Summer housesitting is over, time to prepare our next adventure

This is my brother Tony and his wife Tessa. First meeting in 17 years!

Its my turn to write! I normally leave the writing to Jackie, but things are in quite a whirl at the moment as we're getting ready for our three month trip to the USA and there's a lot of things that need organising and time is short. She's off having her hair cut, taking her mum shopping and getting her mum a Covid booster (we had ours last week) and to the dentist, so as I've got free time today, it's my job.

Little Indigo cat

Being tempted down with Dreamies!

She's blaming me, of course, for the whirl as I wanted to fit in seeing friends and family before we head off. So, since the last blog we've finished our housesit in Studley, Warwickshire, managed to fit in a trip to Evesham to see my brother, Tony and his wife Tessa who happened to be over here from their home in Crete to visit her brother for family birthdays, we've had a Sunday Tea Club meeting with friends in Birmingham, lunch with our friend Abi, a visit to a climbing and skiing friend, Helen to discuss climbs in Yosemite (the climbing gear is now packed), a trip up to Harrogate, North Yorkshire to see our friends Si and Di (and discuss our plans for a six day walk along Hadrian's Wall in North England in May of next year), lunch with Helen (as in Ian and Helen, not climbing Helen), 

Getting ready for a ParkRun

I've managed another couple of ParkRuns (27min 8 sec for 5km now!) and, last night I had a blokes night at the local pub, The Weighbridge, in Alvechurch with John and another three of the local 'Sunday Club' group to discuss important things like beer, breakfasts, trains, Air Miles etc over several pints of real ale. In amongst this we've been shopping and sorting out what we need to take to the USA. Tomorrow is the final pack and, on Saturday morning the taxi is booked to take us to the coach station in Birmingham for a trip to Heathrow Airport in London. We don't actually fly until Sunday morning, but we've booked a hotel close to the terminal so we can have an un-pressured trip down before catching a 9:30am flight to Albuquerque in New Mexico, via Phoenix, Arizona. Our plan is to tour through New Mexico, Arizona, a tiny bit of Texas and most of California, including Death Valley, Yosemite, Joshua Tree, San Fran., L.A., San Diego and Palm Springs. Our friends Fred and Maggie, who live near to Albuquerque are picking us up from the airport and have very generously offered to lend us their van to travel around, which is absolutely amazing of them. We'll be staying with them for a few days before heading off. Have a look at that little map top right to see our rough plan with places of interest marked, click on the square in the top right to make it full screen. Above it, click on that photo of the rock arches and that opens a page that gives more detail on our plan. I don't know why she's complaining things are a bit of a whirl. 

This is the lake at Arrow Valley in Redditch, round which the ParkRun does two circuits. How could you not enjoy a run round here on a Saturday morning?

So that's a summary, but more detail is needed! If you haven't got time or enthusiasm to read on, then we'll see you next time with exciting adventures in the USA (we'll do blogs more often as there'll be lots to say), but do look through the photos below, taken and sorted with love and care before you go... 

Sunday Tea Club with Manu, Crystal and Reuben. We drink Chinese Tea (hence the name) and Crystal, who is from Hong Kong, orders all the food, which is always superb and nothing like you'd get in a Chinese takeaway, it's far superior. With a beer before and after and a lot of laughs, it's always a tremendous night out

Right, that's 90% of our readers gone, well done if you're still reading - proud of you! 

Here's what she wrote and handed to the waiter. We could never go there on our own as we wouldn't know what to order! However, we could go back with this photo as say we'd like all this please!

The next day we're in Harrogate with Si and Di

First, Studley, where we did our last housesit, is in Warwickshire, whereas Redditch, almost connected to it, is in Worcestershire. There's just a narrow strip of greenbelt separating the two and yet lots of green space around them both. Have a look at this map. A little bit more building and Studley would become a suburb of Redditch, but it can't as it's in a different county. Interesting, well, I thought it was and I thought you'd like to know it too! Our last few day's with Indigo cat in Studley were thoroughly enjoyable too, she's such a cute cat, although she does get herself into trouble by climbing up onto the shed roof. She's 15 now, so not quite as sprightly as she apparently used to be. Once up there, getting down looks a bit more of a challenge. One one occasion I lifted Jackie up so she could get hold of her and bring her down, on another occasion Dreamies cat treats were sufficient to distract her and encourage her down. We hope she learns from her experience! The town of Studley was also a bit of a revelation, it has nine pubs of which six appear to be offering hand pulled ales, quite a number of restaurants (the Nepalese was fabulous!) a bespoke butchers, also very good (we tried it), loads of different shops and cafes and on the edge of countryside with splendid country walks. All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable housesit! 

