@travellingwiththeateam

After leaving Sydney on 15 Jan 2024, we set off on the first of three camper van trips back to back, covering over 2,750 miles from Sydney to Melbourne, then on to Adelaide before finishing with a loop around the wonderful island of Tasmania.

During this time we visited over 50 beaches across the four states, staying on camp sites in some of the most glorious settings, as well as free camping on sports fields, vineyards, urban parks and beach tracks.

We woke up the sound of the local birdlife in all its various forms, including laughing kookaburra, galah, Australian magpie, Paradise parrot, Rainbow lorikeet and the Sulphur-crested cockatoo to name but a few. Added to that it wasn’t uncommon to spot wallabies and kangaroos in the undergrowth and occasionally koala’s, Wombats.

In terms of our beach standouts we loved visiting NSW finest, Hyams Beach and Jervis Bay.

In Victoria, Bells Beach, Squeaky Beach, Lorne Beach, Brighton Beach, Torquay Beach, Apollo Bay, Port Fairy, St Kilda Beach and Wilson’s Prom.

Moving on to South Australia we enjoyed Long Beach, Hardwicke Bay Beach, Port Willunga Beach, Glenelg Beach and Maslin Beach.

Finishing in Tasmania we spent some great times at beaches in Wineglass Bay, Bay of Fires, Cosy Corner and Boat Harbour Beach.

Outside of being on numerous picturesque beaches, we spent some wonderful times wine tasting at 25 wineries, across South Australia visiting Barossa Valley, McClaren Vale, Clare Valley, Adelaide Hills and Coonawarra. The wines from the Red centre of Australia included Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir. We also indulged in Riesling’s, Chardonnay and the odd Sauvignon Blanc. Happy days!!

In Tasmania, we spent time in Devils Corner and Freycinet Peninsula, with Josef Chromy Wines standing out as one of the best wineries on the island.

We got to see Andy’s family during this 2 month stint, notably The Elliot’s in Melbourne and Adelaide – big thanks to Sue, Paul, Rupert and Jayne.

Our lasting memory of this time was the freedom that the camper vans gave us as we crossed through the four states, going and staying wherever we wanted and experiencing the beauty and wonder that Australia offers.

Our overseas adventure took us via a stopover in San Francisco on 14 December before flying on to Sydney arriving on the 16th. We then spent a month in Manly with friends enjoying a summer Xmas & NY with days on the beach and dinner and drinks in the afternoons and evenings.

During our 32 days in Manly on the Northern Beaches, we visited 17 beaches, including Manly Beach, Shelly Beach, Freshwater Beach, Collins Flat Beach, Little Manly Beach, East Manly Cove Beach, Manly Cove Beach, Delwood Beach, Fairlight Beach, Esplanade Beach, Silver Beach, Quarantine Beach, Queenscliffe Beach, South Curl Curl Beach, Whale Beach, Palm Beach and Avalon Beach.

During this time we frequented over 25 bars and restaurants including The Manly Club, Hugo’s, Felons Brewing Co., Manly Pavilion, The Espy, 4 Pines Brewery, Manly 16ft Skiff Sailing Club, The Boathouse at Shelly Beach, Cibaria Manly, Sushi Plus, Rollers Bakehouse, Yo-Chi, The Ivanhoe Pub, Noon, Silo Espresso, Pilu at Freshwater, Harbord Hotel, Harbord Diggers, Pocket Pizza, Busta, The Newport Arms and The Joey.

We spent wonderful days and nights visiting the sights and scenes in Sydney, including the Rocks, Opera House, Circular Quay, The Botanical Gardens, Bondi Beach and Junction, Queen Victoria Building, Luna Park, St Mary’s Cathedral along with walking tours in the city and a food walking tour in Newtown.

We had a magical Xmas Day with friends at Freshwater Surf Club playing festive games, eating Xmas dinner followed by surfing on Freshwater Beach. It truly doesn’t get much better than this.

On the 28th Dec we celebrated Andy’s 54th bday at Hugo’s restaurant on Manly Wharf, which had an all white theme. It’s always so special to visit a traditionally winter affair in the glorious sunshine of the southern hemisphere.

New Years Eve was a picnic on East Manly Cove Beach late afternoon followed by fireworks in Manly Cove before driving off to Cremorne Point where we watched the main NYE fireworks off Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House.

Into the new year of 2024 we celebrated a final bday for our daughter Amelia who was turning 19 later in January, so before she returned to the UK on the 12th January, we had a Mexican themed dinner at El Camino Cantina on the Wharf.

After a hectic social life over the first month of our overseas tour, we eventually left Manly on the 15th to start our travels with the first of three camper van trips, with 2 weeks navigating a coast trip down to Melbourne.

