Friday 19 January 2018 – Carlisle I picked up a rental car near Ronald Reagan airport and headed north through Maryland and up to Carlisle in Pennsylvania to visit Rian, Jo and son Liam. Friends from NZ, Rian is at the war collage in Carlisle. It has been a little cold up here with snow still […]
Monday 8 January 2018 Having arrived at Château de Pondres late last night after 36 hours of traveling I had planned to go for a long walk today. Heavy rain set in which put paid to that plan. Château de Pondres was once a castle built way back; no-one seems to be quite sure when as […]
Kisbee Bay Fiordland NZ Sunday 31 December 2017: Roger Around 20 years ago friends Alister and Vanya bought a share in Preservation Lodge at what was once the town of Cromarty. For years Alister, a keen hunter, entrepreneur, former helicopter pilot and karate exponent, has been encouraging me to spend a few days at the […]
Sunday 24 December: Sylvia We were woken in the night by the howling wind so it was no surprise that our helicopter transfer was again cancelled. After a more leisurely breakfast we headed back out with Catalina for the two hour drive to Puerto Natales where we met our driver for the ~2.5 hour transfer […]
Tuesday 19 December 2017: Roger Departing Auckland in the evening on a new LAN Airlines Boeing 797-900 we had a reasonably comfortable flight in their roomy, lie-flat business class seats. Landing in Santagio mid-afternoon on Tuesday we were met by a guide and a driver. Kirstie, my youngest daughter, returned from here last Tuesday, she […]
Wednesday 27 November 2017 We had arrived late last night and are staying at the East Hotel on the northeast side of the island, close to the Royal Canin office. Upgraded to a corner room we had a great view over the thousands of appartments in front of the hotel and across the harbour to […]
Saturday 25 November 2017 Having arrived late last night from Shanghai we had a late start to the day. Around noon we jumped on the easy to use MRT and headed to Longshan Temple on the west side of Taipei City. Founded in 1738 by Han immigrants from Fujian, it is quite an interesting place to […]
Monday 20 November 2017 One of Sylvia’s team was leaving today so I volunteered to go out and get a nice letter opening knife as a gift. I started the search at the local plaza, which, with seven floors of expensive shopping, drew a blank. I wandered the local streets near the Jing’an Temple and […]
Monday 30 October 2017 In May last year I had the privilege of spending a week with Todd doing some long-range shooting on a ranch near Canadian in Texas. See: A long shot in Texas. Since then Todd and his wife Shannon, along with her father, visited Queenstown in New Zealand and I had the opportunity to […]
Monday 2 October 2017 Arriving at Heathrow after an overnight flight from Singapore we caught the Heathrow Express to Paddington. For £52 return, moving at up to 160kph, we were at Paddington station quite quickly. We checked into the quite new Novotel – their bottom priced rooms are called Superior Suites and compared with many other […]