The first leg of our journey began on Monday June 24 in Brisbane at 3.30pm with a Virgin flight to Sydney to then connect with our China Airlines flight to the UK.

Second leg – Sydney to Taipei – 9 hours. Departed 10.10pm and watched the sunrise as we flew over the surpringsly mountainous Taiwan.

Third leg – Taipei to London – 15 hour flight – aaagh! Departed approx 9.00am and arrived in London at 4pm. My internal clock hasn’t quite adjusted to completing a 15 hour flight but arriving, by the clock, in 7!

I can’t recommend China Airlines highly enough. The service, the staff, the food and our Premier Economy seats made for a flight as good as it could be.

We had a major win when we got to Hertz to collect our hire car 🚗. They had booked a Fiat 500 for us! and when they saw our luggage we all agreed that size car wouldn’t cut it. So we upgraded to a larger one at a very good rate and had Dave added as a driver. Originally it was going to cost nearly $2000 more to add Dave because of his age (over 80) so to have him added with the car upgrade for £10 a day ($1200 extra for our total car hire of 66 days) was a bonus.

Then it was off to our first night’s accommodation at The Five Bells pub at Wickham. Without a GPS, map and no data capability on our phones we visited all the small villages in Berkshire for nearly 2 hours before we found Wickham! 🤣🤣🤣

It was worth the wait. The thatched 500 year old pub was a very welcome sight.

I couldn’t have wished for anything better to welcome us to our English holiday.