The Ashes - 2nd Test: Adelaide Oval

Next stop on the Ashes tour was Adelaide in South Australia. We had tickets for Day 2 of the cricket which went very well for England. The Australians had been bowled out on Day 1 for 245 and we watched as England made over 300 runs for a loss of just 2 wickets.


We went to the game with Meg's cousin Sam who is over from the UK working at a high school in Adelaide, and his Australian friend Nick. We watched the day's cricket from the general admission grass bank which provided no shade from the scorching heat of 39'C.


The Adelaide Oval is a beautiful cricket ground and its centrepiece is its 100 year old scoreboard. The board is four-storeys high and requires at least six people inside to keep score during a cricket test.

In the afternoon we spent a session in with the Barmy Army singing Jerusalem and God Save "Your" Queen. It was all good fun and invited some amusing Australian responses.

Mark's friend Travis was also in Adelaide visiting his brother's family and we spent some time on the beach (in the rain - see photo below) and in a few bars and restaurants in the nearby area of Glenelg.

From Adelaide we headed off in a camper van to visit the Barossa wine district and then down the Yorke Peninsula. Due to some budgeting concerns we decided to take things easy and disappear into the bush for a few days to read, relax and recharge our batteries for the next leg of our journey.

After a few days in the Innes National Park at the southern tip of the Yorke Peninsula we made our way back towards Adelaide.