The small joys of winter

So despite all my worries about winter in the UK, it turns out it’s not that bad. Now by not bad, I don’t mean not cold, it’s freezing (literally). What I do love is the fact that houses are actually heated properly over here and that when we don’t want the heating on we can light the fire place in the living room! We’ve been going for walks in the countryside, playing on frozen lakes, and even falling through into the water :) luckily only our feet got really soaked.

I also love warm winter drinks – I’m not talking hot chocolate here but rather yummy drinks such as mulled wine. One the stove right now is a simmering pot of Pimms, apple juice, apple and orange wedges and cinnamon. It’s soooo good and extra yummy after falling into a frozen lake!

Despite the rest of the country suffering the earliest winter snowfall in decades, we welcomed in winter with really clear blue sky days (though I think the snow is about to hit)*. I thought I’d take advantage of these and get some photos of the sun setting over a local park. By the time the sun actually set I couldn’t feel my toes but I think it was worth it! Hope you enjoy them and as always, please put your email in the subscription box if you want to subscribe to this blog.

(*edit - woke up this morning to find everything covered in snow!)

Sun, fun and beautiful buildings on the shores of the Mediterranean

I’m really excited to share this album. They’re from a recent trip Rupert and I made to sunny and warm Barcelona. Unfortunately we only had three days there but we loved every minute of it. As well as checking out Barcelona’s famous architecture and soaking up the atmosphere (with the help of some tapas and lots of sangria and Estrella), we were also able to spend an afternoon in a sports bar watching the last race of the formula one season… if only Mark Webber had won!

We stayed in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona – this place has so much character and so many beautiful buildings. The highlight was the inside of the Catedral de Barcelona (unfortunately the outside was covered in scaffolding)







There were three other things that jumped out as we walked through Barcelona:

1. Colourful buildings

2. Happy couples – maybe it’s the Mediterranean air


3. Bikes and scooters – so technically this is two things. While the push bike rentals all across the city are a great idea, they’re for residents only. This means poor old tourists have to walk everywhere!


Please feel free to leave any comment's below or over on the full album

A big red bus, a pile of rocks and some fireworks!

I’ve finally been able to upload the photos we’ve taken at various places around England (the full album is located here on the Sun-and-Snow webpage). We’ve done some great day trips since we’ve been here and on the whole have been pretty lucky with good weather. Unfortunately the cold and rainy days are beginning to outnumber the sunny days – the Queenslander in me is getting a bit depressed at the thought of the winter ahead :(

Enough whinging about the weather and onto more exciting things – we were lucky to have a few days in London before we headed up to Milton Keynes (more on this town another day but it’s a lot like Canberra except with even more concrete!). With only two days in London we visited some of the city’s major icons and for two Aussies that don’t have the best sense of direction, we found it surprisingly easy to work out where we were going (sorry for the stereotypical processing of the photos below but I just couldn’t resist).

We made a couple of quick trips to Cambridge and Oxford and while both were great, Oxford on a Saturday was a bit too busy for our liking. I was also disappointed that with all the second hand book stores in Oxford, I couldn’t find an old Oxford Dictionary!






We also spent the night in Salisbury and visited a famous pile of rocks nearby. Unfortunately we were at Stonehenge in the middle of a pretty average day (midday is just about the worst time to try and make nice looking photos!). I love the fact that it’s such a famous land mark but no-one really knows why it was ever built.

I thought I would finish with a photo of some Guy Fawkes Day fireworks that were held at a local village to celebrate the foiling of the Gun Powder Plot to blow up the British Parliament. Rupert and I are actually living in the grounds of a house that was owned by one of the men involved in this plot. He was eventually captured and be-headed once the plot was uncovered but there are plenty of rumours around that the plotters met at the house before the infamous night and/or hid in the house afterwards.



As always, feel free to leave any comments on the photos and please put your email address in the box up the top on the left if you want to receive an email when I update this blog. I hope to have some photos of our amazing (and warm!) trip to Barcelona up soon!