December

 December passed in a bit of a blur. The sea freight had been shipped, but the air freight was still to go. The girls visited and I needed to finish up with my work.

To make matters more complicated, we were one person down. In England, Kris had stepped into a pothole and jarred her knee. She had on and off pain but was able to work around it, until the 24th Nov, when she tried to walk up the stairs and her leg gave way. She wasn't able to put any weight on the leg and was in a massive amount of pain.  We managed to get her to the floor by the couch, but ended up needing an ambulance to get her to hospital to find out what had happened. At the hospital we were informed that they wouldn't have an MRI available to do a scan for a few days and so they sent her for an X-Ray. When we returned back to her room in the emergency department we noticed that her paperwork was still on the shelf, but didn't think much of it. She had been brought in at 2pm and it was now around 5pm. I waited with her until about 11pm, and we still hadn't seen a doctor for results. At this point she was starting to get hungry and hadn't had any painkillers since about 4pm and was pretty sore. We called a nurse and found that, because her papers had been left on the shelf in the room, they didn't have any record that she was even there and had forgotten about her. At about 1am we finally saw a doctor who said that the X-Ray didn't show anything (as we expected) so they had no idea what was going on.  I ended up heading home around 2am so Kris could sleep. The next morning they decided to admit her because she still wasn't able to put any weight on her leg and, because of the previous shoulder surgery, she couldn't use crutches. The nurses then informed us that they wouldn't be able to schedule an MRI for over a week and Kris wasn't able to head home until she could walk with aides. She ended up in hospital for most of the week until they managed to find a walker that she could use to move around a little. 

Meanwhile, Cameron, Tom and I relocated the sofa bed downstairs and cleared up so she would be able to return home. On Thursday she was able to get home and was dropped off by hospital transport. The MRI was scheduled for Monday.

On Friday we had an appointment to see how Tomas had recovered from his pancreatitis and luckily we got the all-clear. I dialed Kristine in on a video call.

By Monday, she still wasn't able to walk more than a few shuffling steps, so we organized a taxi to take her to the hospital for the scan. It took a few days for the answers and eventually we got good news - she had torn her meniscus and while it was very painful, it would heal on its own and didn't need surgery. Over the next few weeks she improved dramatically until she was able to walk again (albeit with a limp and a bit of pain) by the time Alana arrived.

With Kristine out of action, life still continued. We still had work, cleaning/packing and planning for Alana's arrival. We weren't sure if we'd be able to do our end of visit trip, or if she would even be able to fly - but luckily we got the all-clear for both.

As for the packing:

The air freight was scheduled to go on the 23rd of December, but we were then informed that would mean that it would likely sit in a warehouse until the first week in January until it could ship. Instead, if we sent it a week early, we would be able to get it shipped and sent before Christmas and it would be ready for us when we got back into our house.

So on the 16th we managed to get the air freight packed and sent:

We then had just our suitcases left to go. We were scheduled to leave the apartment on the 27th and start our final trip through Norway before we headed back to Australia, so we needed to get our suitcases packed. Unfortunately we ended up with way more than we expected and it wasn't looking promising to get it all in. We dropped a few full suitcases off at a friend's house to get them out of the way while we left only clothes, bed sheets, doonas and the PlayStation. But we were around 40kg over our luggage limit. 5kg extra luggage was going to cost around 900 danish crowns (around $225), so that didn't seem like a good idea. We decided to take a chance with PostNord, who managed to ship a 20kg bag for us for 2200sek, or around $300.

For Christmas Eve, we celebrated with Pete and played boardgames. Christmas day was spent packing and Boxing Day with spent with some friends from rugby. It was hectic but great to catch up with everyone.

We finally got the bags packed, house cleaned and we were out on the morning of the 27th.

We'd had to return the company car on the 20th, so we had hired a Passat for the last week and the Norway trip. It was a struggle packing all of the remaining suitcases into the smaller car, but at last we could say goodbye to the house and start on our way up to Norway.

