Family, Friends and sad farewells

We flew overnight from Boston to the UK, landing at Heathrow around 9:30am. This gave us enough time to transfer terminals and do some duty free shopping before boarding our flight to Manchester. From here, we had our first cancellation on our world tour so far! The train we were due to take to Sheffield was cancelled, which resulted in us having to rush around catching two other services, instead of having the nice, laid back direct service that we had booked. Anyway, everything was quickly forgotten when we arrived into Sheffield and my Mum and Dad were there to meet us!

Now, we changed our plans for the UK a few times due to various reasons, and, in order to fit everything in, we had to head off the following morning - it was great to quickly see Mum and Dad the first night we arrived, and was also quite handy as we needed to do some more washing! Thanks Mum.

We took a train down to Leicester to spend the weekend with Lucy and Gary. We had a blast, catching up on old times and enjoying a few beers whilst sitting out in the lovely Leicester sunshine. We followed this up with a buffet curry - it had been a few months since we had last had a curry, so we were hanging for one! The following day we went to Lucy's parents place, where they made us feel very welcome and we had a lovely Sunday lunch, before settling down to watch the World Cup final.

Back of Lucy's parents house

Brian, Lucys Dad

After Leicester, we headed back to Rotherham to spend some time with my family. We went on a day trip to the Great Yorkshire Show in Harrogate, which was all ferris wheels, tractor and horse carriage sales stands, country life clothing outlets, some great food outlets and, some a whole heap of farm animals (some of them huge, as you can see in the pics). My brother Steve and I also managed to play a couple of games of golf (I still can't beat him, but got a little closer).

Yorkshire Show


Amanda


Day of Golf

On the Thursday Monique headed up to York to catch-up with Jackie, our former next door neighbour in Kirribilli. Monique's performance of taking photos was very poor (none in fact), but had a great time with Jackie who introduced Mon to a new way of eating Chinese: which consisted of standing, bent over your kitchen counter and rapidly scooping spoonfuls of Chinese into your mouth!

As is usually the case when we are back in Rotherham, we headed out for a night with Steve and his girlfriend Amanda. We went on a pub crawl down an old student hangout area of mine in Sheffield, and ended up in The Leadmill nightclub. Was very disappointing to find that they no longer give you a free Chupa Chup on your way in. Apparently this has something to do with Health & Safety (I can only imagine where the lollipop stick ended up). Clarkson would have a field day; another example of the high-vis vest crowd overstepping the bounds of reasonableness....

Anyway, the club itself wasn't very busy as most of the students had left the city: which provided plenty of room for Steve and I to throw some shapes (yes, it runs in the family). Not content at kick-out time, Steve took us all for a curry (which I almost fell asleep into) before we all headed home in a taxi, just as it was getting light. Beard.

The next day I went with Steve and Dad to see my footy team (Sheffield Wednesday) play in a pre-season friendly. This was against Grimsby, so, regardless of how the result turned out, we'd at least be able to took into some nice fish and chips for lunch. And so it was - Wednesday lost. Hopefully this is not a sign of things to come this season. We also went out for a lovely dinner with all of the family that evening and then the following day Steve and Amanda put on a great BBQ for us at their house.

Cousins Clare and Kelly

Sorry girls I had to put this photo in because of Wes necking his beer in the background. Well done!

Dane, Clare, Ben and Holly

Super Seth and Mum Gemma

Matt and Wes (Seth's Dad)

Peter and Margaret (Dad and Mum)

Matt and Steve

Amanda and Lisa

Dad keeping warm

After one final curry with Wes and Gemma, our time up North was pretty much over and so caught the train to London to catch-up with friends. We decided to stay at a small hotel (Henley House Hotel) in Earl's Court, as this was not far from town, and was on the tube lines to Wimbledon and also to Heathrow for when we left.

We managed to catch-up with Nicky (and new bub Matthew) who we'd not see in ages, as well as Mandy and daughter Ellie. Yes, we've been catching-up with people who have young kids and we've been asked heaps of times whilst on this trip what our own plans are. And we'll keep you guessing!

Baby Matthew with Mon and Matt, Mon and Nicky

I also caught up with some of the guys I used to work with in London, whilst Mon spend some more time with Lucy, and then we met up with my uni mates - good to see you all!

Tom and Ewen

Matt Kilcast

Cockburn (Rick Astley)

Dayster, Dave, Scott and Nick

The gang

Dayster, looks like one of the boys kept an eye on you!

Jase, you can't hide, you are bigger than the HP bottle!

Before we knew it, our time in London was over and we had an early Saturday morning start, heading to Heathrow for a flight to Rome.

Matt