Spain

Ok, here's the posting for Spain, I will endeavour to get commentary for the previous posting completed at some stage. The first photo here is of Hamish after he had lost his boarding pass out the window at the departure gate. On Ryanair you don't get allocated seats and it's a mad rush to get on first, if you haven't got priority booking, so you can seat where you want to. When Hamish lost his boarding pass the lady at the gate let us go on first so we got six seats together. We got to Spain about 10pm and were picked up by uncle Jimmy. Jimmy was not used to driving from the airport at night and we ended up going the wrong way for about 50km before Jimmy realised that we were going the wrong way. We got to where we were going, Jimmy's mate Eric's at about 12.30am.

Here we all are on our first day in Spain, bathing in the Banya, a place where warm mineral water comes out of the ground, very nice and relaxing. You can see and lake in the background that is used for water for the cities of Granada and Almeria and also hydro power generation.

After the banya we went to a pommy restaurant for Sunday roast, a massive meal followed by may cerveras (thavesas, beers) and vino tintos (red wines). Seemed to be big part of our trip to Spain, mucho cerveras. Apparently if you speak loud enough, slow enough and put o at the end of each word the Spanish can understand you, not. I found it quite good to try and use the phase book and I think people were more appreciative and helpful if they could see you trying.

Jimmy has a villa on the outskirts of the village of Freila and here some photos from around the village, peppers drying on the side of a house.

Two old boys processing almonds

Here we are swimming in the lake, the temperature in Spain while we were there was about 28 degrees mid day. In the morning it would start at about 19 degrees. The Spanish apparently get up early do their work, go home ( the bar) at about two for a sleep siesta (drink), then go back to work at about 5. We didn't get round to having a siesta as we got up late and ate and drank all day, with minimal activities such as swimming, golf, swimming, market, etc.

Here's one of the holes on the Valle del Este golf course I played on.

Here's Caleb on the coast at Vera while Hamish and I were playing golf.

Here we are after lunch by the dam end of the lake one day, the oldies were sleeping.

Here's a view back up the valley to Jimmy's place, olive trees in the valleys and almond trees on the ridges.

Jimmy's place in the evening prior to us going down to the village for more cervesas and vino tintos, yeah baby, it's a hard life.

View through the almond trees to Jimmy's villa with Freila in the background.

Us with Jimmy before we left for Granada and the plane back to England.

Here we are at the top of Granada looking towards the Alhambra (I think that's how you spell it)

I do know how to turn these photo's around but forgot to turn this one around, sorry Al. When we got to Granada and boarded our plane we were informed that there had been a bird strike on landing and the plane needed some work prior to takeoff. This meant that we had to stay over night in Granada, Ryanair said that they would reimburse our cost so I hope they do, it ended up costing us about $700 extra for the six of us.

All in all Spain was a very cool place, nice and hot, good beer, and good food and cheap in comparison to some places we've been. I think we will be back to see Jimmy in Freila again some time.

Thame Fair

The Thame fair is an annual event that coincides with the Thame show, sort of like a A&P show but bigger. The fair had heaps of rides and amusements and the boys spend about eight hours there on the Friday before we went to Spain. Grandad took them down at about 1, then Al and I went down about 3, ended up in a pub some where (I did find some interesting pictures in the men's toilet, ask me about them when you see me next time). The boys and Grannie and Grandad went and pick up Chris at about 6 then we met aunty Janet at 6.30.

The boys favourite rides were the ghost train, the house of mirrors and the dodgems.

Grannie and Caleb on the dodgems.

Not a good photo, but aunty Janet and Hamish on the dodgems. There was also heaps of shooting games that the boys had to go on. We ended up going home about 9pm after having the customary hot dog / roast pork sandwich, no big breakfast.

London

Grandad took us to Amersham where we could catch the train into London, the ticket us £15 for the whole day, not too bad considering UK prices. Here's a photo of an escalator going down into the underground.

We finally managed to work out where the information centre was and asked where we could catch the tour bus. Back on the underground to the tour bus stop and here we are seeing the sights. A cousins of mine said he spent two and half hours on the bus seeing several sights more than once, I thought what an idiot until we had been on the bus for a similar amount of time and yes, we had also seen many sights more than once, oh well at least it wasn't raining.

Finally got back to where started and walked to the London eye for a ride, this was pretty impressive and not too expensive. It did rain while we were up there as you can see in the back ground, but the shower passed quite quickly.

Don't know what happened her, there appears to two photos the same, I try not to double when we have our slide show at home, I think Al said we've taken about 1200 photos now, should be a great night, hope you're all looking forward to it.

Here we are in Moroccan restaurant with Suzy and Lawrence, Suzy assures me she was smiling, we had a great time with Suzy and Lawrence even though it was only for tea.

I think we need to go back to London as we didn't really have enough time to look around while we were there it may have had something to with our orientation skills.

Worthing

Here we are on a barmy English autumn day at the coast, pretty frigin cold, still got my jandals on though. Only had a day here after we came back from the Scilly Isles, Alan took us down to the sea front for a couple of hours then we went back to Jen and Alan's for lunch and we left about 5 o'clock, heading for Thame.

Here's the gamblers at the amusements on the pier

And yes we have a winner, after putting in £3 worth of 2p pieces Caleb actually had a collect, I think he won 8p.

