When this is posted, we will be sitting in Sainsbury’s coffee shop in Kidlington, under the pretence of having afternoon tea. In reality, we are just there to use their free internet. This week finds us living in a beautifully renovated barn in Noke, Oxfordshire, approximately 10 minutes north-east of Oxford; it is not internet friendly out here in the sticks. However, after everyone’s initial dismay (how did people ever travel before the web?), we found out where we could go for access and it seems, it’s not just Sainsbury’s, it’s everywhere.

We arrived Friday after a smooth trip on the “chunnel” – the sub-terranean train from Calais to Folkestone. At Calais, the English border patrol officer quizzed me about our trip, our car, our finances, the cost of our trip (I told him we didn’t want to know!), our jobs and our residency status (no, we are not from the Netherlands). I had to explain ‘long service leave’ to him before he felt it appropriate to stamp our Aussie passports and allowing us through.

Arriving in the UK, the traffic was civilised and once we realised the speed limit was in miles, we were able to match the pace. The traffic came to a grinding halt around the NW section of the freeway as we closed in on the exit to Heathrow, but we were able to view many planes taking off through our sun roof window, which was at least exciting for me.

Jessica’s gappy friend Malise arrived into Oxford bus station at 7pm from Austria that night. Rod and Jess had a bit of a difficult time trying to get to the bus stop: look, if you’ve read any of our posts, you will by now understand this is par for the course for Rod, however with a bit of help from a cabbie and the carpark’s resident homeless guy (I kid you not), they managed to get Malise and safely return to Noke.

Saturday saw us have a well-deserved home day whilst Jess and Malise checked out the sights and shopping of Oxford. It rained all day, so we were happy to watch a few DVD’s with Hamish and enjoy the comfort of our leather lounges. Mid-afternoon we headed to Sainsbury’s for free wifi and not-free afternoon tea; best coffee we’ve had since we arrived in Europe. Honestly, no-one can make a café latte or cappuccino here without a tower of meringue-esq froth on the top…apparently the English can though (thank the Gods).

Sunday the girls headed to London for a catch up day with two of their gappy mates who live in the UK. We took Hamish to the National Car Museum to see Mr Bean’s mini. It was a beautiful day – the rain had cleared and we had no trouble finding Beaulieu, where the museum is housed. There are many things to see and do there other than look at cars, although this is the main attraction. Even two Hyundai drivers enjoyed the beautiful old cars, F1 cars, motorbikes and Top Gear displays.

We enjoyed a monorail trip as well as a ride on an old double decker bus, sitting upstairs in the open of course and Hamish took on some English drivers in the kids play area. And although the three kids were oblivious, the parents were in full competition with sideline comments such as, “Go Australia!” and “Overtaking on the inside, that’s my girl” and “Go left, go left!”

Beaulieu is also the place where during WW2, the English trained their secret agents, including Nancy Wake, Violet Szabo and many others.

Beaulieu Palace still stands and we dared take a Hamish there for a look around, but this proved to be the undoing of him (and us) – as a result, none of us had ice cream. For the brief time we were there, I managed to check out the kitchens and was amazed at the ‘upstairs’ call bell system, of which I would have been on the receiving end.

From the looks of the many, many paintings of the Lords of Beaulieu, perhaps a bit less in-breeding might have been in order? They look like they may have led their men into battle from well behind the front lines. I mean, you know you’re rich when you have an iron cast of your hand (why?) and you can take your Rolls Royce Phantom to the US on the Queen Mary, no less.

Got home in time to watch the second half of Australia V Argentina in the rugby world cup semi-final and we look forward to watching the final on Saturday with Travis and Dawn Martin in Chester (Livy’s Mum and Dad).