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After spending a week in L'Argentière-la-Bessée playing with water, canyons and mountains James and I departed for pastures new.

I thought Via Ferrata and capsizing a kayak was scary, but nothing could have prepared me for the journey over the Alps! We had rain on Saturday and Sunday - lots of it - and it was still hammering down when we set off. We told Ol` Unreliable (the sat nav) where we wanted to go and to avoid the toll roads and what not and boy did it pick us a peach of a route.

I am sure that the road it picked to clear the Alps would have, under normal circumstances, been a slow and pleasant ascent offering undeniable beautiful views of what lay below. However, due to the rain we were treated to driving through thick cloud that reduced visibility to a matter of feet and of course the French had neglected to add any safety barriers on this narrow, windy mountain pass! Oh dear.

I guess it comes as no surprise that we survived the intrepid journey and I bet you have no idea where we have ended up (hint: look at the post title)...

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Written around 6am on 28th July 2011

I think I probably kept these travel plans a little quieter than the ones from last year, but that's mostly because I am useless and also because... well, I'm useless!

So what am I doing in France? My friend James and I are spending the next month driving around the place with very little in the way of fixed plans. So who knows? But that's part of the fun: watch this space!

Sadly though, this trip is not in the campervan, Lily, as originally planned as her engine died about a month ago and even if I had her fixed in time I don't think I would have been confident running a freshly rebuilt engine in on quite such an epic journey! So our transport comes in the form of a mighty Ford Focus estate. James' mighty Ford Focus estate, to be precise!

This has been semi-planned for a good few months now but as is my attitude to most things in life - "don't worry, we'll just see what happens!" - not much in the way of actual planning went ahead...

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If you've known me for any reasonable length of time (around 15 minutes or more) you probably know that I am, and pretty much always have been, obsessed with Volkswagen camper vans.

This obsession started a dozen-or-so years ago when my family borrowed a camper from family friends, The Ashbys - the lovely folks behind Bristol Volksfest, for a camping holiday in Scotland. At this time I was still a resident of The South (close to Bristol City FC since you were asking) and so the trip to Scotland in a 25+ year old vehicle was no mean feat!

If my childhood memories are correct, we made it a little over half way before the unfamiliar territory of the hard shoulder became an unscheduled stopping point. With instructions to the recovery vehicle to simply follow the dotted line of oil we left in our wake, the camper van escapade had started well.

After lengthy tow to my aunty and uncles farm in Scotland my dad was able to chuck on some overalls and sit under the bus to work out what had brought us, and our proposed camping holiday, to such a halt: a blown engine. Great.

Well after a few days of an impromptu adjustment of holiday plans my father had the old girl running again using magic, wizardry and a ver Heath Robinson boot lace, no doubt. So back on the road we were to head, this time homeward bound, as our short leisure break was coming to an end.

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This is awful. I've not blogged in a terribly long time and have next to no excuse for it.

Just because my travels have ended, doesn't mean that this blog is over! I will continue to write about what happened on my travels (because there's so much I haven't divulged to you yet!) and write some more details about specific events/places and what not. Perhaps you will be treated to more than 9 words describing the best thing ever!

And because I have the travelling bug pretty bad, I'm certain I will be visiting other people and places as soon as my moth-filled wallet will allow.

I will be back on a proper writing schedule soon - so don't stray too far.

Cheers,
George 

So here I am leaving Cairns, where I have spent the last week-or-so and boy does it know how to rain here! Sadly, because Australia is built up around the prospect of being outside 99% of the time, there isn’t a huge amount to do here during the downpours so luckily I am now sat on an aeroplane ready to hit up the middle of this country to see a big red rock in what I imagine can only be described as a desert.

Outside of the rain, sadly I have been ill. I know, I know, I have been rattling on about it for weeks, but it got seriously worse while in Cairns (cue lavish amounts of sympathy). So bad in fact that I felt the need to see the doctor who was kind enough to prescribe me some antibiotics, some butt-kicking menthol-eucalyptus stuff and more pain killers than any one man can take. This was 3 days ago now and I am pleased to announce that I am [clearly] healthy enough to fly, the swellings have gone down, the headaches are less and less frequent & intense and my fever has yet to return – hooray!

But enough of the mundane and miserable; what else has Cairns had to offer despite the torrents?

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Enough of the worries, what good things have been going on since Fraser Island?

Well, as the post title hints, I’ve been pretty busy (my manful cold doesn’t stop me!) acting out some new roles.

The first of these has quickly become my favourite and so when I was in 1770, the last real surf spot on the east coast, I spent more than my fair share of time in the water! Emily and I decided the previous night that we would both roll down to the surf shop in the morning and take part in the cheapest surf lesson ever: $17 for 3 hours. That’s not a misprint, that’s really what it cost!

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Sadly this entry is not going to be too chipper as I have some bad
news to deliver.
The first piece of news is that ever since
I have been ill. A combination of too little sleep and not wrapping up
warm enough at night on the blob of sand in the sea has left me with a
lovely cold.

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Yesterday (edit: now 2 days ago – silly internet connections here!) I
returned from Fraser Island: the worlds’ largest sand island.

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So here we are – a second bright and sunny day in a row in Australia. The weather has been so poor over the last week or so that the sunshine has come as quite a surprise!

So where was I when we last spoke? I believe I was about to leave Sydney on the start of the Oz Experience, so I guess that’s where we will start off today...

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Written March 3^rd 2010, posted only now because I’ve been waiting for the accompanying photos and still am...

Today I started the Oz Experience and while I was initially sceptical – 9 hours till our overnight stop, “Spot-X” (Arrawarra) – it has been sweet as so far!

The journey was really rather enjoyable, despite the wind, rain and grey clouds. The greatest thing about the time spent on the bus is the people you meet and the first bus ride with a brand new group of strangers is always going to be fun.

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