Alana's Visit

Leading up to Christmas, we started getting our packing ready, but we had one more adventure left. Alana was due to arrive with one of her friends for a visit from the 7th - 23rd of December.

We took them around the usual sights in Malmo, but the main part of their visit was a trip to Legoland and the German Christmas Markets in Lübeck.

I finished work officially on the 12th of December and we left early on Friday 13th to Legoland. We had an early start to make sure we arrived at opening time for the park (10am).

Tomas wasn't super interested in the Christmas Markets, so he decided to stay home, so the trip was Kristine, Cameron, me and the two girls.

We arrived at the park just on opening time (10am) and explored around. As with the last trip, the park was themed for Christmas, but some of the rides and areas were closed.

The girls had a shot at ice-skating and went on a few of the rides.

Kristine liked the new Lego Florist

and the way they used multicolored pirate hats for petals

Lego Santa

Alana tried a very hard wall climb...

Cam got eaten by a Lego raptor

That's Cameron upside down...

By about 3pm we were finished with everything we wanted to do and see, so we decided to duck over to Lego House. We didn't have enough time to do the full House experience, so instead we ducked into the shop, where they have some unique sets and where we saw some of the set creators signing the boxes.

Signing the Fortnite Sets

We spent way too much money on Lego (and too much space, considering our air freight was pretty much full!) and then headed down to Esgrus, which was just over the border in Germany, and our stop for the night. The hotel was comfortable and we had a good sleep before heading down to Lübeck in the morning.

We found parking just outside Lübeck Old Town and headed through the historic gates into the city.

The Western side of Lübeck houses the Holsten Gate (Holstentor), which was built in 1464 in Gothic style. The inscriptions on the city side read SPQL (based on the Roman SPQR - "Senatus populusque Romanus" (The Senate and People of Rome), in this case being "Senatus populusque Lubecensis" (The Senate and the People of Lübeck)). The outside of the gate reads "concordia domi foris pax" ("harmony within, peace outside"). This was added in 1871 to replace the previous inscription which was lost -"Concordia domi et pax foris sane res est omnium pulcherrima" ("Harmony within and peace outside are indeed the greatest good of all")

Holstentor

Side View

The Christmas market was huge and had the awesome backdrop of the Lübeck cathedrals. As always, they mostly consisted of roasted almonds, gingerbread, roasting meat and Glühwein (a spiced mulled wine).

Marienkirche over the markets

Hospital of the Holy Spirit

Burgtor - Northern gate, built in 1444

Crepe!

Customs House

On the way back, we stopped at the Bordershop and got home around 7pm.

On the 18th we headed out to do the usual tour of Copenhagen, but this time we caught the changing of the guards:

I then left Kristine and the girls and headed back to Malmo, while they watched the Tivoli Nutcracker:

The girls flew home on the 23rd, but we are not going to be too far behind...

Dealing with Strange Swedish Logic

As we prepare to pack and get ready to finish up in Sweden, the last thing we need is to have to deal with strange Swedish logic and bureaucracy. 

We'd already had a few run-ins with parking the car.

The first issue we had was when we parked the car to visit a friend. The carpark allowed for 2 hours free parking and then paid parking after that. We used our parking app and set it for about 8 hours so we had plenty of time. It looked like it was going to charge us for the whole time, but so be it. Then, about a week later we found a parking ticket that had become jammed down under the windscreen wiper. It was for that parking time, which was weird since we had fully paid for the parking and we had proof through the parking app. The parking app company said we needed to discuss it with the carparking agency, so we called them. After explaining the situation to the lady on the phone she told us that we had received the fine because we didn't have a parking disc displayed for the 2 hours free parking.  A parking disc is used to indicate the starting time for parking so the company knows if you have exceeded your free time:

So, we explained that we had used the parking app and had paid for the full time, so we shouldn't need the dial as we didn't use the free parking.

Them: "But did you have the dial up?"

Me: "No, we paid for all the parking on the app. We have the full receipt here - we paid for the whole time and didn't use the free time."

