This one definitely surprised a few people. Sarah-Jaye and I flew over to the UK, but didn't tell many people we were coming. First up was Bob, thinking that Mr King had taken her away for a romantic weekend in the Cotswolds. There they were sitting the Ebrington Arms pub garden, when in walk us two. "Oh my god!! Sloooooth!!!" Poor girl couldn't understand it all, neither could Mumhead when we called her up - so confused. So that was all good, got out on a couple of good walks, dinner at the pub, stayed in a great B&B. From there it was up to Clara and Jon's, where Nicky and Nigel came up for the night. Managed to get ourselves a bit lost out on a walk with 2 babies. Thought we'd avoided the jetlag, but that kicked in properly so struggled to stay awake past 9pm. Down to Husbands Bosworth (driving over Dan Black's bridge on the way) and stayed with the Bird for another day. Gave Dan Black a call "fancy a pint? I'm in a pub 10 miles from your house!" More confusion there then.
Into That London, over to Clapham Junction and Northcote Road for pre-wedding beers with Matt. Next couple of days down in Sevenoaks, staying at Chris' and trying to get hold of the Mais boy, but finding that hard to sort out. Eventually turned up in his kitchen on the Friday - poor old boy very confused about all this! Matt and Georgie's wedding was on the Saturday, a great day and night. Managed to scare the crapola out of Bodders, Jarmarl, Colonel, Nicholas James Beneke, The Dog, pretty much everyone really. Didn't enjoy my hangover the next day one bit - definitely a top 5 with muchos vomitus. Found ourselves in some private members' club for a lunch we couldn't eat.
Down to Tunbridge Wells after that, 2 more babies to meet and stayed the night at Dave and Polly's. Plenty of cheese was consumed. Whatever you do though, don't get involved in watching In The Night Garden on CBeebies. Not good, wrecks your head with all that talk of the Ninky-Nonk and Iggle-Piggle.
Spent most of the week working, dropped SJ back at Heathrow (note: never, ever drive to Heathrow from Tunbridge Wells on a wet Monday morning when the M25 is closed.. Reminds me why we left the UK!) Caught up with the boys a few more times that week, then it was all over and back to NZ again.
Plenty photos of the trip here. Rather than giving money to one of these "carbon-offsetting companies", which I'm not too sure about, we donated 50 trees to Trees For Canterbury. Some of them are planted over at Haven MTB Park. Hopefully that goes some way to balance out all this flying we're doing.
Great to see all of you that we could, sorry if we didn't get to see some of you, but will make sure of it next time (will actually tell people we're coming though!)