An extra day! Thanks ash cloud :)

We were originally scheduled to fly out of London's Heathrow Airport on Monday afternoon. All day Sunday we were hearing that the airport might be closed and flights cancelled. If we were going to fly out on Monday, we needed to leave the hotel at 5am. I set the alarm at 4am and phoned Air Canada first thing to check on the flight to find it had in fact been cancelled. Thankfully Nina, one of the team managers, gave me a direct phone number to call and I was able to get us booked onto the 1pm flight Tuesday. With that all done, Rick and I headed back to bed to get a few more hours of sleep.

We had a good sleep in and then headed to the hotel restaurant for a really good british breakfast which consisted of eggs, bacon, sausage, baked beans, mushrooms, tomatoes and fried bread! Wow, it was huge but it was also very good. After breakfast we relaxed in the beautiful sunshine and then looked into a trip to Cheddar. We originally thought we would take a train but found a small bus that would take a bunch of us for only 23 pounds each way, pretty good when we had 17 people go. Cheddar is famous for the caves and gorge but I couldn't have imagined how amazing both would be.

The map of Cheddar and it's Caves & Gorge

It was a pretty little town.

Because we had so many people in our group we were able to get a group rate into the Caves and the museums. I had no idea how amazing those caves could be, not generally something I would be interested in but so glad we did it.

The pictures don't do it justice, the height of the caves were unbelievable.

Rick decided he would climb up one of the walls of the cave (much to Nina's dismay...I think she was worried about getting kicked out, lol) but right behind him was Kayl...they are way up there!

The build-up on the cave walls over the years. I thought it would be goopy but it was actually hard as a rock.

After the first cave we went into a museum (that was a bit disturbing - we learned a whole new meaning for batton, eww) but at one section you could paint on the walls...Rick painted the "Agility 2010" on there :)

Marty told Nina to squeeze herself into one of the cracks in the next cave :)

Cox's Cave was a bit disturbing, lol (as per the sign). They made it more of a haunted cave, the funniest was when someone slammed a wooden door behind Kayl who then leapt onto my back while screaming only to have me leap onto Nina screaming! Poor Nina!! LOL

With all the caves and museums done, we took the time to walk around the town and check out the cute shops. We of course were on a mission to find cheese in Cheddar :)

Cheddar was so beauitful.

We found the Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company!

For everyone that asks why I'm not in any pictures, it's because I always had the camera but I let Rick have the camera for the day. Here Nina and I are trying out all the different cheeses. Nice pic of me ;) I think the cow is wondering what I think of it, haha.

After the cheese sampling and shopping our group decided to split up. The healthy Nina, Teri and Rick wanted to climb the nearly 300 stairs to the lookout tower overlooking the gorge and the rest of us wanted to go find a pub for drinks and food :)

Our lunch pub - too bad the dogs didn't come along (though they probably wouldn't have fit on the bus, we were crammed in ourselves). Even dogs were allowed in the caves!

I think my photo style rubbed off on Rick over the two weeks, this was a picture he took on the way up to the tower...very cool.

Teri & Nina in the lookout tower...did Rick even make it up the whole way?!?

I guess he must have since here is a picture of the beautiful scenery from the lookout tower and it was on my camera ;)

After our lunch & drinks our group decided to take the open topped double decker bus to see the gorge. Imagine our surprise to see Rick, Nina and Teri already on the top waiting for us. What an amazing little tour of the gorge on the top of that bus, the best!

The pictures don't do it justice on how high it was.

Another view of the gorge.

My favorite sign of the day.

We finished up our day with a nice dinner with Kayl, Deb & Marty at a local pub close to the hotel. The fish & chips were delish and the desert was amazing. When we arrived there wasn't anywhere to sit with the team so we went to a different section of the restaurant. There was a guy sitting at the table beside us who just couldn't stop sneezing! I know that doesn't sound funny but let me tell you, we had some serious giggles and a few tears over that dinner. A dinner I won't forget anytime soon :)

Kayl and I went for a swim (wish I had tried the pool out before the final night) before calling it a night and getting sleep before our trip home the next day.

We were up bright and early the next morning to check out and have a quick breakfast. The bus ride to Heathrow was quite entertaining sitting beside Susan & John. Susan kept us entertained and made the ride go quick. Funny that John offered to let us take Susan instead of keeping her for the rest of their trip in the UK ;) We arrived at cargo for the team to drop off the dogs. It was almost 11am by that time and our flight was at 1pm so we decided to call a cab to get to the terminal as the team's flight wasn't until 3pm. About 10 minutes later the cab arrived and it took about 15 min to get to the terminal. Once in we found the Air Canada line up which was quite long and got in the back of the queue (that's British for line up, haha). It wasn't more than a minute before they were calling out "is anyone going direct to Ottawa"....sweet! Yes, we are flying direct to Ottawa :) The next thing we knew, we were at the front of the line-up (passing Marty and Deb) and getting our tickets. Little did we know how far our gate was away from there. We got our tickets and started walking and only made it to the gate as they were calling us to board!

The plane ride was long but very uneventful. I watched 2 movies, a few 2 1/2 men episodes and then 3 episodes of Glee! I know, what the heck?! I think I have become a Gleek now, hahaha.

We arrived in Ottawa and got through customs pretty quick to our waiting luggage and then found a cab to Tiffany's house where we had left our car. We had the most amazing sign attached to our car when we arrived:

Thanks Kyra for making our day!!!

I am sad to say this is the end of our blog...thanks for following along!