It’s over a month since we last updated the bulefish blog but the travels have certainly continued.

After leaving Litchfield, we made our way to Dundee Beach for a few days and then finally onto Darwin. Turning up in Darwin in the middle of the dry season, only days before the Darwin show, the whole city was heaving and caravan parks heavily booked out. Thanks to some forward planning (for once), we had managed to find a cool little private camp about half an hour out of the city. The family have turned their property into a small campground and can accomodate five campers with power and water plus a few more unpowered in the back paddock. Darwin seems like a cool city with lots of things to see and do around the area but for us at this point in our trip, it’s a logistics stop as we pause the Australian road trip for a month and swap the caravan for a air flight half way across the world to England.

Leaving our car and van safely locked up in the back paddock of the property in Darwin’s outer suburbs, under the watchful eye of Angus the security bull, we set off on our long haul adventure. Being quite used to travelling long distances in the car, the kids were just as awesome on the flight and came through the 24 hour journey full of smiles (helped by a long sleep on the Singapore to London flight).

Over the last month we have toured the UK and spent some wonderful (and long overdue) time with family in various parts of the UK. The kids have had the chance to really get to know the family that they usually only see on FaceTime and the time here has been priceless.

We spent some time in the north, recovering from the journey and enjoying some TLC from grandma and grandad. It’s the middle of summer in the UK and grandmas garden is looking amazing… especially after Kiera has set up her tea party!

After a few days recovering from the long haul flight, it was time to make our way south to meet up with Andy and Uncle Phil in Falmouth on the south west coast. Whilst we are all very used to long distances in the car, I opted for the easy route with the kids to Cornwall and decided to fly from Manchester to Newquay – a short one hour flights seemed way more fun than 8 hours + in the car!

Summer was well and truly in full swing for our week in Falmouth and we happily settled into beach mode on this very beautiful part of the UK coastline.

Seizing the opportunity to show the children some ‘old buildings’, we spent an afternoon exploring Pendennis Castle. Built by Henry VIII in the mid 1500’s, the castle formed part of the King’s defence system to protect against invasion from France and the Roman Empire.

The most amazing part of our time in Cornwall however, was valuable time spent with family and the opportunity for Finlay and Kiera to get to know the other half of the Hallchurch clan. Putting four children together in a house for a week and you would usually expect arguments and total chaos but instead they formed a tight pack as if they had been best friends forever.

The sun continued to shine throughout our trip and the temperature reading on the car told us it was a beautiful sunny 31 degrees on our drive north – a temperature we are more used to from Northern Australia and something I never remember growing up! Whilst we are a month or so past the longest day, sunset is still around 9.30pm and ‘evening’ is a new phenomenon for the kids to get used to. I never really feel like Australia has ‘evening’ time. It’s either day light or it’s dark – particularly after the last few months in northern Australia where it would be bright sunlight until 6pm ish and then the sun sets, the stars come out and suddenly it’s night.

Failing miserably at our attempts to get the kids to go to bed in England when the sun is still out, we instead opted for some lovely evening walks!

During the last seven month’s of our Australian road trip we have made some pretty special memories but the last month in England has given us some long overdue time with family and that was always what this part of our adventure was about.