we passed the passport interview!

It appears that we will be allowed to leave the country (and presumably we'll be allowed back in again too). Both passport applications have been checked and lodged, and we should be receiving our shiny new biometric passports with two weeks. Which is just as well, considering how much time and effort and money I've put into this trip to date!

I've been wandering around the internet checking out other people's itineraries, and wondering if ours is a perhaps a little lacking in detail. We have the dates in each city locked in, but apart from that, everything is quite fluid. We know we want to do some day trips, and although I've ordered the Britrail pass, we're not planning on making reservations until we get to London. There doesn't seem to be any real advantage in booking too far ahead, and there are so many daily trains to places like York that we would be extremely unlucky not to get seats.

We can't possibly see everything in any of the places we're going, so we're taking a good guidebook for each city, and we'll make decisions based on the weather and what takes our fancy at the time. The guidebooks have opening hours, maps, suggested walks and itineraries, some history and context - enough to work out a rough plan of what we want to do each day without having to be locked into anything. Which is, I think, the way I want to travel.