ABSTRACT
We disembarked from the Orion in the morning and collected our baggage, and travelled first to London and then on to Oxford. The train gave us a stage from which to get a first glimpse of the English countryside, which was enchanting, so tidy and manicured after New Zealand’s natural bush and subtropical forests. I was impressed by the sharp edges of the villages, the streets of closely packed houses abruptly giving way to open fields. In New Zealand the villages and towns have no obvious boundaries; they just gradually peter out into farm land and the houses usually stand alone in sections about a quarter of an acre in size. Most of the English houses were in terraces with very little land and the rows and rows of identical chimneys augured a relatively cold climate.
