London, Teddington - July 26-Aug2Arrived on time in Luton and had Roger & Allison pick us up as planned and we all met up with the rest of the gang a couple of hours later. John arrived with Don & Maureen, from Scotland so we headed to the bar for a real ale. The Teddington Club was an excellent choice as it has good facilities, decent food and choice of real ale and is right next to the Thames with lovely walks along the footpaths. Thanks for that Roger....

Sat 26 July 2008Writing this at Lisbon airport, I'm just jotting down a few thoughts. We got up at 04.00 and hit the road an hour later. The drop off of the car was so smooth as was the check-in at the Easyjet counter. Somehow, you're always expecting a problem but luckily, and so far, out holiday has been sweet with all transitions being exactly as planned.We are so sad to leave mainland Europe behind. The car behaved impeccably and Mary, the GPS, was totally in...

The days continue to race by. Any thoughts of homesickness are just way off target. I had a train of thought, today that began with me thinking about our hire car, the Citroen, and some of the really good bits like the diesel engine being so grunty but economical, the satnav, the reversing aid and the on-board computer. None of which we have in our cars in NZ. Then I moved on to our cars in NZ, that they both need warrants of fitness and road licence. I swiftly ...

17 JulyWe went to Cape Rocco a few days back, the most Westerly point of mainland Europe. It was very strange with a mist just streaming over a point and the temperature was nearly 10 C lower than the surrounding area.Doug has been guiding us to spots he visited 25 years ago and they have changed so much from sleepy villages to built up concrete towns. Some of them still have a small-town undeveloped feel but others are just horrible developments with over-crowde...

Just to finish off.Ros would like to thank all the birthday greeters and the Bookies.Spain has a really lovely feature, that being public water fountains. Every small town has water fonts for public use. You often see people bringing big bottles to fill up. In our village, here, there are 2 different systems; one with potable water and the other with non-potable. We found out the potable is of European standard quality - i.e., it's had all the filtration and chem...