Saturday, February 08, 2025

Down Under 2025 - Sydney

Sydney, Australia. 06/09-February-2025.

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Friday 07: We made it to Sydney! We had a refuelling stop at Singapore where they kicked us off the plane for an hour which gave us a chance to shower and change in the BA Executive lounge. We had a couple of days in Sydney before travelling onto NZ. 

I loved the inflight map with its pilot’s eye view.

We ordered an Uber from the airport and had a short drive to our home exchange apartment between the airport and the city centre. 

Our apartment was in Forest Lodge, a lovely green suburb with many old, Victorian houses. Despite feeling a bit zombie-like and not used to the heat (29 degrees C), we managed to fit in a lot on our first day: brunch at Tramsheds, a walk around the river front and back through the streets, a trip into the centre for a sunset concert at the Sydney Observatory and back for dinner at a local Korean restaurant. 

After arriving at the apartment we went for brunch at Tramsheds, a nearby shopping complex / food hall.

It’s not called Tramsheds for nothing.

There were lots of typical historic houses in our area with lovely cast iron railings. It was fascinating to see the similarities and the differences between Victorian houses in London, New Orleans, South Africa and Sydney. All the same era and many commonalities in the detail but all subtly different.

Anzac bridge and the continuation of our walk.

We saw all manner of Local wildfowl inhabiting the canal area: wild turkeys, noisy cockatoos, white faced heron and an Australian white ibis.

Just at the bottom of our street, this lovely path along the side of a canal leads to the Tramsheds shopping mall and food hall.

We booked for a free sunset concert up by the Sydney Observatory. Heading up to the concert, we turned a corner and suddenly this was the view!

It was a lovely setting for the concert with a view of the harbour bridge in the distance.

The two lads played for about three hours, modern ambient music. Gentle to listen to whilst watching the river flow.

The obligatory sunset photo from the observatory.

Supper was back at the conveniently close Tramsheds but at a different restaurant from brunch.

Saturday 08: Another busy day in Sydney. Morning was, of course, parkrun / parkwalk. We might be jet-lagged and not accustomed to 23 degrees and 67% humidity but it is #parkrunday! 

Today's parkrun choice was actually the second closest to our apartment but chosen in order to give us an N for our second alphabet. A three-lapper round the perimeter of St Leonard's park, the course descriptions led us to expect hills but thankfully only gentle slopes. Big friendly crowd of 460 runners and walkers, almost everyone we spoke to were tourists or expats and Mary had a lovely iced coffee in a local cafe afterwards.

General view of the park.

Mary volunteered as park walker and donned the blue tabard.

After a shower back at the apartment a friend, Peter, picked us up and took us for a drive up to Sydney's lovely northern beaches. We made a stop for lunch at a marina we then headed off to a huge bushland National Park stopping at a couple of viewpoints to enjoy the scenery. 

One of the stops near Dee Why beach.

Some of the birds we saw on our walk and on the tour with Peter: Sea Eagle, Bush Turkey, Pelican & unidentified raptor (possibly hawk or osprey).

At our insistence Peter dropped us off at Manley Quay and we made our way home by public transport: ferry, train and bus. Then a quick change and back to Tramsheds again for a lovely supper and some Australian wine. Mary’s first wine since arriving in Australia!

Sunday 09: We had an early flight to New Zealand, so rather than rely on Uber we took a recommendation from our host and ordered a local taxi driver. The alarm went off horribly early at 5:30 for a 6 o’clock pick up which meant we were at the airport in good time to do bag drop and get airside for our breakfast. The flight to Queenstown all went very smoothly and thus began our New Zealand adventure.

Next: Cromwell, 09/12-February-2025

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Wednesday, February 05, 2025

Down Under 2025 - Introduction

Penrith, UK. 05-February-2025.

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Wednesday 05: Mary’s cunning plan had to been to run away to New Zealand for her big birthday for the number that must not be named. British Airways do not fly to New Zealand, but we had enough BA miles to get us one business class ticket to Sydney and, with an Amex two-for-one voucher, get us two business class flights to Sydney. We would then pay for the short haul flights across to New Zealand. 

There are limited reward seats on the long haul flights and you can only book up to a year in advance. That means that you can’t book the outbound flight until the return flights are available. As a result the outbound flights that we wanted were snapped before the returns were available. In the end we were able to snag both outbound and return flights a couple of weeks later than the original plan.

So Mary had 11 months to plan our itinerary. The plan was, following advice from friends, to start at the south island and work our way north. There were too many options so she narrowed it down using two criteria: 1) Every Saturday had to have a parkrun and 2) We had to visit as many of the major wine regions as possible.


The most common question we got asked was “Are you hiring a camper van?” “No, we are using home exchange for most of our accommodation and travelling about by a combination of car hire and train”. The most common comment we got was “You will love it, it’s fantastic!” This is Mary’s planning spreadsheet with location, travel / events and accommodation. 


All in place, and travel visas completed online in advance, we headed down to London the day before our flight to ensure no danger of train delays impacting our ability to catch the evening flight. It gave us a chance to meet up with my siblings and partners for a pre-flight meal in Skylon restaurant in the south bank.

Thursday 06. We mooched about during the day and then headed to LHR T5 to drop off our hold luggage at the earliest opportunity. We then killed a couple of hours in the Executive Lounge drinking and only eating a few nibbles as we knew there would be a full meal once we were in the air.

