Packing for Indonesia

       At Fiona and James for a midweek meal & 

       catch up

This is a very short blog to see if Brian can do it on the mobile phone. We are not taking the laptop to Indonesia as, although all the flights have hold baggage, there are 11 internal flights. I made the decision to see if it was possible to travel with the 7kg permissable for cabin baggage, and it is. We may be wearing more clothes through the airports than we'd like, but for the lack of stress I think it's worth it. If you'd like to see our plan for our trip look right in the column alongside. You'll see a map, click on the square top right to enlarge and click on each of the map markers to see details. Above the map is a picture of some Komodo dragons. Click on that and it opens a page describing our trip.

.      We're packed - and this is all we're each taking 

       for 37 days in Indonesia

We left Bristol and don't seem to have stopped since, flu jab, tidying in the garden, ballroom dancing (in preparation for the January cruise), dinner in their local with Fiona and James, packing a million times into new backpacks and a very busy weekend.

.       On our 6 mile walk with Denise and Paul (he 

        was there, he's taking the photo). This is a 

        lovely spot along the Worcester & Birmingham 

        canal with Lower Bittel reservoir behind and the 

        Lickey Hills beyond

The weekend started with a walk with Denise and Paul from the house, a good 6 miles on a sunny crisp day, lovely. We finished at the Red Lion for a pint, and for us, a light lunch.

.     See, I told you he was there too. A sunny but 

      quite cold day

The reason for the light lunch was the arrival late afternoon of Jonathan and Lucy. They were coming to see us obviously, but also to see all the changes we've made to the house. We'd booked Kurzi lamb at the Indian for our evening meal as it really is a treat. We ate and ate but seemingly made little impact. The leftovers have given us 4 meals, finishing with a twist on shepherds pie!

.     Me taking a photo of Denise taking a photo of 

      some sheep

Sunday was also clear and crisp, so another walk, almost 6 miles at a really good pace with a light brunch in Barnt Green. They then headed north, to Telford to collect Lucy's mum and stepdad to take them home for a few days. It was lovely to see them, we talked and talked, unusually for us as normally our focus is on Charles and Caroline, not Jonathan and Lucy.

.     The Kurzi leg of lamb we had in the Dilshad, the 

      Indian restaurant in our village. It has to be 

      ordered at least 24 hours in advance so they can 

      slow cook it in all those lovely Indian spices. It's 

      huge and absolutely delicious!

We chilled for a short while before heading into town for a Sunday tea club, Manu and Ming, Helen and Ian and newbies Mike and Ella. As usual Ming ordered, we ate and much laughing and talking was done.

The 'house thing' for this blog is we now have a new roof. We got back from Bristol in much rain, which didn't stop, to no tiles, fortunately the battens and felt were well secured and the space remained dry. 

.     Out for a 6 mile walk with Jonathan and Lucy on 

       Sunday morning. This may look similar to the 

       picture with Denise and Paul and that's because 

       it is! However only this part of the walk was 

       similar, the rest was quite different

They didn't come on Monday to start tiling as the weather forecast wasn't good. The day was, so everyone was a little irritated. They turned up on Tuesday and didn't hang about, finishing about 10.30 on Thursday! They've done a really good job tidying up inside the loft, and didn't do a bad job outside. It wasn't until the scaffolding went though that we could really tidy. The back was cleared on Sunday so we cleaned all the windows, soffits and sills on Monday, he then turned up Monday evening to clear the front, so that was Tuesday, including doing nextdoor, as they were very dusty and it really wasn't their fault!

.     Sunday Tea Club. This is in the pub before we 

      went to the Chinese restaurant where Ming 

      orders everything and we have a feast! LtoR: Ian, 

      Helen, Ella, Mike, Ming, Manu, Jackie and me

Along with cleaning and final packing we've also had our minds focused on the cruise as Denise and Paul are going to come too which will be great. They are much more organised with the shore trips so we've now sorted all of those too, hurrah!

.     Walking down the steps from New Street Station 

      towards the Chinese restaurant 

Tomorrow we get the bus to Gatwick, an overnight and then our flight to Jakarta.

