After 4 months of running around the world at what seems like an unmaintainable pace, our next stop on The Cook Islands offered the chance for a well earned rest and the unimaginable thought of not having to board any form of long distance transport for eight days! This leg of the tour also offers me the chance to write a relatively brief blog, particularly when compared to the recent barrage of prose that we have spouted since our time in Australia and Ne...

And so it was time to head north. Alan was very excited by the prospect of a 'real' car ferry experience - 3.5 hours sailing the slightly choppy Cook Straits to windy Wellington. I was less excited at the prospect of arriving at 2am and having to find somewhere to sleep for the night, but I sailed onwards nevertheless. After a rather pleasant time watching the US Open women's final on the crossing we arrived in Wellington ready to find a spot to bed down. This ...

With only 3 weeks to scratch the surface of Australia we knew we'd struggle to fit in all the things that we wanted to see, but nevertheless set off on an antipodean odyssey running (at times literally) down the east coast from Brisbane to Melbourne with a small detour to Fraser Island off the Queensland coast. This installment of the blog is sure to be a bit of a bumper installment and for that I can only apologise. So, are we all sitting comfortably? Then I'l...

New Zealand: a land bigger than the UK that contains only four million people - and 1.2 million of those live in the largest city, Auckland.Our task, if we chose to accept it, was a 3000 mile drive around both islands in a camper van that Kate had dubbed 'Bernadette' - a name I found acceptable, but that was mostly so that I could hum 'Bernadette' by the Four Tops every time the van was mentioned.With Petrol at approximately one pound per litre, it was also going...