We got the survey for the house on Elmington Road, Camberwell through on Thursday and it recommended a structural engineers report due to evidence of subsidence.

Vic’s sister recommended an engineer who she deals with through work and we arranged to meet him at the house on Friday afternoon. We’d already arranged to have the afternoon off to go to the Beer Festival so we were able to get things moving quickly.

The engineer was great, gave us lots of information and his opinion of the property, and we decided that it was too much of a risk to continue with the purchase.

Problems included subsidence, which could well have been historical but there was no guarantee, there was also no drainage at the front of the property, the rear extension had been built with un-rendered breeze blocks, the roof was bowing due to slates being replaced with concrete tiles, the floors of most rooms where sloping. We got much more information from him than we did from the Homebuyer Survey we got through the Alliance & Leicester.

After leaving the house, we went for a bite to eat and called the various parties, and then went and registered with some more estate agents in Camberwell.

After that it was on to Earls Court for the Great British Beer Festival. We arrived there at about 5:30pm and because we’re CAMRA members we didn’t have to queue and got discounted tickets.

We bought our pint glasses (which we exchanged for the commemorative glasses when we left the Festival) and headed to the Cider stall for our first half pints. Vic tried some Gobbledegook while I went for the Delvin End “Smiling Moose”.

After the ciders we moved on to a host of bitters of various descriptions. Those that I can remember include Summer Session, Tindall’s Summer Loving, Sharpes’ Doom Bar, Arkell’s 3B, Falstaff’s A Fist Full of Hops, Mauldon’s Black Adder and probably a few others that I don’t recall.

Lots of the beers had run out as the festival had been running since Tuesday, but there were still plenty to choose from. Being a Friday the festival was very busy, much busier than the photo above, so buying a beer often took a fair few minutes. Next year we’ll have to go earlier in the week.

The food was good, if a bit expensive compared to the beer, most pints were between £2 and £2.80. We had some hot pork rolls to soak up some of the beer before returning home.

So we’re now back on the house hunting regime, with a very urgent need to find somewhere if we’re not going to end up renting again. We’ve found a few places on the web so we’ll follow up on those this week. The good thing is that we’ve got a lot of the pieces in place already, so we can move to exchange of contracts as soon as we’ve surveyed etc.

Well, we’ve been looking for a house to live in, and it looks like we’ve found one.

We looked around a few parts of South London, including Streatham, Earlsfield and Camberwell. The place we’re hoping to buy is in Camberwell. It’s a newly refurbished Victorian four-bedroom end-terrace. The mortgage has been approved and we’re waiting for our survey to come through. There’s no chain so we could complete the purchase within a couple of weeks or so.

Vic and I are both still working at East India, so the commute to and from work will get much longer but I’m sure we’ll be able to cope.

We’ve been looking at kitchen appliances (oh the excitement!) and furniture in preparation for the move, and it’s all looking very expensive. Then there’s the mortgage protection insurance, the income protection insurance, the house and contents insurance, does it ever end?

We’ve booked ourselves a weekend off at the Bestival on the Isle of Wight at the beginning of September, which we’re both looking forward to. Hoping that the weather stays good as we’ll be camping.

Lots of bits and pieces to post about so I’ll try to get some of those done over the next few days.

I’ve been busy for the last few months and haven’t got around to blogging much.

I’m hoping to change that, and in preparation I’ve given the blog a bit of a makeover. Not complete yet, but a good start.

I also have a nice non-shiny new machine to blog from but more of that later.

I’m working out in Sunbury, miles away from where I live and from the office of the company I’m working for. Took a disk array from the office in Docklands over there by taxi this morning, £74; different route from usual, we went along Embankment and the north side of the Thames rather than crossing over and following the South Circular. Much faster, just over an hour instead of an hour and forty five minutes.

Today I got out of work relatively early, out of the office in Sunbury by a quarter to six. Most evenings recently I’ve been much later – a quarter to nine in one case.

I missed the train by a couple of minutes. That’s usually how it works out, so I sit alone on the platform and watch the people on the other platform. As their train arrives, more passengers arrive on my platform. Of the five people waiting, two are talking on their mobiles and two others sit with their phones in their hands, either texting or playing a game (or maybe even moblogging).

A heron flew over the station, first one I’ve seen since we got home. Also saw my first wasp of the year in the office today. Summer must be nearly here.

After almost half an hour the train finally pulls in. The train isn’t very busy but it’s definitely more crowded than I’m used to from usual later journeys.

Within a couple of stations the train is very full, hardly any seats left in my carriage, and a couple of people with large suitcases heading into town. Kingston fills the train right up.

New Malden – a girl dressed in long, colourful hippy-style clothes sits cross legged on the platform, drinking from a bottle of water. She’s heading south, away from the busy city, and will be joining hundreds of commuters also heading taht direction.

The train drops some people at Wimbledon; seems to be the first drop-off point where more people disembark than board the train. Clapham Junction is the other big one.

