Claire and Gareth go travelling!
Welcome to our new travel blog
On our third day in New Zealand, we picked up our camper van which would be our home for the next three weeks. We’d splashed out a little bit and gone for a slightly bigger one than we had in Tasmania – one with a toilet and shower and that we could stand up in! …
Continue reading “A land of Volcanoes: Rotorua and Lake Taupo”
With only limited time for our trip we had had to be selective about which countries we chose to visit. However, in choosing where to go there was one place that was always at the top of both of our lists; New Zealand! We touched down in the largest city, Auckland in late afternoon and …
Continue reading “Welcome to NZ: Auckland and Waiheke Island”
During our Kumano Kodo hike in Japan we had met a brother and sister from Sydney who had been less than enthusiastic about their city. As a result we entered Sydney planning for a more relaxed pace to this section of the trip to refresh ourselves between campervans. We arrived in Sydney in the early …
Tasmania (or Tassie as the Aussies call it) was an area of Australia that we were both extremely keen to explore. For some reason it seems to be missed off the standard British tourist itinerary, yet every Aussie we had met along our trip so far had raved about it. We had five days of …
Continue reading “Tasmania Part 1: Hobart and the East Coast Drive”
After a slightly delayed flight due to the Typhoon (we got off easy compared to Claire’s brother!), we arrived in Melbourne, Australia. Recognising that we would have needed all our sabbatical just in Australia if we had wanted to cover the whole country, we had focused our 2 week itinerary on the south-eastern tip: Melbourne, …
With our Japan adventure drawing to an end we had one destination left to explore: Tokyo! After an 8 hour train journey taking most of the morning and afternoon, Claire headed out to stretch her legs on a jog around the local Kinuta park before we spent the evening planning our Tokyo itinerary. We had …
Probably the most rushed section of our tour around Japan; we had 3 days to explore the two main Southern Islands of Japan, Shikoku and Kyushu! We decided that a ferry ride across Japans inland sea would be a good way to see some more of the coastline so took the fast ferry across from …
Day 4 of our Kumano Kodo trek was the ‘big climb’ of the trip. All our guide books stated that you must begin the hike before 8am despite the day only being 14km. After our experience of the steep hot climb on day 1 we were prepared for a hard day. That meant an early …
Over the last 1000 years, walking wasn’t the only mode of transport used by pilgrims. The Shingu river provided an alternative mode of transport, and as a break to our hike (and to allow Claire’s brother to join us for the last day’s hike) we had booked a traditional boat trip down the river. Unfortunately …
One of the first things we had planned for our world tour was a four day hike across the Kii peninsula, which is to the south of Kyoto and Osaka. Both of us had come across the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage trail independently in our research and we thought that it sounded like a great trip. …
Claire and Gareth go travelling!