almost a lap of South America

I wish Gerard, been here a few months now, just learning to walk again as well as having many other snags. I was hoping to be back on my bike in a year or so but might have to downsize to a twist and go scooter. Oh well shit happens! Thankfully Merv's pics are giving me a smile and reminding me what I'm missing, also gives me some mental umph to get back out there. :) Would be nice of Queenie to up the old pension, I had to drink a lot of tea to qualify for that. ;) Now, if only they would have me back in the Andrew :)
 
It might have been asked ... I might have missed it ...

What camera you using ... you're getting some great shots for sure :thumb2

:beerjug:

Cheers for that! I was shooting Cannon. I had a weekend hobby/job shooting sports at the weekend when my local sports pro photographer was overrun with too many events on any given day. IT was great fun, and good trainning as he was pretty unforgiving when it came to handing in shots.

To be more specific, I was using a 1Ds Mark3, and a 7d until it died. As to lenses I had 2 bags of them, from 14 to 600. Tripods, flash remotes, The whole kaboodle. within a few months of the trip finishing, I sold the lot. Too heavy and too bulky for hiking / motorcycle travel. On my recent trip to Morocco I just brought my phone!
 
Cracking report, keep up the good work.
I went 3 yrs ago and brings back lots of happy memories :popcorn

Thanks! I've been asked to give a slideshow at a camera club in Dublin in a couple of weeks, and while I was preparing and going through the shots I got inspired to do this thread. It was amazing how many memories had faded that the photos revived.
 
This is just great!

I've been to Salta, BA, and Patagonia....and ridden a gaucho horse with a wooden saddle and stirrups....(gulp)....but your photos and write up are special!

Thanks!

Come on JohnRTW! You've gone very quiet recently! Are you over again soon or are you still robbing the RN pension fund!
Thanks, You probably recognized a few spots. Amazing place to travel.

I wish Gerard, been here a few months now, just learning to walk again as well as having many other snags. I was hoping to be back on my bike in a year or so but might have to downsize to a twist and go scooter. Oh well shit happens! Thankfully Merv's pics are giving me a smile and reminding me what I'm missing, also gives me some mental umph to get back out there. :) Would be nice of Queenie to up the old pension, I had to drink a lot of tea to qualify for that. ;) Now, if only they would have me back in the Andrew :)

John, I'm glad your getting a smile out of this. i guess that's what it's all about at the end of the day. My mum used to day that there are 2 things that can never be taken away from you, or never lost, and that's memories and educashun. :)
 
We took about 4 or 5 days to go through the Salar and the Lagunas route. While there is not much there, it's really nice to be so remote. We had enough fuel and food and water for a week or so. However, getting to San Pedro de Atacama is wonderful as it's a small cosy town, and our first cosy touristy spot in quite a while. It was nice to get to nice restaurants, cool bars and a chill out town for a few days. It's still cold at night, but not much below zero. There are a good few things to see all round that area.

Valley of the moon.
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I had to keep a hat on the camera to stop the camera battery from loosing power too quickly
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moonset in the Atacama
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The salts and minerals are amazing. The atmosphere is so dry, the lakes fill and evaporate annually.
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The Church in san pedro
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When we were there, there was a cool religious procession.
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To be more specific, I was using a 1Ds Mark3, and a 7d until it died. As to lenses I had 2 bags of them, from 14 to 600. Tripods, flash remotes, The whole kaboodle. within a few months of the trip finishing, I sold the lot. Too heavy and too bulky for hiking / motorcycle travel. On my recent trip to Morocco I just brought my phone!

:thumb

:beerjug:
 
The Atacama desert is one of the best places in the world for astronomy. The altitude (3000m + ) makes for cleaner air, and the lack of towns or cities make for a very black sky at night. When in the town of San Pedro, we went on a night tour to a spot with loads of telescopes. Each one was trained on a different star, and you could move between them and look as much as you wanted. I could recommend it as an activity if you are ever in that area.

Once we had done that, we got the opportunity to see some of the big guns. We got to visit the European space station!
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This is the driveway up to the station.
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This is the machine they use to move the radio telescopes into position. Those tyres are over 4 feet high!
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We also went to see what is probably the highest geyser field in the world at El Tatio

We had a pretty bleak drive to get there, in fact we turned back as it got so bad you could not see where the road was. On our third attempt we got there.
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Good spot for a bath :)
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Your not too far from Calaima mines there either. One of the biggest in the world. Looking across the mine looks like this:
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When you see them up close, you get to count the steps to get to the cab.
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To really get a feel for it with a sense of scape that we are all used to, Take a wee look at this huge volvo getting dwarfed.
 