Trains going in the opposite direct are even busier, lots of people standing; at least going into town there’s a seat for almost everyone.

Heading to Earlsfield the train runs along an embankment raised up above the surrounding houses, so you can see the rooftops, with Crystal Palace transmitter to the South on our right.

Soon after that we’re in the opposite situation, running through a cutting with nothing but scrubby slopes and graffiti-covered concrete.

Clapham Junction is bustling, a strong smell of fresh coffee drifts into the carriage as we leave and the train rattles past the back of Asda.

Vic rings to ask me to pick up some rocket/roquette salad from Marks & Spencer at Waterloo station. The fridge has frozen the stuff we bought at the weekend. The thermostat gets knocked really easily and kills anything green in there.

Then it’s on to Vauxhall, past Sainsbury’s and Keybridge House where I worked for BT on the Genie project in 1999. Lots of people get off here, probably switching to the Victoria underground line.

Soon be at Waterloo; passing blocks of flats with people playing ball games in the green space nearby, the Houses of Parliament drift past on the left and the train slows to a crawl for the last few hundred yards.

Time to save this and get ready to brave the chaos that is Waterloo. Will give Krispy Kreme a miss tonight, expensive and tasty but just too rich to be eaten any more regularly than an occasional treat.

Sorry I haven’t posted recently.

Started work and now that things are underway it’s proving interesting. Unfortunately I’m currently working out in Sunbury, more than an hour and a half from home, but that won’t last for ever.

Vic’s now pretty much recovered from a very nasty chest infection which left her with residual asthma; she even got an inhaler from the doctor.

We haven’t been out much, though we’ve met up with a few friends in the evenings, and Vic spent the weekend in France visiting Deb.

Not huge amounts to report which is why I hadn’t posted. We’ve not really taken any photos since our return either, though Vic has some which she took in France.

I’ve started a technical blog to keep the nerdy stuff out of my normal blog, and given the current level of excitement that might well get more postings for the next few months.

I’d like to thank everyone for their messages on our return to the UK, it’s nice to see people are still reading the blog.

I’m trying to get Vic to write some stuff on her blog but I’m not holding my breath on that one.

Well, we’re back. In fact we’ve been back in the UK for ages now.

We had a week and a bit in Cleethorpes with my parents (including a visit to see Grimsby Town beat Chester). While in Cleethorpes we also bought a car, 1999 Volvo S40 1.6 XS which has been behaving itself since.

After Cleethorpes we spent a week in Bury St Edmund with Vic’s folks. We arranged to share a house with Vic’s mate, Lisa, who lives in West Ham, East London.

So we’ve been here for two and a half weeks, and Vic started a temp job last week. I’m starting a 3 month contract on Monday working in one of the data centres at East India Dock.

I’ve got a DSL connection in the house through the “UK Free Software Network who are an Entanet reseller. They do a monthly contract with a generous download limit so that suits me fine.

I’ve set up my old Linux server with a new copy of Ubuntu Linux and a cheapy wireless card. That’ll be going somewhere out of the way shortly as it’s a bit noisy for the hallway.

Can’t say that we’ve been overly delighted to be back in the UK. The weather has been grim, London seems to have become even grumpier than it was when we left and everything seems so expensive.

We’ll see how things go with work and decide what we’re doing next after we’ve been here a while.

The end of our amazing round-the-world trip that is.

We depart for Frankfurt on Wednesday afternoon, arriving Thursday morning, and a few hours later fly over to Manchester.

We’ve both really enjoyed Boston, especially the snow that fell on Sunday. We haven’t managed to cover all of the tourist sites we had hoped, but maybe we’ll be back in the future to visit those when it’s a bit warmer.

We’ve been up to Harvard and also MIT in Cambridge where we visited the MIT Museum. We walked round Boston Common in the snow on Sunday and visited the location of the “Cheers” bar.

On Tuesday we went to the Science Museum to visit the Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination exhibition and also did the “Jump to Light Speed” in the Milllenium Falcon cockpit mock-up.

Along with all that we did lots of shopping at the various discount stores in Boston, so I’m now well supplied with jeans, a new suit and coat.

Not sure when I’ll get to post again as we’re returning to my parents’ house in Cleethorpes for a while and then on to Vic’s folks in Bury St Edmunds.

Difficult to believe we’re finally returning to the UK, over 16 months since we left. We’ve had a fantastic time travelling and would recommend it to anyone. There’s so much out there to see, we only managed to see some of the things we wanted to. As you travel you hear about so many others things which would be great to do/see but time and budget are limited so we had to do what we could manage.

Now we have to work out what we’re going to next! Jobs and accommodation, I guess.

We’ve been in Boston since Wednesday and the weather forecast has been getting colder.

Since Thursday they’ve been predicting a Nor’Easter and last night it started.

It’s now been declared The Blizzard of 2006 and there’s been around twelve inches of snow here in Downtown Boston.

I haven’t seen this much snow in ages, if ever. We’re staying at the Omni Parker House which is nice and warm.

