Addendum

 Dear Gentle Readers

There is nothing like travel to broaden your mind and to bring its share of minor disasters.

Things like having to pay £1.50 to use a toilet when they are free in Australia, lack of parking in many towns where there is plenty in Australia. Checking in to non-attended hotels, just following instructions on how to get in. Lids on drink bottles in Italy and Switzerland permanently attached to the bottle so you don't have bottle tops littering the land (good idea, Australia should do the same). Unattended petrol stations (Italy I'm talking about you) with instructions only in Italian. Not realising there are two brands of diesel and filling the car with the more expensive one. In Australia only one brand of diesel. No laundry facilities anywhere we stay so have to find expensive laundromats and sit around waiting for it.

On the good side, Victoria going to a hairdresser in outer London and the proprietor on hearing she is 73 saying she looks 50, so Victoria walked out feeling 20 years younger.

Minor disasters like getting to Nottingham after a 3 hour drive only to discover I had left the SD card for my camera in London (£15 for a new one, albeit a 32GB instead of the old 16GB). Fortunately I had backed up all the photos onto my laptop. Yesterday after we got back from Hadrian's Wall I discovered my lens hood for my camera was missing. Not keen to go back on that trail so £28 (about $50) to purchase a new one. Sigh! And of course, ripping the wheel trim off the Peugeot in Italy (thankfully not too expensive).

All European cars and UK ones LEAVE the rear view camera on once you shift out of reverse. You have to dismiss it by tapping an X on the screen. Damn annoying when you want the Android Auto screen with Google Maps on it to come back. In Italy, the Peugeot would often hide Android Auto three swipes away on the screen. Fun to try to do while flying down the motorway with the mad Italian drivers all around.

Every shower in every hotel and I mean every one of them, have a different way of operating. Some
have separate controls for water and temperature, some are combined in the same tap but there is no standardisation, so every new hotel you have to spend a few minutes working out how the shower works. To complicate matters, some showers have an overhead shower and a shower hose and working out how to switch between them sometimes takes an engineering degree. This one was from our hotel in Keswick.

This is similar to the one at the hotel in Hexham, near Hadrian's Wall. Took me quite a while to figure this one out. The Conwy hotel also had this one and did it have pitiful pressure! Possibly the worst shower we've come across.

This is the shower control in Aberystwyth, no control for water pressure and you turn this control as far as it will go counter-clockwise to get a shower with somewhat warm water.

This is the shower control from Beggar's Reach. Again it took a few minutes to work out how it worked.

That's all I can think of at the moment. I shall update this page as more things come to mind or more "disasters" happen so keep checking back on this page.