beautiful. It's three vast stories, with gorgeous furniture. Joel and I are staying on the second floor, which is pretty much the kid's floor. Their rooms are first in, their own bathroom, plus the two guest bedrooms we're staying in. It's all pretty cool, really. I must take some photos. The upper floor is all wood, very attic-y and beautiful... that's where Sally and Morris have their rooms, plus another guest room where Pamela is sleeping. The grounds are massive, and just inside the gate is the gatekeeper's house, which Morris rents out. Just as an idea of exactly the kind of house we're staying in. We're very lucky. It's amazing how things can unfold sometimes, isn't it?

I don't have any credit on my phone, so I'm not able to call anywhere, but I'm trying to find a T-Mobile place, because it seems like Optus and T are somehow connected, and I can get my top-up here. Or something. I'd rather get Optus though, becuase I know exactly what my rates are that way.

Yesterday we were in Haworth on the way up to Leeds... it's very eerie, and depressing, the way that the Brontë books will relate. You can understand why the sisters wrote to escape that kind of environment. It's... really... dark. I have photos, and you can hardly escape the horribly opressing sky.

They had first edition Brontë books. I was so tempted.

Right now I'm reading The Airman, which is an Eoin Colfer book (see how I like younger literature?) and enjoying it. It's nice to have some European reading here and there.

Gotta run!

Okay, so we're in Bromsgrove right now, staying with the beautiful pemphredouk, who is just as awesome in real life as she is on the internet. Surprisingly.

I'm on the computer because I keep closing my eyes, despite it being only 4pm here. It's bloody confusing. I slept until 2am English time this morning, because it was a sleep flight, but I have to stay up until about 8 in order for my body clock to adjust. It should be early morning right now or something. Urgh.

This keyboard is driving me crazy though. It's all wrong. The speech marks are over the #2, where the hash key should be, and the @ is where the speech marks should be, though the apostrophe is there too... and there's a $ AND a £ sign. I don't know, it's just weird is all. :)

Apparently I have global roaming for my phone, so that's pretty damn cool.

The plane trips were kinda... ugh. The first plane was, anyway. It was one of the older ones, and the economy class is, well, pretty shoddy, really. But the food was pretty good, even for gluten free - though they did give me a roll at one time. Sigh. The second was pretty good, really. It was a three-seat row, and the girl that sat next to me was nice. She spoke Cantonese though, and wasn't too strong on the English, so we didn't chat much, because my knowledge of Cantonese is... oh, right... none. The seats were more comfortable to sleep in, and once we'd had dinner (at a time my body clock claimed was about 1am Australian time) I fell asleep for seven hours.

Today we went from Heathrow indirectly via a couple of lovely towns. It was quite nice, having a look around, experiencing. Cold, but not too cold... I quite enjoyed it, actually. Very refreshing. Nicer once the sun came up, though.

Oh, and they lost Joel's luggage. *g* It turned up in the end, and they just dropped it off with us, so that's good. Apparently it decided to get a cup of coffee or something and just hopped the next flight from Hong Kong instead of the proper one. Oh well, it's here now.

I'm very excited about tomorrow - we're going to York - but not just because we're exploring somewhere new... I'm excited because it'll be the first PROPER day I've had in about 48 hours.

In about twenty minutes, we're going to pick up one of Pamela's daughters from school before we have dinner and I get to pass out in bed, so I'd best be scurrying off to the kitchen with a book or something, to keep myself awake until then. (I keep closing my eyes in here - so much for using the computer to keep me awake!)

...did I mention how much I'm NOT checking my flist when I'm away? Well I'm not. So there. *g*

This is the travel journal set up for tearcreek and joel42 as they travel to England and beyond. Contact, updates and photo spammage, is the main idea.

Not MO because there are some non-ljers out there, but don't pass this comm around, please.