Them: "But you need the dial for the free two hours."

Me: "We didn't use the free two hours, we paid for the whole time."

Them: "But you need the dial for free hours."

Me: "Ok, but we were there for 8 hours and the entire 8 hours was paid for in the app."

Them: "But you need the dial for the free hours."

Me: "But we didn't use the free hours...."

Repeat for the next fifteen minutes until we eventually gave up. They said they could escalate it and look into it,  but since we had already delayed for a couple of weeks (because we weren't able to see the ticket as it had been pushed down to the base of the wiper), we ran the risk of getting an overdue fee.  To avoid this, we decided to just pay it, which I think is exactly what they planned.

We had a similar one when we returned from our semester trip this year - we had to purchase a vignette for Switzerland, which essentially counts as a toll to travel on the toll roads:

Showing the size of the Vignette -  its about 1/2 of the size of a playing card

We parked at the shops across from Tomas' school and put up our parking dial for our 2 free hours (we had learned our lesson), and so we were surprised when we came back 10 minutes later to find that we had a parking ticket for not displaying our dial.  We called the company to protest and were sent the photos and details. Apparently the Vignette had obscured the dial.  For comparison this is the size of the dial that sits on the dashboard behind the vignette:

Example of the size of the dial

The picture showed that the parking inspector had managed to line up his photo perfectly so that the vignette was covering the dial.  Had they taken a step or two to either side they would have easily be able to see the dial, but instead they chose to align it up so they couldn't see it.

I called the parking company again and told them this.

Them: "But it is not the inspector's fault if he cannot see the dial."

Me: "But he could see it if he took a step to the left or right."

Them: "Can you see the dial in the photo?"

Me: "No, but if he moved a step he could see it."

Them: "So, the dial was obscured then."

Me: "Ok, but if he lay on the ground and took a photo he wouldn't have seen the dial either, even without the vignette sticker.  Surely there has to be some intelligence in how he takes the photo."

Them: "There is nothing we can do, the inspector did nothing wrong."

So we had to pay this one also.

So, before you think that we just had trouble with the parking company (and don't get me wrong, when we were here the first time, a car was pulled out of the canal and we joked that it was likely covered in parking tickets), PostNord, the Swedish postal company hasn't been terribly helpful to us either.

The first big issue that we found was tax. Since Australia was outside of the EU (and now England was also), anything that we had posted to us could (and usually would) accrue tax. The main purpose of this is to stop unfair trade - if I could get an item cheaper in Australia, I could bring it into Sweden and undercut local suppliers.

We wanted to get a jacket from our rugby club in Australia for our coach here in Sweden (something unique that couldn't be bought in Sweden), so we asked Alana to buy one and post it to us. The jacket was about $80 and postage ended up being around $50. When the jacket arrived it was held by Swedish customs and we needed to pay 200kr tax and processing fee (around $30) to get it released. 

Another time, one of my magazines, I received as part of a subscription, failed to arrive so, I emailed the company and they sent a replacement. The magazine cost about 70kr ($10) from the shop, but when my copy arrived it was held awaiting a 120kr (almost $20) tax payment.  I was telling someone at the game shop about it and he mentioned that he won a Warhammer model from the US that he stocked in his own shop. The model in Sweden was about 900kr, but the same item sold in the US for about 1400kr. He won the model in a competition for free and when it arrived from the US he was charged 300kr tax to import the item as it had a 'high value', costing him almost $50 to receive an item he had won, and could have bought for about $150 in Sweden.

But tax is unavoidable, logic fails are not...

I have been collecting Pirate Lego and Lego released a new gift set, a mini pirate ship, that you could purchase with Lego points. Unfortunately we had used up all of the points last time we had shopped, but it was easy, Tomas wanted to get a Lego set for his friend and we wanted to order a set for me for Christmas so it worked well. I would place one order for my set (and we added a Christmas wreath for Kristine) and get the points then immediately order the set that Tomas wanted to gift his friend and use the points to add the pirate ship.  That was our first mistake - it turns out that the points aren't added until the sets are dispatched, but that was a minor issue. I just waited a couple of days and could place the order. We had 3 weeks until the birthday, so plenty of time.

