After trawling around every camping shop in Manchester and searching through endless blogs and forums looking for a backpack, we finally found the Osprey Porter 46 to be just what we were looking for.  Unfortunately after phoning most Osprey stockists in the UK we found that only one store had some in stock.  To make matters worse this store was in Bath!

So last Saturday we jumped in the car and drove to Bath.  It was a pretty quick journey down but once in Bath it took over an hour just to get into the car park.  We then waited another hour for our lunch to arrive in a pub we found, but all this faff was eventually worth it once we reached the Itchy Feet shop.

Jen first tried on the Osprey Porter 46 bag and it fitted her perfectly.  It also folded down really well and could have all it’s straps tucked away when you want to just use it as a duffel bag.  While Jen was trying on that pack I quickly tried out the Osprey Waypoint 60 which, although slightly bigger, did come with a detachable day pack that would come in very handy.  The Waypoint also does the trick of tucking away all the straps for transport which should mean less chance of damage in transit. We now have a new bag each which we need to kick and rub in the mud before we leave so we don’t look like complete newbies!

We’ve also had our second round of Hep B and Rabies jabs with the final ones due on December 9th.  I probably should have had something to eat before these injections as no sooner had I walked out of the nurse’s office I had to sit down from feeling really woozy.  After a few minutes of sweating like I have never done before I was back to normal and headed home for some Crunchy Nut Cornflakes 🙂 Jen has a much stronger constitution and looked after me admirably, like a hero really [last bit added by Jen].

We had our first round of vaccinations today.  We decided on the full selection of 4 injections:

• Tetanus, Diphtheria and Polio
• Hepatitis A and Typhoid
• Hepatitis B
• Rabies

We need to go back a few times in the coming weeks as some of the jabs take multiple shots.  The nurse was pretty good (much better than the ones we remember from school) and the actual jabs were done in a matter of seconds.  Although the jabs didn’t hurt our arms are now fairly numb at the top and we can’t even  raise our arms as high as John McCain.

Now we just need to figure out where to buy our Malaria tablets from.  There’s a couple of different types to choose from but essentially you can either have expensive ones with not many side effects or cheaper ones that could make you feel awful (perhaps a caravanning holiday in Llandudno would have been easier).

Next up…what size bag to take.  Oooh the excitement 🙂

Sod this credit crunch malarkey, we’re off!

Rather than sit around and watch the world financial systems crumble on BBC News 24 we thought it would be a great idea to travel around the world and hope that by the time we get back everyone will have sorted themselves out.  Jen finishes her job on Friday October 31st and Ben finishes his on Christmas Eve.

We have been to Trailfinders and purchased our round the world tickets so there’s no going back.  We’ve set this blog up in the same way as our wedding website, so we can send a photo and piece of text from our iPhone as we travel around (as long as there is WiFi available).  Our leaving date is January 15th 2009 and we hope to be back by August.  I’m sure we will struggle to fit it all in and do everywhere justice but we’ll give it our best shot!

We hope that you follow our route and leave us comments with each post so we can all keep in touch.