A year and seven continents

We called 2009 “our gap year” and we were determined to make up for the fact that when we left University, we never had the opportunity to take the travelling gap year which is fairly common these days.

During 2009, we spent just over half the year outside England. Paul visited all seven continents and Pat visited six (missing out Africa which was a diving visit).

We flew at least 58,000 miles (all distances calculated as great circle distances - the shortest and therefore not the actual):

London Heathrow	Sao Paulo	5863 mi
Sao Paulo	Buenos Aries	1070 mi
Buenos Aries	Ushuaia	1460 mi
Ushuaia	Rio Gallegos	228 mi
Rio Gallegos	Buenos Aries	1277 mi
Buenos Aries	Sao Paulo	1070 mi
Sao Paulo	London Heathrow	5863 mi
London Gatwick	Sharm el Sheikh	2404 mi
Sharm el Sheikh	London Gatwick	2404 mi
London Stansted	Granada	1034 mi
Granada	London Stansted	1034 mi
London Gatwick	Marsa Alam	2543 mi
Marsa Alam	London Gatwick	2543 mi
London Heathrow	Singapore	6765 mi
Singapore	Darwin	2074 mi
Darwin	Cairns	1042 mi
Alice Springs	Darwin	808 mi
Darwin	Singapore	2074 mi
Singapore	London Heathrow	6765 mi
London Heathrow	Reykjavik	1180 mi
Reykjavik	London Heathrow	1180 mi
London Heathrow	Washington Dulles	3677 mi
Newark New York	London Heathrow	3465 mi
Total:		57822 mi

We also drove over 12,000 miles (mainly in Australia) and sailed about 4000 miles (Antarctica and the Red Sea) and we would be the first to admit that as a result, our carbon footprint was high.

We had an absolutely wonderful time; made lots of new friends, saw places and had experiences which we will always remember. When we muse over some of the things we did, we cannot really believe some of them and nor can our family and friends.

We originally started the blog just to enable friends and family to keep track of where we were and what we were doing. However, the number of hits on the blog exceeded 12,000 by the end of the year and when we added an automatic map to the blog showing where readers lived, we were astonished to see the wide geographical spread of readers and followers.

It was a wonderful year and we are very grateful for having had the good fortune and opportunity to take a year out.

We have some draft plans for travelling in 2010 – you can be sure that they will feature in this blog as and when they happen.

Pat and Paul Harvey
December 31st 2009