My set arrived about a week later. PostNord dropped it off on our doorstep in pouring rain at about 10pm at night without knocking or ringing the doorbell. Tomas found it in the morning when he left for school and the box had almost dissolved into a puddle of wet carboard. Luckily my set was inside a second box and was protected, but the box for Kristine's wreath was completely destroyed.

So Tomas' set shouldn't be too far behind.  We checked the Lego page and there was a tracking number and it said the parcel was with the transport company. I logged onto their page and it said that the package was at the dispatch center in Malmo and ready to be sent out.

We waited another week - checking constantly to make sure it wasn't left out in the rain, but it never arrived.  We were getting dangerously close to the birthday, so Kris bought another copy of the set, figuring that we would just keep the other one for us when it arrived. But a week later it still hadn't arrived and the transport company still had it listed as at a dispatch center in Malmo. The chat line for the company didn't help - it just said that it was awaiting a delivery date. In the end, Kristine walked to the nearby Post Office and asked if they might have received it. They suggested we call PostNord. That seemed a bit strange, as the shipping company was something like PostNL from the Netherlands. But we didn't have much to lose, so I called PostNord.

The date of the call was the 11th of December and we'd expected the package somewhere around the first week in December. This is a rough transcript of the call.

Me: "Hi, I am just chasing up an order XXXXXX, which I believe was posted to me."

Them: "Ah, yes I can see that in our system, the sender was Lego?"

Me: "Yes, that's the one."

Them: "What seems to be the problem?"

Me: "It has been sitting at ready to deliver for two weeks, but doesn't seem to have moved."

Them: " Oh yeah, it's at our warehouse at the moment, ready to be returned to sender. So, you do want it?"

Me: "Yes, that's why I ordered it. Do you know why it wasn't delivered?"

Them: "We had it scheduled to be delivered to you on the 2nd of December, but we only received it from PostNL on the 3rd of December, so it couldn't be delivered on the 2nd."

Me: "Ok, makes sense. So did you try to reschedule a later delivery?"

Them: "No. It was scheduled to go out on the 2nd, but we couldn't deliver it then as we didn't have it."

Me: "But you have it now?"

Them: "Yes, it is about to be returned to sender as it has been in our warehouse for two weeks."

Me: "So if you have it, and you know it wasn't able to be delivered on the 2nd, why wasn't it delivered on a later date?"

Them: "Because it was scheduled to be delivered on the 2nd."

Me: "Ok, but you couldn't do the 2nd, as it didn't arrive until the 3rd, could you not have delivered on the 4th?"

Them: "No, because it was scheduled for the 2nd."

Me: "Ok, never mind. Can I get it now?"

Them: "It's scheduled to return to sender. Did you want me to stop that happening."

Me: "Yes, please."

Eventually we managed to organize Kristine to drive and pick it up from their warehouse. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but it seems that they tried to deliver it before they had it and then went into some error state and just ignored it completely.

I love Sweden, but it can be fun sometimes...

Packing and Prepping to Head Home

At the end of the year, my work contract will finish up and we will be returning to Australia. We all have mixed emotions - we have good friends in Sweden, the MRC rugby club, Skåne Old Boys and Tomas has just settled in the international school. On top of all that, there's still a bunch of travel we would like to do. But, on the other hand, it will be great to see friends and family again, return to our Australian rugby club and swim at a proper beach.

My actual contract end date is the 22nd December, but we have a few plans to finish up the trip. Alana and her friend will be visiting for most of December, so we have some trips and visits planned for them. We are also planning on taking a trip up into Norway at the end of our holiday and returning to Australia in mid January.