.     Our roofers just starting the tiling. We had ours 

      done with our neighbours so there's two roofs 

      being done at the same time. The roof was 

      without any tiles last weekend when it rained 

      heavily. We had only a layer of felt to protect us, 

      but it worked well, no water got in. Note the very 

      useful conveyor they had for getting the tiles up 

      onto the roof. Made the job very easy for them

.     They also had a drone and this photo is an aerial 

      view of the roof as it was on the weekend with 

      no tiles

.     And this one shows the finished roofs before the 

      scaffold was removed

A month of dog and cat sitting in Bristol

Freyja dog with Jackie at Battery Point Lighthouse, Portishead

There really isn't much to write in this blog about our time in Bristol with Freyja dog and Tinsel cat as Freyja has just had all of our time!

We've been to Uphill, at one end of Weston-Super-Mare, where she can run for miles on the beach playing fetch with her ball. When we are bored with this she has a small tennis ball that she buries and digs up in the dry sand, very funny though the thought of sand against the teeth does set my teeth on edge.

On the beach at Weston-Super-Mare. Weston gets bad press in the UK, unfairly in my view. It is situated in the Bristol Channel that has the second highest tide in the world. The beach is gently sloping, making it a safe area, but this means that when the tide is in there's only a small beach, but when the tide goes out its huge and the sea disappears! A good section of this is sand, but further out it reveals mud, which can be sticky and it's possible to sink into it. It's therefore unaffectionately known as Weston-Super-Mud, but there is a huge beach and a pleasant place to go

We've walked down the coastal path to the Ship, a huge pub, built in 1973 by Vic, who still runs it now. He can be grumpy, and obviously doesn't need the cliental, but does it because he wants to. We had a great chat with him, and a good pint.

Our coastal walk towards The Ship near Clevedon. Actually this might be the walk towards the beach at Weston-Super-Mare, but its a nice photo! 

There are a couple of woods we've been to, Abbots pool and Leigh woods. Both of which are great fun for sniffs and leaping through looking like a little deer. Leigh woods is the only place Bev regularly puts the tracker on her, so we did too, just because she does hare off out of sight. We didn't worry about her not coming back to us, as that is one of the joys, she wants to come back to you, but if something happened you'd be hard pushed the find her. The first time we went there she did vanish for a short while before returning, about the same time as the WhatsApp message came through from Mall the dog walker saying she'd got Freyja. She'd obviously heard her voice and thought she'd say hello, before bounding back to us which was very pleasing. 

Drinks and lunch at The Ship. Go back in time to the 1970's and enjoy the hospitality of Vic, who had the place built in 1973 and still runs it. He's one of the characters of the world (and serves a nice pint of real ale)!

One of our favourite places was Ashton Court which feels very safe. It's very popular with dog walker's which means sometimes she'll meet a dog who wants to chase her. She loves it, just so she can show off about the speed she can go. One day someone will be able to catch her, but no-one we saw got close. There are also woods here for sniffing and squirrel chasing and open areas for ball chasing. A bit of everything. There is even a park run so last Saturday Brian decided perhaps he'd give it a go. This did limit where Freyja and I could go, and it was a bit of a challenge walking away from him. She looked back a few times but forgot about him soon enough.

Saw this in the boatyard at Weston-Super-Mare next to the lovely Boatyard cafe at Uphill (where we had lunch everytime we went). Many of these boats are rotting away but it's not an unpleasant place. I liked the notice someone had put on this old hulk. If you can't read it it says: 'Uphill Wharf - Welcome to the graveyard of broken dreams Rest in Pieces!' I have heard it said that there are only two best days of owning a boat, the day you buy it and the day you sell it!

This was not the case last week when we went into Pill. I popped into the barbers to see if he could cut my hair, which he could. Rather than wait Brian took Freyja up to Hams Hill the standard 'fall-back' walk. He had to drag her all the way there, didn't dare let her off the lead for fear she would run back to me, and then get towed all the way back. It's safe to say she is a ladies dog so in Bev's absence I am top dog.

Whilst Freyja dog is the main event, we were also looking after Tinsel cat, a 17 year old moggie who keeps well out of the way of mad dog, spending most of her time on a chair in the kitchen but demanding fuss whenever there's someone around, summoning attention with a very loud miaow! She will have nothing to do with Freyja despite her repeated attempts to befriend her. The closest she's got is sniffing her tail when she doesn't realise she's there!

The dog walker has had her for a couple of hours a week, just about time for us to go to do our food shopping. Apart from that she's been with us. We did have one scary moment though as we had to have an emergency vet visit for an emetic injection as we didn't know how much of her teddies paw she had swallowed! Quite a lot as it turns out, so I'm glad we made the decision to be proactive rather than risk a blockage, though she'd probably have been ok! 