After this it was on to Bolivia again. We had yet to visit La Paz, the jungle or see the famous death road. But our real reason for going there was actually a medical one, I needed a dentist. I was getting intermittent pain, and knew something had to be done. La Paz seemed the logical choice of places to go. :)

We did get to see a dentist, a very good one. It seemed I needed root canal treatment, and then crowns when that was all done. We ended up stuck there for 2 weeks doing that. That in itself is no big deal when your time is pretty open.

We did get a good look at the city, got the truck services and all those things. I'm still wearing the Merrell runners I bought there.

A bit of a twist on the mexican wrestling.
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"the red mask" landed on Sarah after getting thrown from the ring. So he had a little rest after that.
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Even the ref got in on the act.
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Sarah concidered this as a career for a few minutes..
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La Paz at night.
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Vegetable sales.
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We decided to cycle the deathroad as it's all downhill (going out of la Paz), and catch a bus back. Loads of companies organised this as a tour so off we went.

What I was thinking of:
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The snarl up trying to get there. Serious queues.
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Thats it, you can see it through the clouds :)
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We headed to Cochabamba, on our loop of the country.
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and on to the Jungle.
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Where we swapped our truck for a cannoe.
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We had a few river crossings to deal with, not too big of a deal on routes where trucks have to get through.
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Glad we were not sharing a boat with this guy.
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We had all sorts of overnight stops, one super one was at the end of this pier. Loads of people fishing in the lake till sunset, then quiet. San Ignacio de Moxos, an Indian village founded also by the Jesuits. It is a friendly and agricultural village , and they speak an indigenous dialect called Ignaciano and have their own unique food and traditions.
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The Jesuits had no stone to use for building in the Jungle, so they went with Wood, and did an amazing job of it too.
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This is in Rurenebacka, or Rure as the locals call it. it's sort of the jumping off point for Jungle trips in Bolivia. That amazing house is a water reservoir + house combined, built by a fascinating civil engineer from Europe who lives there now. He owns a nice camp spot up the hill to the left as you come into town, and has the best swimmingpool in town.
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We were just about out of time in Bolivia, we just had time for a few days in the Jungle and then we had to hit the road for Peru. Bit first, a few views of the jungle.

This was to be our transport into the Jungle to visit Parque Nacional Madidi, which covers over 1.8 million hectares and is home to mammals, amphibians,more than 1000 bird species, trees over 800 years old, also numerous plants, so really we were spoilt for choice. Where would we start, so much to learn about. The Bolivian Jungle/Rain-Forest is amazing. The local guides all have grown up in the area so are really knowledgeable about the fauna, flora and the forest in general. They can explain animals habits and they know to listen for their sounds so as to track them. They know about natural remedies from the plant life in the forest which they use for remedies for fever, cuts, colds and insect bites. The guides know the general chitter chatter of each bird, and can tell how close they are so spotting them gets a lot easier.

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River transport

Our trip to the jungle began by canoe, in the rain I might add, for about half of the six hour journey into the deep forest. It may have been raining but it was not cold, in fact it was a welcome relief. Along the river shore you can see many homes where people are still living, I think about six communities live along the shore. We spotted many birds to which our guide Ronny was up to date with, knew their names in 3 languages, English, Spanish and the Scientific one. A black caiman, many capybaras ( which are large amphibious rodents) were also spotted. A very rare spotting was The Tapir , and judging by the many scrapes on his back Ronny assumed it had been in a fight with a Jaguar.


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The jungle was very thick, and therefore hard to see very far.
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The watson bird
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We also spotted traffic jams
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This wee chap had himself in a bit of a pickle....
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WE were offered the chance to go for a swim in the river. I should mention that this was the same river we were piranha fishing in! Seemingly in certain areas, there were too many river dolphins for the piranhas. This chap went for a swim to get the crap scared out of him when a dolphin decided to play a game of splash.
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after a few days in the Jungle, it was time to get back to the truck and hit the road. This was the road to La Paz from Rhure. This is the new road, the one to replace the famous death road. :)

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And it's not too big in spots.
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Just to sum up Bolivia, we loved it. We had loads of wild camps, super views, good dentistry and great interactions with locals. Crackin spot.
 
