Salisbury - its so *beep* cold

Well here we are in Salisbury and as the title suggests it is friggin cold. Such a beautiful little town and so old.

We finally got here at about 8pm last night after a LLOOONNNGGG day of travelling. We left Amsterdam at about 8am and, unlike Paris, didn't take us long to navigate out of the city (apart from the cyclist Mikey nearly sent to an early grave)! Amsterdam is a very cool city and we would love to go back there another time. One thing we did forget to mention in the last blog was the quality of the buskers in Amsterdam! We saw one lady who must have been at least 90 years old playing the same two notes (badly at that) on an old recorder - quite sad actually. Then the next day we think we saw her father in the town centre playing the same two notes on a harmonica. The funny thing was he was sitting on a very expensive old people scooter; don't think he was making much money - but good on him sitting out in the cold being 130 years old (he had to have been that at least!!!)

Anyway back to the journey. We thought we would be smart and print off some directions to go back to Calais, but a word of advice for anyone that does that - do not take them at face value. For example it states to take a certain exit for a certain town, but when there are 3 different exits for the same town it can get rather confusing. As a result we got a little lost in Belgium and added a good hour on to our journey. As soon as we made it to Calais, in good French style, we got friggin lost again finding the Ferry Port. What should have been a straight through 10 minute drive must have taken us at least 40 minutes!! But now we are in the land of normal people and have not got lost once (but that was a fluke!!)

When we got into Dover we went straight to hire our car (but first a side point - at customs on both ends Mike must have had his drug baron face on because we kept getting stopped and asked questions!!!) Anyway, back to it, we were hiring our car and didn't even think to check if we had enough on the credit card for the deposit which they need to hold. Needless to say we didn't and frustration and running around ensued. We ended up having to ring Jean (Mike's mum - keep in mind it was about 2am in Australia at this time) to get the funds transferred. It was a test of our nerves and sanity after such a long day so far - and we hadn't even started the long drive to Salisbury!

Anyway we obviously made it on the road and decided to take the coastal road. It was such a sketchy drive because of the fog and the roads are all country lanes. The 200 mile drive took us about 5.5 hours to do. When we finally made it to Salisbury we had no idea where we needed to go, we had no map, it was dark and foggy so we couldn't see any road signs. We were taking wrong turn after wrong turn to try and get into town and after about 15 minutes of doing this, lo and behold we stumbled across the hotel! Such a fluke, and we were thankful as we could have been stuck in a continual motion of being lost!

The hotel (or B&B) is absolutely gorgeous. It is very much like Bungunyah Manor where we had the wedding, but so much older and nicer. Log fires everywhere, a cozy lounge to smoke and read in, the food is out of this world, but it isn't cheap. The dinner we had last night cost us around £50 ($130 Australian) but well worth it, thank god it is all on Bartercard, thats all we can say about that.

This morning, after a scrumptious breakfast, we went to the markets and bought gloves and beanies (not that they are making much of a difference). After we finish here we are off to Stonehenge so Mikey can do his ritual sacrifice! (I think i'll stay in the car!!!)

We are off to Glasgow tomorrow and looking forward to spending a couple of nights in a scottish castle!

We will be back on line in Glasgow hopefully, if not it will be when we get to Glossop in a few days. We are really looking forward to staying with family there and totally kicking back!

We look forward to your messages and if you have sent us one of those comments, we haven't figured out how to reply to it so please don't think that we don't love you!! When we get more time on the net we will figure it out.

Anyway we will sign off now. We love you all. Talk soon.

Have a great Xmas everyone!

Karen & Mikey