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We are still travelling, more or less full time, although now we are on a break of sorts. We are in Darlington, England, staying in the house that we half own.

Mick, John, Mike, & Don photographing Chris and Sam

We came back to England for the wedding of Chris to Samantha. Their marriage and some others show how times have changed. Chris & Sam first lived together, then bought a house together, then found a nice church, and then planned their wedding 18 months in advance. Along the same line of "what changes time has wrought" are our London friends Dinah & Mick: After being partners and more or less living together for 20 years they got married in March. The expense/untidiness of having two houses a block apart wasn't enough for them to do it; rather, as they were retiring and wanted to be sure each would inherit the other's pensions, they tied the knot. Now, at last, they have moved in together and rented out the other.

If it hadn't been for Chris and Sam's wedding (and visa problems) we might be now be touring Russia. (For a quick idea of where we went see the presentation of Mediterranean and Eastern European travel guides we have used in the past six months.) But we would have come to England by summer's end to celebrate Dinah & Mick's wedding, which party they have delayed so they can celebrate their retirement at the same time. 

Being at home, the days seem less filled — although they really are, but with things quite different than when travelling. In the two weeks before getting to England, we spent four days in the High Tatra mountains of southern Poland, three days in Wroclaw, (or Breslau if you prefer the German name) and five in Prague. Adding 2 travel days, that just makes two weeks. We came back from Prague by overnight bus. Scheduled for 18 hours it was only 16 hours and in fact was quite a pleasant trip. To our suprise our bus took us on, or rather "in" the Channel Tunnel, our second such trip. It is so smooth you are hardly aware you are moving. Zip and you are there.

A lot of the time before the wedding was spent on opening and dealing with a pile of mail six months old. Most were bank and credit card statements. Now as this is written, some three weeks later, we just about have our financial life in order and our computer well informed of our activities for the last six months. In 1978 when we travelled through Asia, there was none of this work upon our return: we paid for everything in cash and had no credit card accounts to look after and didn't have three IRA (retirement) and multiple other savings accounts to check up on.

Just a few items in the two large sacks of mail were personal, coming from those few who don't yet have their own email and don't have our email address. Again, completely the opposite of 1977-1978. Then there were no internet cafes and no email. We relied on Poste Restante (General Delivery) for the few items we got from the family. And hotels didn't have satellite TV with CNN, TV5, and BBC World; we read India Today, the Economist, and the like to keep up.

Jhap, Jan, Jade, Megan on the beach at Redcar

Since the wedding Jan has been enjoying leisure time with family. One of our outings was to the beach at Redcar. Gerry of course has gone along, often as photographer. He has also made use of his time to indulge in his technical interests: starting to relearn Java, J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition), and JavaScript.

Care to visit or see where we are? Click here for directions with a map.