Next stop was Peru. We were excited about this mainly because we were being joined by great friends of ours from Cork who we had traveled with before. they were hiring a 4x4 and would travel with us for a few weeks.

To make this work, we shot straight up to Lima as we intended to see the sights with them. Once they arrived, we went to look at Peru. However as is the way with all great travel plans, the dates did not line up 100%, so we took the opportunity to go visit the Galapagos Islands. We left our truck in Lima, bused to Ecuador and few out from there to the Islands. We had a month to spare, so we went out for just over 3 weeks. While it can be expensive to go there, we rented a small house on one island for just a few bucks per night and loved it there. We kept an eye in the local travel agents for last minute deals, and grabbed a cheap cruise when we spotted one.

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We did manage to get tickets onto a week long cruise to see a few of the islands, this was our boat.
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The wild life were so relaxed it was incredible. Closeups were just too easy.
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The red footed boobie
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We had timed it well, we got to the ablatross during the mating courtship as they tried to attract mates. It was something else to see.

This was the group on our boat (it was nice and small, 16 guests max) We stopped off to see this post box that dated back hundreds of years. Seemingly, sailors used to drop off their post there, and collect any for destinations they were heading to. it could take years for letters to arrive, but it worked.
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The male friggate bird
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We had a few gear nights craic in the towns, good bars and very cheap seafood.

All in all, we rested up for a couple of weeks, it was just grand.
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We had been looking forward to Friday 15th November for a number of weeks, as on this day two great friends Robin and Claire arrived from The Republic of Cork to Lima in Peru to travel with us for 24 days. After a joyous meeting in the airport, dinner and pisco sours to really welcome them it was time for the Peru Adventures to begin. Claire and Robin had hired a lovely 4×4 camper from www.rvperu.com and after stocking both larders and wine cellars we left but a trail of dust behind us.

We headed towards Cusco, and spotted a farm fair by the side of the road. This could be anywhere in Ireland on a summers weekend.
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The Tambopata National Reserve did not disappoint. It has more than 10,000 species of plants, 600 species of birds, 200 species of mammals, more than 1,000 butterfly species, thousands of insects, and over 100 species of amphibians and reptiles. Here our highlight was the Macaw clay lick. In order to see the whole spectacular show of the Macaws from waking , to feeding to flying away we had to start our day at 5.am. This consisted first of about a one hour boat trip before arriving at dawn at the clay lick. Here we witnessed the arrival of flock after flock of blue and yellow, red and green, and scarlet macaws, plus yellow-crowned and blue-headed parrots.
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The birdlife was pretty special.
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We had a little wander around the treetops while we were at it.
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Then it was off to Machu Picchu. We decided to walk there on the Inca trail. It's more expensive than going directly there, but the hike is just fantastic. We took a few days to get there, and loved every minute of it.
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Some of the trail is pretty tough going.
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The evenings we spent in tents that the amazing porters put up, eating dinner then playing cards.
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We had a fair amount of rain on the way there, luckily mainly at night.
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We saw loads of different buildings along the route, one more amazing than the last, We really had to wonder how they did it.
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This is the view that greeted us as we arrived on site. Hardly what we expected. It took an hour or two for the sun to burn through.
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The cloud started to clear, and we could see where we were.
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Once the sun was out, it was superb.
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Time wise, we were now up to just before Christmas 2013. While Our friends were still with us, we had an early Christmas dinner in the truck as they had brought out a Christmas pudding! First one in 2 years. Yummy!

Roast Alpacca (No turkeys handy)
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Claire and Robin flew back from Cusco, and since we had already been to Lima we pretty much fast tracked our way North to Ecuador. As we left Cusco, we met this Japanese gentleman on his way there by Bicycle. I'm not sure of his age, but this was a serious cycle for a young person, and he was lapping it up. While we could not converse, there is a bit of a bond between any 2 people in a foreign country. We exchanged pleasantries, and we each were on our way.

