IRB 7s - Twickenham

After a balmy April, and a rather warm May, as soon as the long weekend rolled around the skies opened and it got very cold.

This did not however deter us from attending the IRB 7s at Twickenham over the week, albeit a little rugged up!


Jess, Ange, Emma, Claire


Paul and Andrew


NZ vs Fiji in the final (which we won)


Haka in the rain

Amy's Admission Ceremony

Although the exam and results were a long time ago, and even though I've had a practicing certificate for months, I liked the idea of being part of a formal English ceremony, which was exactly that, a ceremony.

So Paul and I both took half days and had lunch in Lincoln's Inn, followed by the ceremony in the Grand Hall of the Law Society.


Amy in Lincoln's Inn




Amy and the President of the Law Society


We played tourist for the rest of the day, hanging out in the grassy-in-the-name-of-art expanse of Trafalgar Square and seeing Avenue Q (a show known for being Seaseme Street for grown ups).

The New Forest

Here's a few pictures from our recent trip to the New Forest...


Brokenhurst Cemetery - Brokenhurst had a hospital during WWI which cared for a lot of NZ soldiers injured in Belgium; those who did not survive are buried in a special part of the cemetery on the hill.



Trainspotting in Brokenhurst - the whole town turned out for this arrival.


Paul tending to his bike as we left the pub where we had lunch. The New Forest official cycle map has all the hidden pubs marked out...


Having a break in the sun.

May Bank Holiday

The most recent Bank Holiday weekend, Paul was off on a rugby tour (with his team the Old Street Onians)to those well known European rugby powerhouses of Germany and Austria.



Here's a picture of Paul running with the ball when he was playing the Bavarian All Stars (Paul got a try and the team won 56-0). They also played Graz, in Graz and won 12-0 (in a rain shortened match).

If you are brave enough you can check out all the photos from the tour. If you are not so brave, you can check out the teams they played.

http://www.svsf.de/rugby/

http://www.muenchen-rugby.de/

http://www.rugby-graz.com/


So, while Paul was away I got to go on a tour of my own to Stratford-upon-Avon (as opposed to Stratford-upon-the-central-line) with Amber and Leona.

We stayed at a lovely YHA a little bit out of town, enjoyed the countryside, ate at a local pub, and hired bikes and rode to Warwick Castle




En route to the castle we stopped at a flour mill - powered by water (Flour Mill behind Leona, who was taking the photo)


Then at a little church yard.

Finally we had a picnic at Warwick Castle, joined in their CSI (Castle Scene Investigation murder mystery), watched falconry and battle displays and climbed the turret. You will see that we are kind people and let Leona join us, even though she did not wear the proper uniform.

London Zoo & Regent's Park

After promising for ages that when we had a weekend in London (rare), with little planned (even more rare), and the weather was decent (unpredictable), that we would go to the zoo, we finally made it and enjoyed a day our with Neil, Ange and little Emma.

London Zoo had just opened a gorilla enclosure so we got to enjoy some good close up time with this friendly fulla.

The butterfly enclosure was also quite amazing - a humid tunnel full of butterflies that would flutter about and land on you. The hatching enclosure was easier to take photos of...

And finally we finished our day at the zoo with a picnic in Regent's Park.

Ange & Emma

Scotland

Hardly home from India - I think we'd been back four days and hadn't really even tackled the mountain of laundry it was back on a plane to Scotland to visit Paul and Lorna who were over from NZ visiting their families.

It was great to finally meet the people we'd heard so much about and to catch up on almost a couple of years worth of life stories.

We also played tourist slightly, visiting a castle (and I forgot to take photos), and the birthplace of Robbie Burns.







We also ate haggis. Yum.