A week in England

A couple of weeks ago we crossed the border to go visit some of our friends 'doun south'. It was a bit of a join-the-dots exercise, and we still didn't get to see everyone we would have liked to.

First up was Cambridge to visit my aunt, uncle and cousin. Mark had only met them at Christmas 2007 when he was very sick so it was great to get to catch up without him trying to cough his lungs out.

From there we swifly moved on to our next university town, Oxford, where we had the privilege of staying at Christ Church College with Helen. Here we are with the grass that you're not allowed to walk on.

She also gave us the grand tour of the city, including the Bodlean library, and a cake that looks very like the Bodlean library (but presumably tastes better).

From here we moved to the illustrious Guildford, where we stayed with Pac, Kristyn and Stuart the rabbit in their lovely flat on the South Downs Way. We borrowed their mountain bikes and went for a little ride and then a little run. We also had yummy raclette. To say thank you we left Stuart a present.

From there we made a lightning quick visit to my uncle house in Devizes, before arriving at the the highlight and purpose of our visit: Swindon. And yes, we did go round and round the magic roundabout (6 roundabouts in one). And yes, we did have a competition to see how many roundabouts it took to get home from the park (26, I won). But that actually wasn't the reason for our visit: our good friend Lindsay was turning 30 and along with a load of other folk we'd made the trek for a wonderful weekend house party to celebrate. Unfortunately we don't have any photos of the event, but be assured it was loud, fun and messy... and that was just Yana.