Next: Sydney, 06/09-February-2025

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Monday, February 03, 2025

UK Blues Festival 2025

Blackpool, England. Friday 31-January/Sunday 02-February-2025.

A return to Blackpool following the inaugural event last year. Booked shortly after it finished to take advantage of the early bird reduced ticket deal. Mary mentioned this to a group of her girl friends who expressed an interest so we were joined by Andrea and Christine. 

We used home exchange for our accommodation, a house that clearly doubles as a B&B during the summer months judging by the individual locks on each room and a dining room / lounge for residents.

We arrived on the Thursday night before the festival started and got settled into our accommodation. Rather than eat out we dined in on chicken and chorizo gumbo out of our freezer.

The organisers changed the arrangements from last year. Previously the main stage was in the cavernous Empress Ballroom which, while impressive, was not so good acoustically. This year they used a couple of the conference rooms which worked better although there was more distance to walk between them. 

During the afternoon sessions they had three stages in operation: the Main stage, the Acoustic stage and the Introducing stage. In the evening it was just the Main stage (although on Friday they reused the Introducing Stage for a couple of bands). The Introducing Stage is for less well known bands. You get to vote for your favourite each day and the winner gets a slot on the Main stage the following year.

This room was the venue for the Acoustic stage. A lovely Victorian pub room. 

Previously I have dashed from stage to stage to see as many acts as possible. This year I kept my FOMO under control and spent more time static which allowed our friends to rush from stage to stage to see multiple acts whilst I guarded our seats.

Friday 31st January.

Josie Field (Acoustic). A mezzo soprano with a lovely smooth, pure voice. She is more about the voice than the guitar playing.

Chantel McGregor (Acoustic). By contrast Chantel is more about the guitar than the voice. A regular act from Solid Entertainment’s stable but somehow she just doesn’t do it for me despite her awards and devoted following.

Dom Martin (Acoustic). A Lad from Belfast who we have seen twice before and been impressed with so we were pleased to see that he was on the lineup twice, once acoustic and once with his band. His set included a John Martyn song to confuse one of our party who had misheard his name.

In the intermission we went out for supper at Twisted Indian. It describes itself as Indian Street Food but that’s just marketing BS it is a normal Indian restaurant. We ate there last year and were happy to return.

Thomas Heppell (Introducing). One of several power trios of the festival. Hard rocking blues.

True Strays (Main). Some complex drumming going on behind the guitarists.

Chantel McGregor Band (Main). Obviously louder and more uptempo than the acoustic set but still not enough to send us to the merch table.

Alice Armstrong (was Introducing). We all agreed this lady is good. She belts out the songs with gusto.

Aynsley Lister (Main). Friday’s headliner, a ZZ Top style set. Excellent rocking music.

Saturday 01.

Blue Nation (Main). Rocking humorists with much entertaining banter between the songs. We liked their so much that we bought two of their CDs.


Long Road Home (Main). Last year’s Introducing stage winners. Their prize - a slot on the main stage this year.

Kyla Brox (Introducing). Belting it out in style, a powerful bluesy voice.

Ken Pustelnik’s Groundhogs (Main). Featuring Ken the drummer from the original Groundhogs still playing at 78. Definitely solidly in the Rock category.

Albany Down (Introducing). Don’t remember much about this set.

Supper was at Turtle Bay, a Caribbean restaurant where I had jerk chicken with rice and beans. FUn and fairly basic but then I wasn’t expecting haute cuisine.

The Milk Men (Main). We’ve seen them before and were impressed. A cracking show - kind of Dr Feelgood meets ZZ Top.

The Hitman Blues Band (Main). Definitely American.

Dom Martin Band (Main). Having enjoyed the acoustic set we now get the full band treatment. He is going from strength to strength. Mary thought he was sublime.

Sunday 02.

Kris Riviere (Introducing). Warm Delta blues. Got my vote for the Introducing act of the day.

Son Jack Jnr. (Acoustic). Jangly slide guitar reminded me of Mississippi John Hurt.

Tom Killner (Main). A bit twangy - a hint of country in there.

Lightning Threads. On the Introducing stage  

Jack J Hutchinson (Acoustic). Classic singer/songwriter. Excellent.

Bag’O’Bones (Introducing). Full tilt boogie with some nice slide guitar work.

Snake Oil Band (Main). Old school blues complete with harp.

Sloetrain (Introducing). Another blues band but I wondered if they still have day jobs.

Supper was at Umami, a pan-global buffet restaurant - for a fixed price you could eat as much as you wanted. There was a huge range of choices - something for everyone - and the quality was surprisingly good.

Willie Barrett and John Otway (Main). They are a one hit wonder with “Really Free”. I was not expecting a hilariously funny, laugh out loud performance from this pair.

A comedy musical act complete with Bagpuss bagpipes.

The Crazy World of Arthur Brown (Main). Apart from “Fire” I knew nothing of his music. Turns out the band put on a rocking set with a bonkers collection of caped outfits from the theatrical eponymous frontman. 


King King (Main). Mary knew of this band by reputation, I’d never heard of them and they were an excellent Rock band (from Scotland) The kilt wearing lead singer and guitarist made me laugh, he said he’s going to keep on playing as long as he can. His ideal is to “cark it on stage like Tommy Cooper“. 

There was a man in front of me videoing the show with the flash on. 1) the light does nothing to illuminate the stage thanks to the inverse square law and 2) the light is a clear signal that you are videoing the performance which in some venues could get you chucked out. What a Muppet!

We enjoyed it so much we have already snapped up tickets for 2026!

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