Cricket tour of England 2015

Our holidays in 2015 all revolve around cricket.

On 3 June we left Melbourne to travel to England for the Australian Over 60s Cricket Tour of England and Wales. The tour lasts for a month and we then join the Victorian Over 60s Cricket Tour of England. By the end of the two months we will have seen a lot of cricket and many cricket grounds.

Our flight to Gatwick was with Emirates stopping at Dubai for two hours. Generally it was a good flight as we were not too close to families with young children. However there was one small child a few rows behind us who seven hours into the flight, much to the amusement of those who could hear, announced, "I want to go home".

At Dubai we met up with most of the other team members who had come on different flights and then continued on to England. At the airport we had a short delay while we worked out how to collect the cars required for transport. Eventually we were on our way to Somerset arriving at Yeovil approximately 30 hours after leaving Melbourne. We slept well that night.

Yeovil is named after the nearby River Yeo. Artefacts from the Bronze Age and the Romans have been found in the area but there has definitely been a settled community in the area since the arrival of the Saxons. Records show that Yeovil has been a market town from before the 1600s. Yeovil was known as a centre for making gloves from the fourteenth century. Today the local football club is known as the Glovers and a shopping centre is called Glovers Walk. The hotel where we stayed in Yeovil is The Manor which was built in 1776 by John Daniell, a glover and merchant. In 1927 the building was converted into a hotel.

Yeovil was to be our base for eight days during which time four cricket matches would be played against Hampshire at Hursley, Wiltshire at Goatacre, Somerset at Taunton and Devon at Thorverton.