But it's never as simple as that. We have lists of things that need to be done before we can head home, in no particular order, and definitely not complete:

1) Pack and send the sea freight,
2) Pack and send the air freight,
3) Organise a school in Australia for Tomas,
4) Get the final scans and checks to make sure Tomas has fully recovered from the Pancreatitis,
5) Organise temporary accommodation in Australia until we are able to move back into our house,
6) Fill our all relevant customs papers for bringing our things back to Australia and tax papers for leaving Sweden
7) Complete rugby clearance forms to say that we are cleared by Swedish rugby to move the the Australian competition (we don't have outstanding fees, doping accusations, punishments etc)
8) Clean the house and sort out the remaining furniture for moving out
9) Book the trips for Alana's visit and our December/Jan trip
10) Finalise my new job description in Australia as well as my leave for the final holiday

This is just a sample of what we have on our plate at the moment. But the one I wanted to talk about in this part of the blog was the packing.

Since we were not moving to Sweden permanently, part of our work contract in Australia meant that we could store our furniture and household items that we owned in Australia. We were provided with 50 cubic meters of storage. This had not been a fun thing to organise - we had a surveyor come out to look at how much we had, and he told us that we had way too much stuff - around 66 cubic meters. We ended up getting rid of some items and giving some away, as well as collapsing some things down into boxes. When they came to collect the stuff it turned out that we had less than 50, so we could probably have kept some of the thing we had gotten rid off.

We did have a few issues with the collection also, since my work is located on the other side of town, the removalists that they contracted were also from an hour or so drive from our place. We had warned that we had lots of stuff, so they planned to come and box everything up on the first day and then on the second day they would finish up the last few items and then the truck would arrive to pick it all up around 10am. This worked well as we had the cleaners coming in around 10:30 to do a full clean of the house ready for us to put it up for rent.

We had sorted a lot of our stuff into boxes in the garage, to make it easier to work out what we had, and we had told the removalists that there were lots of boxes there and that some of them, like ones with my fragile Warhammer models of collectable items, would need to be repacked properly.  We also had a big collection of the carboard boxes from lego sets that the kids wanted to keep, so we tucked those in with the picture frames.

The removalists booked an 8:30 time for arriving on the first day, and I called them at 10:30 when they still hadn't arrived. When they did turn up, there were only two of them and they started packing the items for a short time before heading out for lunch. They had about 75% of the house packed by 4pm, but hadn't event started on the garage where most of the gear was. But they decided it was time to finish for the day, and told us they would be back at 8am the next day to finish up.

At 9:30 the next day the truck arrived to collect the boxes, but the removalists still hadn't arrived. The drivers called them and they turned up around 10. They then panicked when they saw how much was left in the garage and called in a few extra hands. By the time the cleaners arrived at 10:30 the removalists were only just getting started and we had to organise the cleaners to get moving around the removalists.  Unfortunately, since they were now under a time crunch, the removalists rushed the packing, and the boxes we had asked them to repack were just taken as they were, and the models were stuffed into boxes without much packing around them. By late afternoon, when they had finished, they told us that we needed to dispose of our own rubbish and that wasn't their job to take it away, and they left. It turns out the "rubbish" was all of the Lego boxes that we had wanted to keep, that had been thrown outside in the rain. While picking those up, I also found some bits of my warhammer models which had broken off and were sitting in the driveway as well as some of the parts of one of the kids video games.  I am really hoping that the items survived the packing, and not super happy with the way it went.

In addition to the storage of our items, we were also allowed to ship things to Sweden. We had taken some things over when we did our visit in December and left them with friends, but now we had the option of 6 cubic meters of sea freight and 1 cubic meter of air freight. Sea freight would take about 3-4 months and air freight was usually just under a month. Due to some misunderstandings we were told that we couldn't take our computers by air freight as they had a lithium cell battery (which was removable..) so the computers needed to go sea freight. The first time over we had avoided taking much seafreight as we knew it would need to be stuff that would need to come home and hence reduce how much new stuff we could bring back. This time we ended up with some items, a TV, some bikes, books, playstation games etc. The air freight was items that we wanted more quickly - some clothes, video game consoles etc.

