G & J away from home

Tuesday, 9 June

Our visit today was to Dursley to visit Bryan and Sue, and my old friend Danvers.  That's Danvers (in the photo) half way down the garden.  He's an elderly chap now and not inclined to be friendly to the visiting foreigners so I had to do without a cat fix, but it was nice to see him still around and enjoying life.

Danvers

After we dropped off some research papers with Bryan we headed off for lunch and the short drive to the motel.  We needed the afternoon to plan our visit to Bath tomorrow (in Gary's case) and to get some reading done (in my case).

Finished my book

I liked the story but it's not my favourite of her work.  I am struggling a bit to read new-to-me stuff, preferring to re-read favourites in the evenings.

We were eating at the motorway services building this evening and I wanted one thing on this side of the motorway, while Gary wanted something on the other so had to use the overbridge.  Here's his photo of the M5 motorway at about 7pm.

Over the motorway

We are still being fooled by the extended daylight hours.  It always seems too light to go to bed and then when I check the time when the room gets light it is still too early to get up.  No time to adjust, now, though, as we have only 3 sleeps left in the UK, then off to Shanghai and home.

Looking forward to getting home now.


Some Thoughts on Packing

Despite my very, very late start on packing for this trip I did (as always) agonise over what to take and what to leave behind, especially as I was determined to only take my two carry-on sized bags; one to check in and one to carry onboard.

The good news is that there is only one item of clothing that hasn't been used (one of two denim shirts) and one item I think I ought to have added (jeans).  I have used all four pairs of shoes but could possibly have made better selections as two of these were used for the same role.

Because of the small bag sizes I have worked very hard at not buying things for people (take note, nieces ;o), but in the last week have added a few books to the bags which will make it a bit hard to divide the bags back into heavy (for checking in) and light (for carrying on).  I might have to rent some of Gary's space.

Not having a wheeled bag has been somewhat off-set by having backpack straps on the bags, but even so long distance treks in the airport even with only the 7kg carry-on bag were not that great.

I can think of a few minor things to drop from the packing list but more of my ideas for 'next time' are about better grouping within the packing cells than actually leaving things behind.

Everything in the laundry kit worked well and has been used often but Gary made a better decision than I did in carrying laundry powder rather than liquid.
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