Jackie with Di on our walk from Buckden

Meeting up with my brother Tony and Tessa for lunch was good, we decided it's been 17 years since we last saw each other. They retired in 2004'ish, sold their house in the UK, took a sailing course, bought a boat with the proceeds and took it to the Mediterranean to sail round some of the Greek islands. They did that for a few years, sold it and now rent an apartment in Crete. We went out to see them in about 2005 but haven't seen them since as they haven't been over here (actually, Tessa has been over a few times and we did see her a few years back, but not Tony). They were meant to be staying with my sister Denise and Paul in Solihull before going to her brothers in Evesham, but that had to be binned after a CT scan on Paul revealed a small tumor that needed removing and the hospital appointment coincided. He had his operation last week and latest reports are that it was successful, he's recovering and it all sounds quite positive, so that's a bit of a relief! 

Di framing one of her photos

Mind those stepping stones Si, you might get wet feet!

Our trip to Harrogate was fabulous too. Si and Di we met in Vietnam in 2014 while they were on a year away travelling round the world and we've kept in touch since. They share a similar love of travelling to us although they are not quite as mad as us as they actually live in a house! A fabulous house too and in the lovely city of Harrogate (is it a city? I'm not sure - bet you've gone to find out now!) and on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors with endless outdoor walking in fabulous scenery. We've skied together, rock climbed together, hiked mountains together and, earlier this year done multi day hikes together. We can share many adventure stories when we see them and discuss exciting future adventures (they are off to South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe in a few weeks on a trip that sounds amazing and one we want to do at some time), so time with them passes very quickly and with a similar sense of humour, there's a lot of laughter. We even managed a seven mile walk in the hills with them, around Buckden and, as usual I recorded it and produced a short Relive video showing the route and added some photos. Have a little look at it: click here (you'll notice Di with her camera, she's taken a photography course and wants to take artistic photos, so there was some hanging around while she got the perfect shot - we haven't seen the results). Looking forward to our six day Hadrian's Wall hike in May next year, the 3rd to 10th May 2023 is already in the diary! The third May will also be our 20th wedding anniversary, so what better present could Jackie possibly have? 

This might be interesting: See those layers on the hill over there? We're no geologists, but we think they might be leftovers from the last ice age when a retreating glacier carved the various levels. Imagine a huge glacier snaking it's way down that valley. I stand to be corrected if anyone knows better. Bill doesn't believe my explanation, he thinks its multiple layers of sedimentary rocks of different hardnesses that then erode at different rates. Late edit: I have been outvoted, the general consensus is that it is sedimentary not glacial. A geological map shows layers of gritstone and limestone, which would erode at different rates to produce the layers. I accept the explanation 

Do you know what, I'm not going to write any more, I'll post photos with some description to explain our other days out. That always takes ages to do, so I hope you enjoy them. I probably need to be getting on really, Jackie and her mum are out shopping now and on the menu tonight is home made chicken and leek pie and I've got to make the pastry for it... See you in New Mexico, USA!

I think Di's photography enthusiasm is rubbing off on me. Here's my attempt at art!

This is a working sheepdog that came over with a farmer on a 4x4 to shepherd some sheep. He was very cute and wanted to say hello to all of us, wanting lots of fuss. 

It didn't last long, the farmer called him back to work and here's his task, sort that lot out!

Oh, there she is again framing up another photo. She likes photos of barns and there's one over there in the distance. 'Don't you want the ferns in the foreground' I asked her. 'No' she said, but here she is bending down to get the ferns in!

Here's Simon in his scout uniform. He's a scout leader and assesses scouts on their Duke of Edinbugh awards as well as organising lots of events and meeting with them. He's just the man to have out on the hill with you, he'll not get lost!