Reillys on Tour

... Dalek. Hi all, Many things I am capable of but, as I discover, many things are unwise. Lisette and I were woken at the princely time of 1:50 am and tumbled out of bed, into clothes and into the blackness outside. The plan, such as it was, was to climb Adam's Peak which is either the fourth or fifth highest mountain in Sri Lanka (Asanga and the Lonely Planet are still arguing the toss on this point). The plan was to reach the summit and watch dawn break from the top. Also, Adam's Peak famously casts a shadow the shape of a roughly equilateral triangle just after dawn breaks which we were also hoping to see. Climbing a mountain in the dark is less fun than you might imagine. There's a lot of stumbling, wheezing and general bitter self-recrimination as to why you ever agreed to doing this in the first place. There's also a fairly worrying amount of losing the people you're travelling with as well. In the event we did finally make the ascent, reaching ...

...no - as it turns out I'm *all* woman... (thanks to the good Professor) Hi all, First up, thanks for your emails - apologies for not responding in kind but I've just recently (within the last half hour) been re-introduced to the world of "pre-broadband". Internet connection in Kandy is pretty much approximate to to internet connection in England in the early 90's. Maybe slower. And so each keystroke has alas become rationed for today. Following about 12 hours of monsoon rain Sri Lanka has returned to levels of frankly dangerous heat and humidity. Even Lisette (bearing in mind her boundless enthusiasm for heat) has declared that it's "a bit much". If you'd like to paint a mental picture of me at present you should imagine a man in a sauna, fully clothed and eating curry. I'm hot. I've been to Happyland. Happyland, it turns out, is a spice garden on the way to Kandy. We visited it yesterday and were greeted by quite a s...

...and this is The Great Escape - I'll come back to that.... Hello Folks, Lisette and I have headed off for one of our adventures - this time to Sri Lanka. Unlike our usual approach to holidaying (buy tickets, catch plane and pray) we have decided to deviate. We are "on a tour". The tour started somewhat inauspiciously. We arrived after a 12 hour flight at 3 am on Valentines Day in Colombo. We were met by a man bearing an "Adventure Company" sign who bundled us into a van together with our fellow tour-ees/tour-ettes. All were pretty shattered at this point and pretty much hoping for instant bed. Not to be. Our tour guide (Asangha) drove us for quite some time and we were in some pretty ropey neighbourhoods by the time he confessed that he may have taken a wrong turn at some point. However, by 4am we were delivered to a hotel. The good. The bad: hotel was pitch black and it soon became apparent that we did not have reservations. The group mood d...

Dear all, Never ones to sit back and relax, Lisette and I have been busily exerting ourselves in Santorini. It's a good way to break up the mealtimes. The most ambitious activity so far has been a hike from our digs, halfway up the island on the West side, to "Oia" - a town at the North-West tip of Santorini. Looking at the map on the morning before the hike we scoffed at what a short distance it was and made plans to complete said journey in under 2 hours. This was not to be. Underway... "As the crow flies" is a fatal way of looking at the world in these parts. It fails to take on board the matter of scrabbling up hills, down mountainsides and also the furnace-like heat - none of which does the humble crow have to contend with. Shortly after departing Firostefani ("our digs") these points came sailing right home to us. Regular examination of the GPS map on my phone made us realise just how far we actually hadn't travelled. Neverth...

Greetings from Greece...... and Salutations from Santorini! I am writing to you from Fira - the island capital. Fira, is one of the few "vertical" towns which I've have had the pleasure to encounter. Nothing here is flat. Essentially Fira appears to be a cliff face onto which bits of shop, restaurant and pathway have been pinned - possibly by genial giants with an architectural bent. We are in a land truly unfamiliar to spirit-levels. The net result of this means that everything feels like (and indeed is) exercise. Want a meal? Clamber up a cliff first. Want to go shopping? Go hiking first... And there are no shortage of shops / restaurants and similar here. Lisette and I were initially very worried upon arrival as despite having packed everything else we had left behind any kind of phrasebook. Normally we at least know a couple of numbers, "please", "thank you" and "could we have the bill please?" - not so this time. So ou...

We have arrived in the Cinque Terre which is on the North West coast of Italy. The direct translation is "Five Towns" and the idea is that you stroll / hike from one town to the next marvelling in the sights of the sea and the beauty of the towns. And the towns are lovely - it is as if Walt Disney came here 80 years ago to get his ideas of what fairy castles etc should look like. Pretty as a picture We are staying in the most Southerly town inside the Cinque Terre - Riomaggiore. There are no real hotels inside the Cinque Terre and the books (Lonely Planet and the " Rough Rubbish Guide to Italy") advise staying with locals. Accordingly we found ourselves following a burly, and I thought rather scary, Italian man home from the station after we arrived. Despite initial trepidation we ended up at a lovely apartment with a view of the sea at a fair price and with a gushing landlady who is wont to say things like "you should-a make-a the hay while the sun-...

I have little, in fact no, tolerance left for young women who sit with their legs crossed on public transport. Why they do it is beyond me - surely they know they are taking up more than their allotted space when they do so? I mean, i'd be bound to notice if i spent 50 minutes kneeing the person in front of me in the back and non-stop kicking the person next to me with every vibration of the bus - wouldn't you? It's as if they are completely unaware of their own bodies from the ankles down. Give me strength. (By the way apologies if you believe I am unfairly maligning the good name of "young women" - it is just that I havent yet encountered any men / older women / boys / girls / dogs / cats that exhibit the same objectionable behaviour) Away from the kickers Enough with the moaning. As you can probably gather Lisette and i have been spending a lot of time on buses of late - we have been a little over ambitious with this holiday in that we are travelling pre...