Monday, August 31, 2009

Summer In The English Countryside

Where Are We: Bradford On Avon, Wiltshire

After a long hurricane season of no updates, we thought to avert rumours of Somali Pirates we had better let you all know what's been happening.

We got back to the UK in early June, after celebrating Linda's Birthday with Dave & Donna in Annapolis, Kate & Roger in Philadelphia, Craig & Barbera in NYC, assorted friends in Montreal, Linda's parents and finally the crew of Bofix in Quebec City over the course of a week!
 
Linda had her new visa for the UK and we set about some serious job hunting. After a few phone calls the first task was to buy some smart clothes, so that we would look the part for interviews.  Despite the economic doom and gloom that greeted us we got a few leads and Tim was offered a 3 month contract on the outskirts of Bristol, starting the first week in July.
 
This was great as we could now get somewhere permanent to live and the bills would be paid for summer. Linda soon got work in Bristol too and we were back to the old life of work and commuting.

The summer weather was truly awful, wet, cold and grey but thankfully the few days of sunshine we got all seemed to fall on the weekends, so we were able to make the most of it to do as much site seeing as we could.
 
We had rented a converted barn just outside Bath and within 90 minutes drive there was enough to see and do to keep us amused for years, never mind one summer. As well as site seeing we spent a lot of time with Tim's parents as this was our main reason for coming "home", Dad's health stood up well during summer, they even managed a trip down to see us in their caravan. We also managed to see a few of our long lost friends but not as many or as frequently as we wanted.

The highlights of our many wonderful tourist weekends were walking on the coastal paths of Devon on the perfect summers day, Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral and another superb walk to give us stunning views over the ruins of Tintern Abbey.


The other fun part of summer was catching up with cruising friends from the Caribbean, Linda literally bumped into Loon in the toilets at Bristol shopping centre, and we saw Peter & Wendy from Keesje II on a couple of occasions, as well as meeting the famous Fred the labrador.

As summer comes to a close our thoughts turn to heading back to Matsu and the Bahamas for the winter. Our contracts have been extended until the end of October, and so all things being equal we will fly back to the USA the first week in November.