The Midlands said 'goodbye' in style.

We had a truly fantastic evenings fishing at a remote dam, in a beautiful green valley, with buck and herons looking on. Then took the first step towards cheesemaking, which is a LOT more time consuming than I thought. But looked possible with determination and a much patience.

We moved onto meat, and had a lesson in butchering chickens, which also included plucking and Dave retaliated with a lesson in how to debone one. Wow, I might get that right in a year or two.

Having had really wonderful weather in the midlands we are now back in drizzling Durban and have to finish off the tents. I just presumed the weather would stay fine for us to do the second half, so we may need a rethink.

The next task is to work out how much we need to send as unaccompanied baggage, and to get it dry, and then sort what suitcases we have, and what we need to buy. It really feels like this the final stage, the last push. Just 11 days and we are off. Suddenly we seem to have lots to do, and no time to do it in. And all the rest of the world just wants to get ready for the holidays!!