First visit to Olympic Park this week- the travel was good, the security was efficient and friendly. The olympic park was much larger than I expected and it took me 30 minutes to walk from the entrance to the Basketball Arena. It's a great thing to have the park so user friendly but it is not so easy for those without tickets to get in. No tickets are sold at the park-all online so you cant turn up and expect to buy a ticket to get into the park. Inside at the ti...

We arrived in London on Thursday, hoping and expecting to be staying in a spacious apartment-what were we thinking?! The most expensive accommodation of our stay has proved to be the smallest !! Very clean and in a great area but studio apartment it definitely is! Bathroom requires extreme sporting body to squeeze into!! Had a great day on Friday exploring bookshops-but have very many to go!. We had the bright idea of watching the Olympics Opening Ceremony in ...

We arrived in Southampton after our British Rail experience (actually Scotrail, Virgin trains and something else) which took 12 hours due to a fault on the line during the middle leg of the journey! Our lovely hosts Sue Davidson and her husband David McBeath (sons John and David and dog Fergus) made us very welcome indeed. Sue is an old medical colleague of Doug's from his time living in the UK in the 80's. Our visit coincided with amazing weather-blue skies and ...

Today we leave Scotland and travel from Inverness to Southampton-a mamouth journey by train changing at Edinburgh and Wolverhampton. We made it across the water from Stornoway despite a gale, drove to Inverness and now the train. Train travel is to be recommended but not for 10 hours! The local dance I referred to in the last blog was fun- a ceilidh- held at the local sports club about 50 metres down the road, which seemed to be the local pub, bingo place and g...

This is our last day on Lewis unless the predicted gale tomorrow prevents the ferry running. As we have a train to catch on Monday from Inverness I am thinking positively!! We have been saying to ourselves that our friends at home will probably not be interested in peat, however we have become 'experts'. This island and probably all the others around Britain were dependent on peat for their heating and still are to a lesser extent. All the islanders have their o...