GIRLS ON TOUR 2006

IN THE BEGINNING...............

   Girls do a bit of bonding at V August 2005.....

So after spending all our school lives ignoring each other Lee and I end up as travel buddies for a year!  I had thought about going away for a long time but had never done anything about it.  Eventually I went to Thailand in the hope that if I did that my wonderlust would be satisfied - little did I know!!  I came home to find that I hadn´t been successful in a couple of job interviews so a change of career wasn´t on the horizon.  Men were off the agenda and so taking a year off became more inviting.  I spoke to Lee about it but her plans were to buy a horse with her savings so I didn´t have anyone to go with.  Some weeks later Sam said she thought Lee would go so we spoke again and before I knew it on a June afternoon in the beer garden we were plotting our escape! 

  Me and Sheila, Flora Day 2005

Hen nights and weddings took over as Sheila´s big day loomed on 6th August which was a truly special time. 

  Sheila´s Hen Night Edinburgh, June 2005

Once Sheila had become Mrs Kent it was time to seriously start planning the tour.  The world is a big place and I wanted to see it all but eventually we narrowed it down to: South America, New Zealand and Thailand.  South America hadn´t been somewhere I had considered but Lee wanted to go to the Galapogos Islands which sounded perfect and the more we researched the more amazing SA looked.

Then I was thrown into a whole new world of mirco this and micro that.....  Everything needed to be small and essential if it could go into my ruck sack.  Walking boots were brought, coats, sleeping bags, mosquito nets - the list was huge and I spent a lot of time aimlessly wondering around hiking and camping shops wondering if this walking sandal was better than that!!  Not for me any more the shiny and pretty packages on the Dior and Gucci cosmetics counters!  Not a stilletto in sight in my bag although you were right Sam 5 bars of soap was excessive and yes I can buy it quite easily in SA :-)

A big moment came in September when our tickets were brought - now this was for real.  We added Australia and Singapore as stopovers and for 2,220 pounds we had brought our passage to a very different year in 2006.  We told our bosses of our plans and suddenly the wheels were very much in motion.

We decided to take our Teaching English as a Forgein Language course as a stand by while we were away so the next few weeks saw us with our heads in books studying grammar and trying to work out what the hell gerrunds were all about! 

December came we finished work and became offically unemployed, a first for me in 15 years!  We said our goodbyes, made our way to London and spent a surreal Christmas trying to get our heads around the journey we were about to make.