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Peru's most famous "old place" is Machu Piccu, but it has loads more, just not as spectacular. This is Caral.
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They built a form of pyramid there.
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We made our way to a less-traveled part of Peru, the mountain range known as the Cordillera Blanca. We took the chance to do a bit of horse riding there.
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What was really special was that we ended up helping out at a Christmas party for kids. Remember the photo earlier in the blog of kids pulling a rope? That's not all they were getting up to... There were Sack races
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Obstacle courses..
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And to top it all off, the biggest put of hot chocolate you could possibly imagine. Every kid was to get a mug of hot chocolate (in the beaming summer sun...). Some of the kids were well versed in this tradition and arrived with flasks, bottles, bowls etc to be sore to get enough to make themselves properly sick :)
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This whole day was run by their school, which was build by, and is run by the owners of the Lazy Dog Inn.
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Sarah of course, hand to keep the whole thing in order.
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After this, we hit out for Ecuador.
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After our Christmas fun in Peru, we went into Ecuador for new year. we stopped in the small town of Vilcabamba. It is famous with longevity all throughout Ecuador due to the simple and stress-free lives and the fresh Andean air. The area has beautiful scenery, mild weather all year round, never too hot or never too cold, and perhaps it’s the laid-back vibe which attracts so many people, mainly for retirement. There tends to be a sort of ‘gringos ‘ boom judging by all the big new houses dotted in the hills. The positive side is that jobs in tourism and construction are booming so young people have little ambition to leave this great area. It really was a great find of a place in more ways than one for us. We parked our truck about two blocks back from the main square for three nights, nobody even blinked an eye-lid, thus we were able to walk everywhere. Wandering through the little streets its amazing what you find. We found a French Bakery, as you do in Ecuador, with the second best baguette and bread in South America – Rurrenabaque in Bolivia topping the list so far.

New years had a few unique things in Ecuador that we had not seen here in Europe. They made life sized dolls or puppets that were all over the town.
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Some of the displays were inspired by the medical staff in the town I guess....
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As the evening got closer to midnight, fires were lit in each cross roads.
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And at midnight the idea was to jump through the fires, given that you had enough time to drink loads of beer!
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And then rock it up with a street party!
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Then it was off to StarMotors, the mercedes dealer to change the tyres
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This one went this bad in the last days before getting to the garage. Flipping lucky!
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We went to see some of the famous Volcanos, and the only problem with being up high is that we're back into the cold.
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Some of the views into the tops of the old volcanoes were quite a surprise. This one ended up printed and on our wall.
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We got to drive across the Equator. We tried camping on it (well, in the car park by this marker) but the police moved us along as it was too dangerous there, we ended up in a truck park 10km down the road. we were only moved along twice the whole time we were in South America.
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I am gobsmacked at how good many of them are. The outward appearance of a holiday snap with their composition, but then you look closer......amazing
 
Thanks!
Some of the pictures I am quite proud of, and some of the pictures are very much just snaps, they are there to tell a more complete story, or when the situation did not lend to waiting till the light was right, or that someone/thing was in the perfect spot for the perfect photo. For me, I enjoy photography (or at least - I used to. I've since sold all this camera gear) but I am more more into travelling than Photography. When I'm on a photography trip, then it's very different than enjoying travelling - The photography decides the locations, the pace, backtracking, waiting etc.

Merv.
 
Thanks!
Some of the pictures I am quite proud of, and some of the pictures are very much just snaps, they are there to tell a more complete story, or when the situation did not lend to waiting till the light was right, or that someone/thing was in the perfect spot for the perfect photo. For me, I enjoy photography (or at least - I used to. I've since sold all this camera gear) but I am more more into travelling than Photography. When I'm on a photography trip, then it's very different than enjoying travelling - The photography decides the locations, the pace, backtracking, waiting etc.

Merv.

I say to people, are you a traveller that takes photographs ...

... or a photographer that travels?


There is a difference ... but you seem to have amalgamated the two :thumb2

:beerjug:
 
Next stop was Colombia. The land of Coffee! We were really looking forward to the Coffee. At this stage of our trip we knew we were coming to the of our trip North through South America, and we had a choice to make, ship around the Darrien Gap and continue North through Central America, or continue our loop through South America and visit Venezuela and North Brazil. This decision was on our minds for a month or 2 . As we were making this decision, we kept looking at what was around us.

View from a farm we stayed on La Serena
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The Church at Las Lejas, just on the border between Ecuador and Colombia.
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We had no idea that the Coffee Plantations would be so hilly
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The upper bag of coffee is the export grade, and the lower bag is for domestic consumption.
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We continued up north to sample the gulf coast beaches. Once there we met up with our german friends where discussed going to cross Venezuela together. There were reports of student protests and martial law and until we were sure it was possible to go through, we decided to visit more of Colombia. We decided to head for Parque Nacional El Cocuy.
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Stunning drive
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The drive was a little tight in places.
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Restocking the larders in this lovely old town
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The park was lovely when we got there.
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