We’re flying back to the UK on Wednesday/Thursday this week, so I’ll try to update the blog with our Boston activities before then. Meanwhile you can take a look at the Boston photos so far.

Chicago has been experiencing unseasonably warm weather for the past month. When we checked the weather from New Zealand back in mid-December it was 0 Fahrenheit (-18C) but on arrival it was around 40F (8C). The forecast indicated that the cold was to return over the weekend after we arrived though and so it proved. On Saturday it snowed lightly and the temperature outside was a bracing 28F (-2C) before windchill.

Our hotel room was very comfortable, and we were paying only around $65 per night through Hotwire. As is so often the case, the upmarket hotels sting you on virtually every “extra”. A can of Pepsi from the mini-bar comes to $4.23 (well over 2 pounds!). Internet access, which had been free at the Econolodge and Best Western was around $12 per day.

The Hyatt Regency Chicago has 2019 room and over 100 suites, making it one of the largest hotels in the world (outside Las Vegas anyway). The front desk was upstairs from the entrance, above a nightclub area called HardDrive and a bar/restaurant called Network. Check-in was all electronic, swiping my credit card in a machine and being given two room keycards in return. Great view north over the river from the room, so we can see the John Hancock Tower, the NBC Building and lots of other Chicago landmarks.

On Friday we braved the cold and went down to State Street in The Loop to check out the shops and restaurants. The big department store here, Marshall Field’s was having a special 2-day sale so Vic checked out the footware department there. Sadly there wasn’t anything she liked and the prices weren’t as good as the discount shoe shops we’d visited in San Francisco and other stores in Chicago.

Saturday, we walked up the Magnificent Mile as Michigan Avenue is called just north of the river. We popped into the Apple Store and checked our email etc, and I bought a “returned” battery for my Apple Powerbook at almost half the usual price. Lots of other “returned” bargains were to be had including some of the new Intel Core Duo iMacs and some iPod nanos.

We had a nasty shock when someone stole all the cash from Vic’s purse which was in her handbag while she was in H&M. They must have reached in while she was distracted and pulled the cash out as no cards etc were touched. Fortunately she only had $50 or so cash (plus $20 from New Zealand), but it was still an unpleasant experience.

Walking up the Magnificent Mile we passed the huge John Hancock Tower, the Water Tower and lots of other great buildings. Chicago seems to have taken more pride and care with the buildings in the city, with some of the most architecturally interesting and elegant skyscrapers I’ve seen. As darkness set in we walked through the snow to Navy Pier, which was almost as tacky as Pier 39 in San Francisco. We had a pretty disappointing meal at an Italian restaurant there and then walked back to the hotel.

On Sunday we walked through the splendid Millenium Park, past the stunning Cloud Gate sculpture created by Anish Kapoor, and the strange Crown Fountain before heading West and then up the Sears Tower for some fantastic views over the city, followed by an excellent Chicago-style pizza pie.

Photos from Chicago

Our roomette was cosy, two seats facing each other with as pull-out table in between. At nighttime the seats fold down into a lower bunk and the upper bunk pulls down form the ceiling. Our Sleeping Car Attendant was a great lady called Sandy who took care of us for the 61 hours of the journey, making our beds while we were having dinner and folding them away while we were at breakfast.

Our tickets and the price of the roomette came to $512, which is 290 pounds. That price included all meals and drinks (excluding alcohol), bed linen, towels, access to a shared shower and toilet, and use of the Lounge Car. The journey was due to last from 9.15am Pacific Time through to 3.05pm Central Time, with the train passing through the entire Mountain Time timezone as well.

Early in the journey we got stuck behind a slow freight train (freight always takes priority over passenger trains on the US rail system), and by the time we reached Reno, Nevada at 6pm on Tuesday evening we were already 2 hours behind schedule.

Passing through the Sierra Nevada mountains was great, the ground was covered in snow and the scenery was beautiful. During Tuesday night/Wednesday morning we passed through Salt Lake City, Utah.

Entering Colorado around noon on Wednesday we stopped at Grand Junction where Vic and I got out to stretch our legs and walk in the falling snow. I think that’s the first fresh snow we’ve been in since Winter 2003/2004 back in the UK.

Colorado was great for scenery, lots of canyons of red rock and snowy trails. By the time the sun set on Wednesday we were about 3 and a half hours behind schedule which meant that we passed through the Rocky Mountains in the dark, reaching Denver at about 11pm.

Waking the next morning we were in Nebraska and passed through Lincoln while having breakfast. The landscape was very different from Colorado, being flat prairie surrounded by distant hills, and on entering Iowa mid-morning the land was flatter than we’d seen in a while and the snow petered out.

We finally reached Chicago, Illinois at 8.15pm, just over 5 hours later than scheduled. That fouled up a lot of plans for other passengers but Amtrak seemed to take care of them, arranging accomodation and alternative transport. We just caught a taxi to the Hyatt Regency on Wacker Drive where we had booked a room for our stay through HotWire.

Photos from the California Zephyr