Right now I'm sitting in a very nice hotel in Manchester. Our friend Peter is working up here for the week and his company puts him up in a hotel all expenses paid. The room is big and he knew L and I were on our way down and offered for us to stay with him at the hotel. We all nearly ended up together in a kingsize bed but managed to sort out a room with two double beds! Zoe has even been provided with a porter cot.

　

We spent today in a little town called Twemlow. Lyndon really wanted to have a look at this town where his name and ancestors came from so he found it. It is so small it doesn't have a church or a pub! We found Twemlow lane, Twemlow cottage and Twemlow hall. The people who now own the hall invited us in and showed us a photo album of the house and grounds as it has changed over the years. They also had info on the family tree and the lives of the Twemlows back then. We were able to walk around the grounds which were beautiful with ponds and lakes lots of trees and lawns. (It rained the whole time we did this, it rains every day here and will continue to do so for the weekend according to the TV!) We took photo's and tried to imagine how much the place would be worth and dreamed of buying it back.......big dreams and farfetched!!! The place is probably worth 3 million NZ. It's a big house on 20 acres of the original land. We also went to the the next village, close enough to walk to and looked at the graveyard in the local church grounds and found the graves of Twemlows as well. It was a very interesting day and we are both glad we have done it. Lyndon is the only one from his generation of Twemlows in NZ that has visited Twemlow here in England, following his Aunty Val and Aunty Dorothy, who visited the area about 10 years ago. They came to England after being invited to the annual "afternoon tea with the Queen".

　

To go back a bit we arrived a week ago in Edinburgh. It is like winter there, don't ask me what happened to summer! We wore polypro every day plus jackets and socks etc. We spent a day in Edinburgh on a tour bus around the city (same day as the eclipise and it got very cold because of it - we were on top of a double decker bus without a roof, we didn't stay up there for long) which was very interesting. We also looked at the Edinburgh castle and saw where the Tattoo was performed. We looked at getting tickets for the Tattoo but it would've involved a long wait in a que and then no gurantee of getting the tickets anyway. It is performed outside and of course the weather is very chilly at night and I think it would have been a bit much for Zoe. Apparently it is coming to NZ next year anyway and I would imagine it would be performed in Dunedin as it is the Scottish place of NZ, so maybe we will catch it then. Edinburgh is a great city and I hope we can spend another day looking around before we leave the country. We have to go back there to catch our flight to China anyway.

　

We spent the weekend in the lake district on the west side of the island here in England. We stayed with friends from church back home there, some came up from London for the weekend also. One of the guys works for the YMCA and had access to caving and climbing gear so Lyndon and friends went caving on Sat. The caves are graded from 1 to 5 and they did a grade 4. Lots of crawling and absailing and getting wet. They all got back very late in the evening and throughly enjoyed their trip even though they were exhausted and sore.  I stayed home with Zoe and took her to the lake instead to feed the swans and ducks. There was a fair on  with various rides available so I took Zoe on the merrygoround. It was the fasted one I've been on and I really thought I'd be sick at the end, Zoe of course loved it - she didn't appear to be feeling dizzy or sick I should say. On Sun we went to another village and went to the park and looked around the town and generally had a relaxed day. We then caught a bus to Manchester on Mon which is where we are now.

　

Tomorrow we head to London where we will stay with Pete's wife Kate until he joins us at the weekend and we all go to Bristol and Bath. We have to apply for our Chinese visa's while in London and it could take a while which means we might be here longer than we anticipated. We would like to spend some time in Ireland and the north of Scotland and would've had realistically only a week left to do that so an extra one might be good. I hope to see Melanie in the next week, she will notice a big difference in Zoe having seen her last at 4 weeks old. We have been in contact via email and I will phone her when I get to London.

　

Well that is all at the moment, hope you are all well, Lyndon and Pete will be home from the movies soon so I will try to be asleep before they get in. Love to you all Rachel, Lyndon and Zoe.