Travels Archive

Blue skies & sunshine with a slight breeze welcomed us as we stepped out of the front door. Ashton Court 10k. Not me of course. Just Matt. A low key event with the Heart FM guys trying their best to get the “crowds” geared up for cheering the home-coming runners. Especially as the Heart FM Angels were nowhere to be seen. The last time I’d seen them was at the 5k marker halfway up the hill bouncing around with their sparkly pom poms....

The final day of an amazing journey. Hop skipping and jumping back from the dream to reality. I’ll keep it short & sweet as I am writing in retrospect. Part of me doesn’t want to finish this because it’s acceptance that it’s over. But it has to be. And we have moved on and are back doing normal everyday things. And this will surely irritate anyone who reads this now because it is such a cliché but it is true....

Today is a sad day. It’s the penultimate day of our travels. Where has the time gone? Luckily we’re too exhausted to be that sad. Not that exhausted, however, to look around the huge camera store just across from Tokyo Bus Station. Matt had gone from one dream to another. We knew if we headed back to K’s House it would be too early to check in so decided to do some last minute sightseeing....

This is it, our final adventure of the trip. We’ve ridden camels across the desert, boated up the Ganges, hiked along the Nepalese border, zip-lined across waterfalls, trodden through jungle with elephants, tandem-navigated vineyards, thrown ourselves out of a plane and off a cable-car, crashed a campervan, scuba-dived in the Great Barrier Reef, seen the Taj Mahal, the Petronas Towers, Angkor Wat & the Sydney Opera House. Now we’re off to climb 6km through the night to reach the summit of Mt Fuji, the highest mountain in Japan, in time for sunrise....

This may say this blog post is for 27th July but I am trying to write it up on 7th November, 103 days after the occasion so please accept my apologies for the tediousness. I have no idea why Japan has taken me so long to write about and how I made time whilst travelling to write up the rest of the travels is a weird one. Anyone who reads this may think why the hell am I bothering when it was so long ago....

Back to Tokyo again today. Our final trip on the Shinkansen and I think we have got our money’s worth. Based on Google maps we did a total of 1104 miles which is about ¥25 per mile (approx 20p). That’s cheaper than our old RX-8 (when we were materialistic and had money to spend on silly cars). In detail for anyone who likes this kind of stuff, like me, the distances were Tokyo –> Hiroshima (507 miles), Hiroshima –> Miyajima (16 miles), Miyajima –> Hiroshima (16 miles), Hiroshima –> Kyoto (224 miles), Kyoto –> Nara (26 miles), Nara –> Kyoto (26 miles), Kyoto –> Tokyo (289 miles)....

We hadn’t planned on going to Osaka as we didn’t think we would have enough time but the guy at the hostel mentioned there would be a big festival there today starting at 3pm so we felt we should go and have a look. The thing is we had also been recommended some other temples in Kyoto and tomorrow we’re off back to Tokyo so we had to get up early to get it all in....

Not content with staying in one place for very long off we popped to Nara, the old capital of Japan from 710 to 784AD, 45 mins on the train from Kyoto. They are revamping the train station so it took us 30 mins to find the bicycle hire place which turned out to be right out of the station instead of left. We intended to hire normal bikes but of course they had electric ones so who could resist?...

It is very very hot today. brought back memories of India & SE Asia, carrying our backpacks through searing sunshine. After our 3rd visit in as many days to Bakery Roti around the corner from J Hoppers, our favourite supplier of random bakery items, we struggled onto a packed tram with all the shoppers. Stares were a plenty as we blocked the narrow alleyways with our ugly luggage. It was a relief to get onto the cool air-conditioned Shinkansen to Kyoto....

After such a sobering morning we needed a lighter afternoon. A tram, train & ferry trip later and we were on Miyajima island, home of the Itsukushima Shrine, its famous floating torii gate and countless tame wild deer always looking for food. It’s a pretty little place with a coastal promenade and one street of cute little shops that even the deer fancied popping into for some retail therapy. At the end of the promenade you get a full view of the torii gate....