4th - 9th September - Bournemouth

4th Caught a train to Southampton where we had to change platforms for the train to Bournemouth. There were a few people on that train heading for the Isle of White for a festival, dressed in gumboots and carrying tents. I felt sorry for them as the forecast for Friday and the weekend is heavy rain. When we arrived at Bournemouth station Max was waiting there for us, he hasn't changed a bit. We followed him to Lee's flat and he had to head back to work.We went for a walk up to the local shops and had lunch at a pub and did some grocery shopping. Later in the evening Max came back and picked us up and took us for a drive around the Bournemouth area as Lee had to work late. We had to wait for quite a while for the ferry as a ship was using the channel.Once we reached the other side of the channel we set off up to Corfe castle and to a view point.
We then headed back to Bournemouth where we had dinner at a Toby Carvery with Max's parents. After dinner we picked Lee up at the supermarket and headed back to his flat where we had a few drinks and a good chat before heading off to bed.

5th Well the weather people got it right. We woke to pouring rain and howling wind. We had breakfast with Lee and his flat mate James before they set off for work. We stayed in doors and had another Max and Lee day watching DVDs and David cleaned the bikes. It did clear for a couple of hours in the middle of the day and we manged to go onto the balcony to take this picture of the Peir and the surfers.

The weather turned again and it poured down all afternoon and when Lee was running home from work. Lee cooked us fish and chips with mushy peas for dinner and a toffee cheesecake for "pudding".
We headed off to Lee's local, the urban beach after dinner and Max met up with us there.When the bar closed we caught a taxi into Bournemouth and met up with Max's wife Mandy, her twin sister Nat, who is out from Perth and a couple of their friends.We headed home after the bar closed at 1am but Max, Lee and the group headed off to another bar.

6th We woke at 6am as David had to catch the 7.05am bus into London to pick up our bags from Marcus and Jo's. David had a 20 minute walk in to the bus station and Catriona went back to sleep until 10am. David made it to Tooting with no problems but had to call Marcus to see which bus to get on. Luckily he did not need to get a bus as it was walking distance and he met Marcus at the end of his street. David had a chat for a while before marcus gave him a lift back to the station so he could make the 1pm bus back to Bournemouth. On one of the trains back to Victoria station David managed to bump into Sarah who was on our South American trip between Santiago and La Paz. Amazing. Catriona had a relaxing day walking up to Boscombe to have a look around but mostly just reading and watching TV. David made it back to Lee's at around 4pm and the weather was still good so we walked into Bournemouth to buy our carry on luggage. We passed a cute little childrens play area and had to stop and play in it on the way back when all the children were gone.We spent the night relaxing and watching a DVD "The brave one" with Jodie Foster.

7th Finally a beautiful non rainy day. We had breakfast on the balcony
before setting off for a walk from Boscombe Pier to Bournemouth Pier along the waterfront. David walked back along the waterfront and Catriona walked back along the cliff top. When we returned to the flat Lee was home so we decided to go to Christchurch. James dropped us of at Hengistbury Head and we walked up past the double dyke fortress from the iron age. We had a fantastic view of the Isle of White and the land forms at the end called the needlesWe then walked into Christchurch to view the ruins of an old castle and the priory. We caught the bus back to Boscombe and walked back to Lee's flat from there. Later on in the evening we headed out to a resteraunt just up the road for dinner. We finished the evening watching the new batman movie "the dark kinght" with James.

8th Last day to explore so we decided to set off to Stonehenge. We walked in to Bournemouth to catch the bus to Sailsbury. It was a very relaxing ride and we both dozed off on occasions. We passed through quite a few little towns where many of the buildings had thatched roofs. From Sailsbury we caught a tour bus with commentary, to Stonehenge.
We had a walk around with an audio guide before catching the bus back to Sailsbury where we bought lunch which we ate on the bus back to Bournemouth. Lee made us a lovely dinner of chilli which we enjoyed with Max and James. Mandy (Max's wife) could not make it as she was spending time with her twin sister who is also heading back to Australia. We had a good night drinking red wine and chatting. A great way to spend the end of our time in England.

9th Said our good byes to Lee and James before they set off for work then we set to packing. Max had dropped over the bike suitcases last night and we worked out we needed to remove the rear rack, the seat post and the handlebars for the bike to fit in the bag. We put all our bike clothes in plastic bags and packed them around the bike as padding. We ended up with our two suitcases for the bikes, Catri0ona’s old backpack and a stripy bag plus two new carry on cases we bought that we packed our clothes for Thailand in and our bike front bags. James came home for lunch at the right time as he was able to help us down the stairs with our luggage. A huge thank you to him for that. The taxi that came to pick us up looked too small to fit both of us and all our luggage in, but amazingly enough we all fitted. The taxi driver was very enthusiastic and we had a good chat to him about where we had been and where we were going and he told us about the Aussie he knew that had moved to England and wanted to know where the summer was. It is funny that everyone has apologised to us for the weather. We made it to the bus station in Bournemouth and had a nervous hour or two waiting to find out if we would be able to get on with all our gear. The luggage policy is for two medium suitcases. By the time the bus arrived Catriona was feeling ill, all for nothing as we had no trouble at all. Obstacle one passed. Next we had to check our bags in but as we were so early (it was only 4.30pm) we were told we had to wait till 7pm to drop our bags off. We ended up dropping them off at around 6.30pm again with no trouble even though our bike bags are over sized. We are so glad we travelled the way we did as going via America we are allowed 2 suitcases each of up to 32Kg unlike if we came via Asia you only get one bag of 20kg. Why is it that the Americans get to take so much luggage? We then had plenty of time to relax and wait for our flight to be called.