[Waverley ARS] The Travellers are Home

[Eddie Hanham]

Well, all the WARS Travellers are now home without any major 
incident.

They were Raffy and Ros Shammay, Jim Ayling, Grant Hinchcliff, 
Bradley Crowe and Eddie Hanham.

The weather was good to us all round with temeratures in Italy up to 
38 deg, humidity up to 85% in Kula Lumpur, and practically no rain.

We used amateur radio handhelds to communicate and Raffy took HF 
gear.Unfortunately very little communication back home from IRLP and 
echolink. Wifi was available in most hotels in Italy but limited in 
B&Bs in England.

Collectively we visited: Malaysia, Italy, Republic of San Marino 
(Italy), England, Holland, France, and Israel.

We all had a wonderful time with experiences and visits ranging from:

Wonders like - Stonehenge, Pisa , Colosseum, and Pompeii; 
Industrial Revolution sites in England like - Iron Bridge, the SS 
Great Britain, and Stoke on Trent; 
Palaces like - Buckingham Palace, Windsor and Blenheim;
Castles such as - Windsor, Leeds, Comwy, and Caernarvon;
Places of religious significance like - the Vatican and many 
Cathedrals including Montecasino, Assissi and StPauls (London);
Museums such as - the Manchester Science and Technology Museum, 
British Museum, Bletchley Park; 
Art highlights such as Sistine Chapel, Lowy Centre Manchester, Queens 
Collection (Buckingham Palace); 
Wild life Sancturaries of Birds and Butterflies;
Modes of transport included: Aircraft, Tour Bus, 7 seater Chrysler 
Voyager, 5 door Saab, 75 ft Canal Boar, Bicycle, and ferry;
Rides included - chair lifts (Capri), vernicular railway (Mount 
Snowden), London Eye, and aircraft simulators.

Well from my point of view it was a marvellous experience that I 
wouldn't have liked to have miss out on, especially because I was 
travelling with like minded friends. With any more than six, 
accomodation and vehicular travel would have been much more difficult 
to arrange. In England, B&B choices become very limited and 
hostels/hotels/motel are the next option. For vehicluar travel the 
next step up is minivans which need to be booked way in advance. 

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! We saw, we wondered and we have now 
returned to sweet "mundainery", less deadlines, and no more packing 
suitcases.

Thanks to Grant for being the stimulus and inspiration, and for his 
research into choices of destinations.

Where to next?



Eddie Hanham
VK2BEH
President