Return of the Native 2 - Sydney to Snowshill

When I went through my family history phase I discovered my earliest known British ancestor was a resilient young woman named Mary Martin. She was the founder of my father's line in Australia. Convicted for theft and sentenced to transportation at the age of 16, she was packed aboard the former slave ship Neptune with 500 other sorry souls for the long voyage to New South Wales.

The year was 1790 and the Second Fleet was the Admiralty's first shockingly misguided venture into privatisation. Contractors were paid for each convict that boarded their overcrowded vessels, not for each who disembarked as was the practice with slaves. Unrestrained capitalism is never a good thing and nearly a full third of the convicts died en route with 124 more joining that number shortly after landing in Sydney. Mary, as you will have guessed, was not one of them.

Our return to the Old Country on a Singapore Airlines A380 in Premium Economy could not have been more different to Mary's experience in leaving it. Well, I suppose it could have - those First Class Suites in the next cabin looked extremely tempting but for a couple of big blokes used to travelling Cattle Class I have to tell you that Premium Economy was luxury! There's no going back!

I highly recommend arriving into Heathrow at 5.50am on a Sunday morning as a way to minimise the stress of transferring from plane to rental car and then clearing the airport. Once I got my new iPhone to talk to Google Maps, and we undertook a few Chevy Chase style circuits of several airport roundabouts, we were on our way to the M40 and the glorious Cotswolds beyond.

When we were planning this trip Cotswolds was just a name to me, a pretty green entity with cottage gardens and thatched roofs. I had no idea where to book but made an uncharacteristically perfect choice. We are in a truly lovely spacious cottage on a farm called Sheepscombe Brye just 500m from the village of Snowshill which could easily be the location from the Vicar of Dibley. The church, which is also named for St Barnabas, is identical and there is a row of stone terraces just like the one where Letitia Cropley lived. I fully expect her pop here head out as we pass by and invite us in for a slice of Marmite cake or some lard and fish paste pancakes.

We are about ten minutes from the town of Broadway which we can see down the leafy green valley from our deck where we sit with wine in hand and a ploughman's platter before us, says he who is now fully addicted to Branston Pickle. We overdose on quaint each time we go to Broadway and I don't mean any kind of quaint, I mean QUAINT! The place is absolutely rotten with stone buildings, thatched roofs, lilacs, wisteria and the whole range of southern English folk from tweed-clad rude and dismissive to eccentric then onwards and upwards to absolutely delightful. Their dogs are far more homogeneous though, there's not an unpleasant one amongst them.

The Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway was a bit of fun and the drive across rather lovely as we descended a small escarpment through what looked like a rainforest of deciduous trees with fresh new spring leaves. We took the 10.00am steam train out of Toddington and beat the crowds then did it all again after lunch on a railcar set. By the time we returned for the second time it was 3.00pm and we were well and truly done!

I didn't spot a single Asperger's amongst the volunteer staff which is unusual and completely rules them out as actual card-carrying gunzels but a number of the other passengers were high on the scale and truly classic examples. The hats, badges and telephoto lenses give them away every time as does the unkempt look and just occasionally the smell.

And speaking of people with obsessive interests, if rain prevents you from driving from one scenic Cotswolds village to another then Snowshill Manor, former home to a somewhat odd chap by the name of Charles Wade, is a slightly disturbing place to spend some time. Wade collected scads and scads of shit from everywhere but mainly Asia and also liked to play dress-ups. I'm sure he's been the subject of many a psychological dissertation. There is so much crap in his dingy, rambling old house that Wade took to living in a nearby shed and I would have as well.

Five minutes in that nightmare of clutter was enough. I fled to the garden where I wandered wet but happy and chatted with dozens of white pigeons who, unlike me, were all intent on staying dry. I played quite happily in some puddles which seemed perfectly reasonable given that I was wearing shorts and thongs. There is little doubt that there have been far madder people in that house than me.

Yes thongs. After 22 airborne hours my feet have to puffed up to the point where I resemble a very tall hobbit. Some people stare, a few are brave enough to pass comment and I've even heard several whisper "He must be from New Zealand!"