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