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Now it was time to look at what would come back and how. Since we'd used 3 cubic meters of our 6m^3 allowance coming over, we had 9 cubic meters to come back with, as well as 1 cubic of air freight. On the previous trip we had converted our air freight into additional sea freight, but this time we were keen to get some things back faster.

It took some thinking to work out how we would do it. The sea freight would take about 3 months to come back, but would constitute the biggest amount of stuff we could send. Anything that didn't make the sea freight would have to go in air freight or suitcases, or else we would have to leave it behind. It was expensive to increase the capacity we were sending, more so than the value of the items we wanted to send, so there wasn't much desire to pay to send more.

We weren't going to be sending essentials by sea freight - we would leave the beds, kitchen table and chairs, cooking equipment and couches behind, so we could possibly look at sending the items early so they wouldn't get held up over Christmas and we would have them fairly soon after we arrived back in Australia. We managed to get confirmation that the computers could go air freight if we removed the cell battery from them, so that was another problem solved.

The removal company sent a surveyor through to look at what we had, and he estimated that we wanted to send about 15 cubic meters back, well over our allowance. Since the size of a shipping container is 10 cubic meters, the company allowed us to go from 9 to 10 cubic with no additional cost, but another 5 cubic meters would be expensive.

This started our crazy packing. Kristine again took on the role of Tetris master and began packing down our stuff into boxes. We collapsed the computer desks we wanted to take back, packed boxes tightly with books, clothes, toys etc and then came the Lego.  We had brought over a huge amount of loose Lego in order to complete some Lego sets that we had parts of, and we had bought a huge amount of Lego on the trip. I started by pulling apart the big sets and breaking them down into ziplock bags. Kristine sorted the loose Lego bits and made stacks of each type of bricks - a tower of 2x4 bricks, another of 4x10 plates etc.  This let her stack the Lego in flat blocks and greatly reduced the size.

In the end we measured a few times and came up with about 9-10 cubic meters. One of the issues is that we were never sure if we had 10 cubic meters in measurement, or if we had a 10 cubic meter container that we could fill. This might not sound different but there was a big difference between the two. If we had a 10 cubic meter container then we would have air gaps between the oddly shaped boxes, or we might not be able to stack multiple tall items on top of each other because they would exceed the height of the container etc. If it was just that we had 10 cubic meters in size then we could measure the size of each box and tally those up.

For example if we had a container that was 2m tall by 2m wide by 2.5m long and we had boxes that were 0.75m tall then we would not be able to stack more than 2 boxes on top of each other and would end up with 500mm space empty at the top of the container that we wouldn't be able to fully fill.  However if the 10 cubic meters was just a size measurement then we didn't need to consider this and could just work out the volume of each box and add them together... Can you tell I'm an engineer who massively overthinks these things..

Anyway, we never really got a straight answer and it didn't matter in the end, because the removalists were happy with what we had and took it all without complaint. It was collected Wednesday 6th Nov and sailed from Helsingborg on the 11th of November. We can expect it to arrive in Australia by the end of January and be cleared through customs and ready for delivery by mid Feb.

The next step is now working out the air freight. We had a cubic meter, but it needed to include the computer boxes and monitors. I find the best way to start is to use tape and mark out a 1m x 1m x 1m cube on the floor and up the wall, so you can stack the boxes in that area.  Again, we run into the issue that the boxes might be 0.90m tall, so you have a 10cm strip at the top - if it is container-sized then that is wasted space, if it is purely volume then you have another 0.1 cubic meters that you can work with.  Likewise the TV we were hoping to bring back is 1.3m long, so its important to determine if it will fit.

In the end we came up with the computers, monitors, TV and 5 small boxes (the white ones in the pic above). That means we know what can fit in the space and now just have to work with what can fit in the boxes.

The air freight is due to go on the 23rd of December, so we still have time.

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One other part of shipping to Australia is the customs forms:

We had to make sure that all the dirt had been washed off of the bikes, rugby boots were scrubbed clean and that we noted anything that might be a biohazard - the only thing we had was a reindeer pelt, but since it was tanned and preserved it should be ok - but it did need to be listed.

