Alps Trip

On the 6th of June, I set off for Munich to met up with Lindsay, an old Uni mate and a couple of his friends from Uni - Mark and Mattijn. We all wanted to climb Mt Blanc (again for me)!! We stopped off at a few places on the way to do some climbs and acclimatise. Most night we just parked up somewhere after climbing, cooked up a mean feed and fought over sleeping spaces in the van.

Mattijn is Dutch so of course it was mandatory to don orange as supporters for the Netherlands in the Euros!

Indian rope gurus...

First day with the camper in Switzerland. This pass we tried to go over was closed so we camped up, went for a hike and drove the alternative route to Interlaken!

Jumping for joy in front of the Eiger

The train that goes through the rock face of the Eiger to most of the way up the Jungfrau

Matthijn feeling sorry for himself after Mount Blanc...

More Venice

Venice

On the 11th of May, I went to Venice to help paddle a Dragon Boat in the Vogalonga festival in Venice! Li Chiang, a workmate, competes with the Raging Dragons, a dragon boating team based near Canary Wharf. They needed some people to fill the boat so I headed over with my old schoolmate, William and did the 30km race! It was great fun, hard work and definitely worth the sunburn. Heres some photos...



Paddling to the start



Hard at work














The locals having a go














Approaching the very crowded Grand Canal.

Twenty Seven

Time to restart the blog for the coming 6 months! For the past few months I have been planning a trip which will take me back to New Zealand by Christmas time. On the 29th of June I will leave the UK for Greece. In Mykonos I will spend a week with Jon and Tim Burrell, meet Lach and Sally in Athens and travel with them up the Baltic coast to Sarajevo. From there I will go by train to Istanbul in Turkey and fly out to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan. From there I will join a Dragoman overland tour through the Chinese Xinjiang province , Tibet and into Nepal. After some time in India and perhaps Pakistan I hope to travel to Africa for a time before finally arriving home!


In any case it has been a long time since I posted any photos so here are a few...














My 27th birthday in Kew!



Buckingham Palace in spring