On 19th August 2018, my wife Jean and I celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. We will be marking the occasion with a night’s stay at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons, but rather more importantly, we will also be embarking on our longest trip abroad for the first and probably last time. Starting with an early morning flight from London Heathrow to Dubai on 22nd August 2018, we will not be returning to the UK until 27th December. 128 days, 18 weeks, 4+ months – however you want to frame it, it’s a long trip. 3 days in Singapore, 11-odd weeks in Australia/Tasmania, 7-odd weeks in New Zealand and 3 days in Hong Kong on the way back. We will actually be spending Christmas Day in Hong Kong!

Jean has actually always wanted to visit Australia and New Zealand, but never really had the opportunity until now. As time has gone on (and on and on….) my desire to go there has increased, as I have heard almost nothing but good about all destinations. We are both retired and have had the time to dream about this once-in-a-lifetime trip. Our daughters have both \”been there and done it\”, adding to the understandable parental determination to match their children\’s adventures, but backpacking and hostels were never going to be involved as far as we were concerned…..

We needed a plan. A friend of mine, a consummate traveller, recommended Trailfinders as an agent for a trip of this nature. So – we decided to drop in to their branch in St. Albans at the back end of 2017. We were extremely fortunate to be able to talk to a specialist for the area, and over the course of the next couple of hours, a few vague ideas turned into a truly ambitious project. This has now firmed up, been bought and paid for.

The priority of this blog is for us to retain a record of this journey for our own use, as we all think that we will remember everything, but of course we are deluding ourselves. I will be trying to post daily updates, which may be very brief and bullet-pointy, and you are very welcome to read these if you have the remotest interest. You can even comment if you so wish. If you do comment and you are signed in to a Google account, your name should be shown in the Comment As box at the bottom. If not, please click the dropdown arrow and select the Name option. Fill in your name (the URL is unnecessary) and then Continue. Unless you do this, you may show up as Unknown. You can always just put your name at the end of the message as an alternative!

Much, much more to come in the following days, weeks and months.