Tomorrow we’ll detail the 2 months from Sydney to Melbourne, on to Adelaide and our final 2 weeks looping around Tasmania.

It’s now 4 weeks since we returned to England having spent almost 18 months travelling through 17 countries.

For those who didn’t follow us from the beginning, we started off in late October 2023 in Oxford and zigzagged away across England and Scotland, popping in to see (and stay) with friends and family.

Our UK leg took us to 26 locations, in England & Scotland across 6 weeks before we left for Australia on the 14th December 2023.

During this time we drove over 1,000 miles, stayed in 15 hotels, 5 guest houses and were treated to homely comforts by family and friends on 6 occasions.

Some other stats from the UK trip – we visited 7 spa towns, 6 beaches, trekked 5 mountains, crossed the Scottish border 4 times, spent 3 nights in a 5 star hotel, enjoyed 2 boat trips and celebrated 1, 21st birthday for Andy’s nephew Thomas.

In Part II tomorrow we’ll cover off the key stats from our first 3 months overseas traveling in Australia, as we started our tour across NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.

Today marked the final day of our travels over the last 500 days or so.

Andy kept up his routine with a 10k run around the Over Hulton area where he grew up, before we said our goodbyes to his parents for the moment and got back on the road one final time.

After promising to return north once settled back in Oxfordshire, we drove back south down to Loughborough to drop Amelia back off at University, treating her to a coffee and lunch before saying goodbye whilst she finishes the last couple of weeks of term.

One of the main reasons for returning from our travels was to see more of our daughter and provide her with a more stable home life. Hopefully we can do this and along the way enjoy the next chapter in our lives back in the UK for a while.

We returned to Oxford mid afternoon and made our way to friends Christophe & Barb’s who have kindly offered us a place to stay for a couple of weeks whilst we find a rental house and start to rebuild a home life in this fine city!

It’s been a real pleasure writing this travel blog over the last 18 months or so and we’ve enjoyed sharing our experiences and stories. It’s definitely changed us both for the better.

Our travels have demonstrated to us that we live in a wonderful world and we have met some amazing people along the way that made the trip so very special and memorable.

We have definitely got the travel bug and are already planning future trips in our heads for other parts of the world over the coming years.

Thanks again for helping us to share this amazing experience.

Until the next time!

We spent today catching up with Andy’s family in Bolton who we’d last seen in early December 2023.

Our stay was at Andy’s parents house where they’ve lived for over 50 years. Two doors down is his youngest brother Ian and wife Justine and their four kids. It was great to see them all and catch up with their news and what they’d been up to over the last 15months or so.

We appear to have brought back some of the Australian sunshine as it was unseasonal warm at 20 degrees with bright clear skies. We took full advantage and went for a walk around the fields in Over Hulton before treating ourselves to coffee and cakes at a local cafe.

We reacquainted with Andy’s parents who we’d last seen back in mid-December in Blenheim, New Zealand when they’d toured part of the southern hemisphere.

The ladies in white – our extended family from right to left, Susan, Andy’s cousin; her mum Margaret who’s just about to celebrate her 90th birthday and his mum, Marian who’s as busy as ever at the spritely age of 82!

In the evening Andy snook off with his youngest brother Ian to the nearby pub where they hatched plans for future cycling trips around the UK and Europe!

Tomorrow will return ‘home’ to Oxford, where our travelling adventure all started on 14 December 2023.

Our first day back in the UK after over 500 days overseas. We woke up in the village of Quorn, a few miles from Amelia’s student house in Loughborough.

Andy was up at 6am and was greeted by a cold frost and a continuation of his 10k running routine.

We drove over to Loughborough and picked up Amelia before heading north to go and see our respective families in Oldham and Bolton.

On the way we stopped off at the White Rose Shopping Centre Leeds to buy a few gifts and cards for family.

After getting to Michelle’s family house in Royton, we caught up her sister, niece and their kids.

Later in the afternoon we had a trip down memory lane with dinner at the Summit Pub, next door to the first house we owned on Rochdale Road.

It was lovely to see them all after so long and hear all their news and talk a little about our travels and all the places we visited.

Early evening we made the short drive over to Andy’s parents house in Bolton to catch up with his parents and his brother and family. Again we spent the evening recounting stories of some of our travel experiences as well as hearing all about their news over the last 15mths or so.

Tomorrow we are seeing more family and friends in Bolton before we return to Oxford on Thursday and eventually return to our home city 506 days after we first left.

Thursday will be our final post day before we sign off on the travel blog.

Our last day of travels took us to our final stop in Doha where we had a 4hr stop over.