We also needed to sort out transport insurance. For the sea freight we have a bulk insurance, the entire shipment is insured for a certain amount per cubic meter, however for air freight we needed to itemise and price each item.  We also needed to work out if we wanted special extra insurances - mould and mildew, set replacement (if they break one chair in a dining set then they all are replaced), or mechanical derangement (replacement of electrical/mechanical items that look undamaged but no longer work due to vibrations in transit).

We settled for the electrical/mechanical insurance as we are shipping computers and game consoles.

So, now we just need to make sure everything fits into the suitcases and the five air freight boxes and then wait for it all to arrive back in Australia. The usual fun game of "hurry up and wait".

England and Wales (27 Oct - 2nd Nov 24) Day 6 - Alton Towers

One place that has always held a fond place in my memories is Alton Towers, a theme park in Staffordshire.

The theme park started as a private estate, that of the Earls of Shrewsbury, and in 1860 the grounds were opened to the public to help raise money to maintain the estate. In the 1970s some themed areas and rides were added to the park and it was fully transformed into a theme park in 1980 with its first rollercoaster.

I visited with my family when I was 16, back in 1996 and there was a new ride that had just been built called the Nemesis. It was themed up as an alien that had been uncovered and was now trying to be held under control and it was the first real thrill ride I went on.

On our first Sweden trip we took the family to Alton Towers in 2017 (Previous Visit), however Tomas was just an inch or two short of being able to ride the Nemesis. We promised we'd take him back some day so he could ride it.

The Nemesis had been closed for retracking between 6 Nov 2022 and 16 Mar 2024, so now was the perfect time to head back.

The park was also themed up for Halloween. Kristine wasn't able to go on any rides due to her shoulder surgery so she checked out the Halloween themed events while the boys and I rode the rides.

Cam and Tomas raced first to the Smiler, one of the biggest rollercoasters, but I wasn't able to ride as my height and broad shoulders meant that I couldn't get the harness closed. They also rode the Oblivion and then the boys and I rode the Nemesis Reborn twice, the Nemesis Subterra, the Th13rteen and the Wickerman.

The lines were pretty long as it was school holidays, so we didn't get to ride as many rides as we had hoped, but it was a fun day and great to fulfil the promise to Tomas and ride the Nemesis with him.

Part of the old Corkscrew ride (I rode this.. when it was all connected)

Heading in

The Smiler:

One of the coolest things with Alton Towers is that there is so much green space and a castle in the middle of the grounds. Anyone who knows me knows that a theme park and castle is an unbeatable combination:

I had been patient, waiting for the kids to finish up on the X-Zone rides, before we could finally head to the Nemesis:

After the Nemesis, we tried the Nemesis Subterra, which was a themed ride where we entered a fake elevator and then took seats around an unhatched Nemesis egg. The lights then dimmed and the seats dropped into a lower cave showing broken eggs. There were a series of effects, such as water spray, air blowers and back-pokers that created the illusion that the Nemesis creatures were breaking free, a more horror version of the Lilo and Stitch ride from Disney.

Following that, we decided to try the Alton Ghost Train as it had a short queue time. Cameron was a little worried that the devil was wiping its bottom with the gravestone:

We passed a few other rides, the Th13rteen a haunted woods themed roller coaster with a drop component where the coaster and tracks fall down and the new Wickerman wooden roller coaster, but the wait times were too long (70min+). The boys ended up going on the Spinball Whizzer and the Rita.

The Wickerman:

When it started getting dark, we grabbed a quick dinner and then rode a few rides in the dark - the Nemesis and the Wickerman:

Nemesis:

Wickerman:

While we were chasing these rides, Kristine was getting a masterclass on sharks from a twelve-year old shark enthusiast in the aquarium and checking out the Scarefest stage:

The park closed at 9pm, so we headed back to our apartment to pack, ready for the return home and our flight the next day: