I have had a few very busy days in the last week. I hired a car thursday night and myself and Ben Holland drove down South to Dorchester to spend the Easter weekend with his family. The drive was pretty uneventful and boring as it was dark.

The weekend weather was fantastic. Walking around with just a T-shirt and jeans is a nice change and the countryside down in Dorset is absolutely beautiful.It was really fantastic to catch up with Bens family again as I hadn’t seen some of them for quite some time. Ben and his brother Daniel took me around to see all the local touristy things like Maiden Castle(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiden_Castle) , Maumbury Rings(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maumbury_Rings) , Durdle Dor(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durdle_Dor) and Hardy’s Monument(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy_Monument). Hopefully I will get some photos up online sometime in the next couple of days.

The weekend was really relaxing and it was great to just hang out in a family environment again. Monday we got up pretty early and started to drive back to London. I was planning on meeting my uncle Dave at about lunchtime to have a bit of a tour around London and catch up with his boys before they caught the Eurostar to Paris on Wednesday but due to massive jetlag they couldn’t make it into town.

It all turned out well though as Ben and I decided to check out some other places on the way back into town. First we made our way to Salisbury Cathedral(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salisbury_Cathedral) which was really impressive. Absolutely massive building and they have the best preserved original copy of the Magna Carta in existence so that was pretty interesting to see. Next up we decided to head up to Stonehenge(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge) as Ben hadn’t ever been there and I was keen to take a look. It really is amazing that they were able to construct a monument like that with the tools that would have been available to them. Tons and tons of tourist busses everywhere which was a little annoying. From there we drove up north to Avebury(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avebury_Henge) to look at the henge there. It is actually a lot larger than Stonehenge but not as impressive as it has been damaged quite a lot over the years. There is a town planted right in the middle of it which covers large sections of the ring.

We did drive up to windsor with the idea of looking at the town and the castle but it was so horribly packed with people that we couldn’t find a single place to park and after about half an hour of looking I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

Ben wound up coming back to my place in Clapham and we headed up to a local Italian restaurant with Thomas (flatmate) to get a feed. We stayed up talking crap and watching “A fish called Wanda” until pretty late so I didn’t get a massive amount of sleep that night.

Tuesday I got to work late (slept through the alarm) and left really early so that I could meet up with Dave and the kids in town. Richard (Dave’s brother in law) was there giving them the London tour so we had a few quick pints and all headed back to Richard and Linda’s place out in Chelmsford. Had a good night once again up late drinking and talking with Dave, Richard, Linda and some of their Neighbours.

Dave’s eurail tickets were for really early in the morning today so we had to get up at 5am to make it into town on time, I was still a little tipsy and really really tired but I have managed to drag my sorry carcass into work today. All in all I am completely knackered, I think I will just collapse tonight.

Anyway hope everybody had a fantastic easter. I will hopefully have some pictures of the weekend up soon.

– Matt