It’s a fun airport to walk around and explore and reminded us to Singapore with a central green/park landscape and lots of high end shops.

A very interesting place where East meets West in the Orchard.

Tonight we are in Loughborough staying close to Amelia’s University house before we drive up to Oldham and Bolton to our respective families. After 2 days in the North of England we will return to Oxford from the 19th and start our search for a longer term house to buy and then buy.

Well we never thought this day would come, but here we are, our final day of our travels before we return to the UK.

It’s been an incredible journey & experience and so difficult to put into words how much we’ve enjoyed the travelling odyssey.

We’ve been to 13 countries, a number of which we went twice, notably Australia, Vietnam, China and Indonesia/Bali.

Throughout the 502 days we’ve met some wonderful people and seen places that we never thought we’d ever the chance to visit until we organised the trip.

We both believe it’s changed us for the better and made us appreciate what a wonderful world we live in and how people for the most part are kind, considerate and generous and keen to share the countries they live in.

Well here we are at Sydney airport after our final day in Manly and our wider trip/tour. It’s been so much fun and the happy memories will stay with us for ever.

We’d love to show you pictures of us on the beach for the final time and then travelling through Sydney on our way to the airport but the media capacity on the app/phone seems to have been reached.

Am sure we’ll be able to resolve, but that’s not going to be today sadly so we will extend the blog for a couple of days once back in the UK to fill in the gaps from the photo library.

After that this travel blog will come to an end as we return to some level of normality before we hatch plans to travel again in the future.

It’s been a wonderful way to chart the last 15months overseas and before that the 6 weeks around the UK. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading about our adventures and the amazing places and people we’ve met along the way. Travelling is a real honour and one we’d recommend if you ever get the chance to do – travel definitely helps to broaden the mind and you get to see and experience some incredible places along the way.

As we about to board our flight to Doha we will check out now and will pick up again in London tomorrow morning.

A few photos of our last day in Australia.

Our last full day in Manly and the tour was fittingly spent with friends.

A special thanks goes out to Caroline, a friend for over 35yrs who Andy first met in Liverpool at University and has remained a part of our lives ever since, notably as Amelia’s godmother and our go to person whenever we were planning a trip to Australia.

She has helped to make our three stays in Manly over the last 15months so very special.

So today we spent the morning and early afternoon back on the beach again and enjoyed our quality time together in the sunshine.

The evening was back at the Skiff Club close to Manly wharf where we were blessed with a glorious early evening of sunshine and stunning views.

We were joined by our Manly massive friends who have helped to make our various stays so very special and it really feels like a home from home.

It was a fun night with lots of laughter, tainted with some sadness because we won’t see these people again for some time. That said we will definitely be back, just a little unsure when and for how long.



There were more photos but due to our ongoing technical issues with our phone these will have to be uploaded when we get back to the UK.

Tomorrow is our final day with our flight leaving Sydney via Doha to London leaving at 9.40pm, leaving us most of the day to still look around Manly market and hit the beach and enjoy a hot day with temperatures due to hit 35c degrees!

The count down to our departure continues…3 days to go and it’s back to the UK.

With another wonderful sunshine day we made the most of being down at Manly’s various beaches to watch the NSW championship completion with kayaking, surfing, rowing and swimming going on all around us on Manly’s main beach.

The competitors were across the age span with young and old taking part and such a great atmosphere.

The pink tight tops being worn by those competing take a little getting used and best suit those with the most ripped bodies.

More photos from the beach and at MJ the Musical.

If you’re carrying a little excess weight then they quickly look a little comical and undersized – think Little Britain!

We did take a load of photos of the day at the beach and our special night at the MJ musical at the Lyric Theatre where our godson Charlie is starring as Little Marlon.

We are however currently experiencing a few ‘technical difficulties’ and as a result only have a couple that have downloaded.

Hopefully once normal service has returned we will be able to add the missing photos to show what a great day and night we had.

Seeing Charlie in MJ the Musical made for such a great and special night and a fitting send off as we wave goodbye to everyone in Manly and make our final journey from Sydney to London.

After the show finished on Friday evening we hung around and managed to catch up on with a lot of the cast, notably the main man himself and the star of the show, the older Michael Jackson who narrates the show and performed some of the great hit songs, notably Thriller and got all the mannerisms just right along with a wonderful singing voice.

What a fantastic show and so amazing to see Charlie in action – he is definitely meant for life on the stage!

Tomorrow is our last full day and we have organised to meet up in the evening at the Skiff Club in Manly Cove for drinks and food with our Manly friends for one last time.

It’s going to be sad not to see them again for a while but we plan to come back as soon as we can and continue to enjoy this wonderful part of Australia.