Laurel Bank Park always has the best flowers, and this year was pretty good also although harder to make out the shapes then previous years (besides the Australia outline). Queen’s Park was also as good as always also. We only went to one day of the food and wine festival this year, and we didn’t have anyone staying with us, but it was as fun as always. We went at lunch time so Rachael finally got to make her free headband before they ran out of flowers.

While we were mostly interested in the health aspect, the main selling point on ads for DNA tests is seeing your ancestry. I was expecting the results for that part to be pretty underwhelming, and they were - confirming I am indeed descended from European immigrants. The matching is really interesting though, it finds sections of your DNA that match that of others, and sums the shared segments which are measured in centimorgans.

Last year I was listening to a Podcast on 23andMe where they talked up what the benefits to health care would be if everyone did DNA testing. Different drugs affect people differently, and apparently DNA is a good way of isolating how they will impact different groups. Also if you know you are more suspeptible to certain diseases you can potentially make lifestyle changes to reduce them, and it can also tell you what you are a carrier of if you are planning to have children.

We dropped the rental car of at Heathrow then got the train back into the city to Lauren’s. After 2 months of travel it was good to just chill and watch TV at Lauren’s. We went out for a sunday lunch at the pub with Rachael’s cousin as well, which was good but super expensive. Stuff in London seems to cost about the same in pounds as it would at home in AUD.

On way to Oxford we stopped at Stratford-upon-Avon and saw the church with Shakespeare’s grave while we stopped for lunch. There was a nice canal but that’s about it. We were staying on the outskirts of Oxford so it would be easier to drive in and out, but the area wasn’t all that nice and there weren’t many places to eat. The next day we got the bus into the center, and went to Blackwell’s Bookshop while we waited for a tour.

We booked a farmhouse on AirBnB which was really hard to find and Rachael was a bit freaked out when we got there because it was in the middle of nowhere and there wasn’t anybody home. But the owners showed up a bit later and were really nice, and put on an amazing breakfast. The next morning we went for a hike. To hike Mt Snowden you need to get there extremely early to get a car park, so we did the less popular Crimpiau one instead.

After driving along the wall, we stopped at our next accommodation which was in Penrith. We went to the lake in afternoon for dinner. The pubs would be nice in summer, with lots of outdoor beer gardens along the lake. The lake itself was okay, nothing particularly exciting, although again would be packed in summer. The next morning we drove back to the Lakes District. On the way we saw a sign to something called Castlerigg Stone Circle, which we went through a extremely tight lane (barely fit one car) to get to.

On our drive south we wanted to go to the beach. Rachael was navigating so took us to what looked like a sandy beach on the map but was actually Lindisfarne causeway, which was a massive salt pan at low tide. After looking it up we thought about driving across to Lindisfarne Castle but it was really foggy and we didn’t really know how fast the tides are so thought it was best not to in a rental car.

We picked up a hire car in Edinburgh, then headed to Glasgow to meet Katherine. We stopped at a few places we saw on the map on the way, first up House Of The Binns which wasn’t that exciting. Next we stopped at Linlithgow Palace. Okay view from outside but heaps of midgies, we didn’t both going inside. There was a wedding on at the church with the groomsmen wearing kilts.

After getting off the ferry we had a nice coastal drive on the bus to Edinburgh, briefly stopping at Glasgow on the way. Edinburgh is a really cool looking city, with lots of nice buildings. We went to our airBnB which overlooked Arthur’s Seat and was hosted by a really nice guy Russell, who told us that the layers actually inspired the theory of tectonic plates. The next morning we did the free walking tour and had an awesome guide, Sabela.