After five enjoyable days in the Peak District it was time to move on and we said goodbye to Andrew and Charlotte (for 10 days) and to Liz and Mat (for 10 hours).

Wanting to break the journey, we borrowed Charlotte's National Trust guidebook and found Stowe Gardens, a two hour drive south. It was, we discovered, just about next door to the Silverstone motor racing track. I did not channel my inner Lewis Hamilton.

Once again, our Heritage New Zealand card attracted excited attention, this time because we were the third Kiwi couple to arrive in the last 45 minutes.

We had lunch in the cafe and then went for a walk in the grounds.

The grounds were planned and created in the 1700s - mainly to try and impress the royalty of the day; this seems to be a common theme with these great estates. There were wonderful views everywhere.

The gardens were dotted with multiple temples, follies and monuments.

This one below was an AirBnB.

After an hour it was time to head back to the car, passing another ornate bridge on the way.

Another hour and a half south we were back on home ground - Camberley, where we lived for over four years at the beginning of the century.

We stopped to visit my Aunt and Uncle, Shirley and David. They had been regular visitors to us in New Zealand over the years but now find travelling difficult so it has been eight years since we last saw them.

We had brought a special gift for them, a silver tray that had been presented to Shirl's parents (my grandparents) on the occasion of their emigrating to New Zealand in the 1960s. Unbeknownst to us, they also had a special gift for us, a painting of Mt Maunganui that had been presented to my parents on the occasion of them re-emigrating to the UK (briefly) from New Zealand in the 1960s. Both gifts were greatly appreciated.

We spent three hours chatting and catching up. We then made a brief crawl by of our old house in Hillcrest Ave, noting that it wasn't as well kept as in our day.

Our next stop was at Marks and Spencer at The Meadows, another haunt of days gone by. Amazingly, I bought several items but Linda bought nothing.

By the time we had finished we were hungry, but not that hungry. We drove to the closest fish and chip shop and bought a portion of chips each. We sat in the car outside and ate them. They'll be getting a good review from me on Google.

Our accommodation for the night was with Liz and Mat at their house in Farnham, fifteen minutes down the road. Despite having last seen them just 10 hours previously, we had a lot to catch up on and spent a long time chatting.

Then, at the time of the evening that we normally would have gone to sleep, we started the long task of repacking all our luggage, consolidating down to one bag each, in preparation for the next stage of our holiday, the continental tour, which begins tomorrow.

But that is a topic for a later blog post.