From English travels to housesitting

I have a 6th sense to know when Jackie is not enjoying a walk!

The journey back to mum’s was long and slow, thank goodness we weren’t coming all the way from Yorkshire.

The Indian was booked though so all was well! And so started a very busy weekend.

Saturday was middle granddaughter Becky's 21 st birthday. The first family gathering in a very long time. It was a shame about the showers, but James manfully barbecued on while we sheltered under the gazebo and chatted. It was really lovely to see everyone, but there was still so much more chatting to be done. The next raincloud came in though, and Becky left to prepare for her celebration with her friends, so we too beat a retreat.

Family gathering at Becky's 21st (she's not in this one!) LtoR: Jackie, Nick, Ivy, Paul, Steph, Denise (in foreground), Fiona, Jessica & Sam

Becky, the 21st birthday girl!

Not back to mum though, but to Helen and Ian, in time to walk Monty dog, and have a pint in the pub, just as well I’d moderated my Prosecco consumption a little bit! We could stay over, hurrah, and how quickly things return to normal. Up the next morning though to go to Sheffield. Ian’s mum has moved to a care home in Birmingham, so her house has to be cleared and sold. H&I have spent ages clearing and shifting stuff South, but we cleared a few more drawers and painted the fence and handrail with wood stain, easy after Ian had previously done the preparation! A short walk for Monty as Ian pointed out some of his childhood haunts, before the two hour drive home again, or should I say straight to the pub for Sunday Dinner. How lovely it was to see them, for more than a couple of hours, huddled up against the cold.

More from the 21st LtoR: James, Sam, Harry & Becky at the back

Laura, Fergus, Jenny, Abbie, Becky and Alex

We stayed over again, but we were all busy on Monday, H&I both to work and B&I to see Caroline in Edlesborough. This had been arranged when we should have been 20 minutes away, on our Housesit in Milton Keynes, but we still wanted to see her, so just the timing was slightly different. The sort of plan had been to cook a vegetarian meal for her and Jonathan and Lucy, as Caroline has recently gone vegetarian, so we went through some recipes on line and in books till we found something that appealed, went through the cupboards to see what we needed to buy, and went out. First stop however was the climbing wall, we used to take Charles and Caroline quite regularly but haven’t for a few years, or even climbed ourselves for a few years. We had a thoroughly good time, all climbing the same routes, until the arms and feet had had enough. Pausing only to send a message to Jonathan saying we were enjoying ourselves far too much so would pick up pizza from the supermarket on our way home!

We made it to the pub with Ian, Helen and Monty dog

We arrived back at mum’s about 21.30 after a jam packed, thoroughly enjoyable weekend.

Then off to Sheffield for painting and sorting jobs

The following day was a bit of gardening before taking Ted to a local CL where we would have the space around us to clean, polish and waterproof the van. Two and a half days later Brian was allowed off site! The van looks stunning, but has now been put into storage for the summer. Slightly weird I know, but better to have him clean and protected while there. Also possibly slightly weird to be putting him into storage when everyone else was going away for the Bank Holiday, but that’s us! We don’t want to be competing with hoards of others for camping spaces!

We did manage to get finished by lunchtime and then everything back to mum’s, and pack our bags, all on Friday. We’d just finished and sat down when mum came back from her weekly walk with Joan, her friend from Forge Mill. Over a cup of tea we discovered that she used to live just up the road from Brian when they were kids and remembers Brian’s sister Denise (or Sneeze as she used to call her!) what a small world! This all left us with a free day today. We’ve been to the garden centre, for four hours and bought nothing. Made lots of notes, have lots of ideas and come away completely boggled! There’s a biggish patch of garden, that needs something in it to replace the fruit bushes that gave up the ghost a couple of years ago. It’s not an area easily seen from the house though, so it would be really easy to g
et carried away and spend loads of money to no real gain. But something does have to be done!

A cool little animation of 5 photos of Caroline climbing and Jackie belaying. Great to be back climbing again!

Polishing Big Ted at the nearby campsite. He looks good but two and a half days of hard scrubbing and buffing has left arms, neck, stomach muscles rather sore!

Off to the garden centre today with Pauline and Jackie to flood our minds with different plants and shrubs for her garden