Mad dog in action in the house

Apart from Freyja our other activity has been booking trips. Three to be precise. We head to Indonesia in 10 days time for six weeks - have a look at the map and description to the right of this blog to see our plan, we have a 10 day cruise in January to hopefully see the Northern lights and a ski trip with 6 other members of the mountaineering club, that Brian organised. It'll be just like old times. We are even going to stay in the chalet run by Cassie and Simon who we met on our ski seasons. So although we never actually stayed with them Alex and Rob, and Mike did so we all know we'll have a great time.

Not my video, it was taken by Mall the dog walker who looked after her on Wednesday mornings. I never got a really good video of Freyja running but this one captures it well. She's a Whippet and is one of the fastest breed of dogs. She just loves running at this speed and goads other dogs to chase her. To date we haven't seen any other dog getting close to her. Here you can see how she leaves them standing 

We have really loved being here and are so going to miss little Freyja puppy dog, she is such a gorgeous girl and has filled out hearts.

The trig point on top of Brean Down. Its only 97m above sea level, but still a decent walk, especially for a whippet who had to be kept on a lead and couldn't race off. Brean Down is a sliver of rock that juts into the Bristol Channel separating Weston-Super-Mare from Brean Sands. Great views from up here...

Looking south from Brean Down is Brean Sands. The tide is going out so the sand is still wet, but you can see the huge expanse exposed by the retreating tide and it is by no means low tide, so it gets even bigger. You can actually see our car parked on the left, halfway up on its own in a small car park. We'd walked from there along the beach almost to the headland in the distance, Freyja doing about five times that distance at high speed chasing her ball. We then walked up here for the view. Brean Sands is almost 7 miles long and one of the longest stretches of sand in Europe. Like Weston, at low tide a layer of mud is exposed so care must be taken not to walk on that for fear of sinking in! 

Looking north from Brean Down is the resort of Weston-Super-Mare. If you zoom in you can make out the exposed mud flats, which are much larger than those on Brean Sands just the other side of this headland. I'm sure there's someone who could explain why its different on each side, but I can't

Another day and another walk. This one was a trip down memory lane for Jackie and I as this was the first pub where we had a drink together. It wasn't a date and, in fact we weren't even an item then. We started off as rock climbing partners and we used to climb on the 100m cliffs of the Avon Gorge, nearby on a Tuesday evening in the summer. I had been climbing with my friend Phil Powell in the Avon Gorge for years, we used to slip off work early on a Tuesday and drive down to the gorge for an evenings multi pitch climbing. In later years Jackie joined us as she used to work shifts at the BBC so, when her shift pattern allowed she could join us. On one occasion Phil had work commitments so couldn't make it, however Jackie could, so we climbed together for the first time. On the way home we stopped off for a drink here to savour the evenings climbing in the fading light over the River Avon and so, we gradually became more than climbing partners! It wasn't sudden though, but a gradual realisation. Multi pitch climbing is very intense, you are putting each others lives into the others hands, complete trust is necessary and, on small belay ledges halfway up a cliff with only us and the rock with a big drop below, you really get to know someone

The view outside the Lamplighters  pub. We'd sit on that wall looking across to Pill and  savour the summer evening

And now we're the other side of the River Avon in Pill, near to where we're housesitting. The tides out and you can see all the boats on the mud. It's a pity that you can't quite see the Lamplighters pub in this picture, it's just out of sight on the far river bank behind that yellow building on the right. But in the above picture you can still see these boats in the little side inlet

This was our favourite place to take Freyja doglet, Ashton Court, a stately home now National Trust property (Edit: I have been told by Bev that it's not NT but owned by Bristol City Council. That's me told, should check my facts better!). It's got extensive grounds overlooking Bristol and lots of activities happen here. Hot Air balloons take off from one field on warm calm days, theres a weekly ParkRun that I joined one week and they had an antiques fair one week. They have a nice cafe in the building, something we stopped for everytime we went. It gave a nice break for us and Freyja in between mad running with other dogs we met on the way, running after her ball and lots of sniffing in the woods (her not us!)

In Ashton Court and just because I thought it was a nice photo. We're going to miss this little girl, so sweet natured and very fast. She's either on (mad running) or off (asleep)

Bev and Iain return to reclaim Freyja. They had a great holiday in Turkey and we had a great time in Bristol. We look forward to catching up with them again very soon

We got back home in the rain to see how they are getting on with our new roof. All old tiles stripped off, felt and new battens fixed. Good job its watertight, but just a layer of felt protecting us from the elements until the new tiles are fitted this week