With love from Sefton Park, Liverpool: A slideshow...

Hello!

Here's a reply to the beautiful slideshow of images I received from my pal in NZ a couple of months ago...

If you're reading this Charlie, look at how neat I've kept my handwriting!

I hope you like it.

'...with love from Sefton Park'



Dear Charlie...

  

So nice to hear from you

It looks so sunny by you!

Today, it's sunny here, too!

How are you?

All good, I hope!

Since you left, some things in Liverpool have changed...

For example...

There are now BOATS on Sefton lake!

...

I know!

*squint for this one

I want one!

Also...

...about the bike...

...which I love so dearly...

She has a puncture

:(

I'll fix her soon, though

Did you get that mag, by the way?

Hope so :)

I wrote about your old/my new bike inside it and then posted copies out all around the UK.

Keep in touch

(The owner of these dogs let me pap them because she loves New Zealand and I explained I was sending my photos there)

"Oh, how wonderful!" she said.

xxx

The Black Forest, Germany: Exploring, tea-ing, being amazed...

You see this bus?

 

We cleverly managed to squeeze ourselves onto the back of it.

Hooray for overcrowding (or so we though before we saw the corners the bus had to take to get up into the forest...)

 

 

This is us in the Black Forest.

 

Absolutely breathtaking, right?

 

Everything is so much BIGGER than us.

 

'Trees to meet you' everywhere...

 

Wandering down into an area cordoned off for lumberjacks...

 

...and stumbling upon a million sideways trees...

 

'I'm in a sticky situation'

 

(I want to chalk here vs my mum and brother are fast disappearing into the forest without me)

 

Time for a tea break, I think!

 

(Nothing brings my mum to me quickest than the promise of a cup of tea...)

 

AKA mum being George of the Jungle.

 

Laughing because a lack of spoons hasn't stopped us getting the teabags out of our tea...

 

(Yes we used that bit of tree)

 

Venturing further into the forest full of tea (and probably forest floor off the twig we used previously. Mmm)

 

We look so TINY.

 

So tiny that we kind of felt compelled to try and show it in our photos in other ways...

 

Probably should have got someone taller to chalk David's height onto the tree...

 

5"2!

 

"David, you're supposed to chalk my height while you're smiling for the camera"

 

 

 

 

***

 

Seebrugg, Germany: Stumbling on serenity

 

 

Part two of the trip...

 

 

Welcome to Frankfurt train station!

 

I would be standing up and poking about the place to get a feel for it....

 

...but I did that the last time we arrived here.

 

And the two times before that when we got lost, ended up on a platform that smelt like thirty rotten eggs, and had to come back again in a bid to retrace our steps.

 

Me taking photos of my brother taking photos, because we have too much energy and not enough space to run about in (yes, we are 23 and 30 years of age)

 

 

Laughing at mum taking 3,666 photos of the view through the Black Forest and then staring vacantly at the train conductor as he sees us off at the last stop on the track...

 

 

Waving to him with my camera (he didn't wave back).

 

 

Galloping off to take photos because I assume this is where we are supposed to be, before turning around and realising it isn't.

 

 

Monitoring the map-reading process from a safe distance (my eyes are rubbish, I'd only get in the way)

 

 

...

 

 

Navigating myself to prettier places while mayhem ensues fifty metres in front of me/my mum and brother argue about which direction we've been travelling again...

 

'Allo!'

 

 

That is amazing.

 

 

So lovely, in fact, that after walking three miles in the dark back to where we were supposed to get off, we got a bus back down the next morning to see Seebruug again by day...

 

(We sailed across here)

 

 

Because, well, nothing lasts forever...

 

 

'Nothing is forever'

 

 

 

...and the accidental finding of beautiful places must always be taken advantage of, and documented.

 

***