Here the crowd from Worthing, Jen behind Hamish, I'm holding James, Alan beside Al, Tim beside his dad, Sunar, (Tim's wife) holding Jessica.

Scilly Isles

We flew to the Isles of Scilly from Lands End on a tiny 8 seater airplane. But the flight was only 15 minutes, so there was enough time for Richard to take about 100 photos of the beautiful scenery leaving Lands End and arriving on St. Marys Island. The weather was absolutely fantastic, couldn't have got better, so as soon as we'd booked in the B&B we were off to the island of Tresco. We got a ride over in a private chartered boat that had enormous motors on the back, and just zoomed along the flat water. On Tresco Merry hired bikes for the boys, so they were very happy to bike around, rather than walk with us. All along the sides of the paths there were wild black berries growing. They were so yum, I'm sure our walk took us twice as long because we were stopping to pick them every few steps. Caleb became quite an expert at spotting the best ones.

Here I am picking some black berries. (This is an interesting animal that came out of the under growth, reminded me of Gorilla's in the mist - Richard's comment of course)

This is where we arranged to meet the boat to head back to St. Marys. You can see how flat and clear the water was. We had a bit of a paddle in the water, but it was too cold for a swim.

The first night on Scilly we had a meal out at the Mermaid (one of many many pubs on the island). Here we are with Barabara (top right), and John (Richards godfather, you can just see his shiny head on the right) and Barabara's daughter Nicola (front right) and her daughters Ashley and Keylee.

Unfortunately the lovely weather didn't last, it got cold and overcast but only rained at night. This is the view from the Garrison Hotel (closed when we visited, but looked like an old castle), looking back to the wharf and Hugh Town on St Mary's island.

We had a big walk around the garrison. Along the way there were cannons and stone walls and defensive bits left over from the war.

On our last day in Scilly Richard and Hamish hired bikes (while the rest of us went shopping). They biked all over the island (twice apparently). Here's Hamish biking up one of the typical roads, narrow and windy. I don't know what would happen if two cars met. There aren't too many cars on the island, but there's probably about twice as many as when we were here 17 years ago.

One of the pubs was giving away Guinness stuff with every pint sold. So Richard, Tom and John had to drink a few so the kids could get these gloves, ball and key ring. I think the chewing gum just wanted it's photo taken too.

We stopped at Stonehenge (us and about 10,000 other tourists) on the way from Penzance to Worthing (a bit of a detour). There was an audio tour to listen to as we walked around it. I found it very interesting, there was so much history, but also so much unknown about it. Hamish enjoyed listening to the history and theories but Caleb didn't know what the fuss was about some old rocks.

Bristol

Here's the Cradock boys at some Cradock grave stones in Hemington. I forget who's grave stones they were but apparently some one in the family used to be the church warden or something, I probably should have been lisening a bit harder.

Here's Alison on the piss again, she found these large RTD bottle of vodka, I think is her third one.

While in Bistrol we went on a open double decker bus tour around the city which was very interesting. This is a picture of the dock area. I did also take many pictures of the big bridge in Bistrol and a caravan park which we saw. The caravan park interested me because there was no grass just caravan people sitting next to their caravans that were parked on gravel. Not sure what these caravan people got up to their spare time but it obviously didn't include any activities involving grass.

We spent two nights at Bistrol with with my Aunty Janet (dads sister) and her husband Richard and one of their daughters Aimee. Their other two daughters, Jade and Hannah were at big school or teaching, both in London I think. The boys thought Aimee was the coolest, she took them down the park with her beebee gun and skateboard, not sure how many old ladies they scared on the their trip. Aimee ended up giving Hamish her beebee gun but Hamish lost all the beebees for it, luckily though we found some more to buy in Spain.... great.

Thame - Jill and Len

On our way to Thame from Huddersfield we had the opportunity to encounter some traffic congestion, you beauty. It took us about three hours to get through this, so a three hour trip took us six hours.

We made a stop at a rest area (that are called Welcome Breaks over here) so the kids could throw the ball around, you can see the traffic in the background

This is the back garden of the place at Emmington / Thame we are staying for the bulk of our time in Thame. This lawn is massive in English terms and Len also has a massive vegetable garden to the right of this photo and an orchard over the back hedge. Here's Len throwing the ball around with the boys, I think this is the first time Len has played with a rugby ball, wha ha ha....... another convert.

Here's Jill and Len, their house is the brown one in the background, I think they call this semi-detracted because it only shares one wall with another house. Our window is the one on the second floor. It's great staying with Jill and Len, it's nice and quiet (when the kids are asleep) and Jill and Len look after us as though we're royalty.

Huddersfield

Those of you that know Hamish will realise what I mean when I say he hasn't changed and that I don't know how his lovely wife Clair (C. A. Pratt) copes. The photo above is of Hamish's home club, he is still playing senior rugby, we were going to see him play on the 6th but he's injury at present. Hamish is a development officer for English rugby and wears all the English gear and drives around in a car with English written all over it, it just doesn't seem right. We had a good talk about it though, and he's infiltrating them and going to bring them down from within, it would appear they seem to be doing that all by themselves at present, Saturday will tell.

We stayed with Clair, Ally and Hamish for two nights, I think Hamish was a bit nervous about taking us home. I don't think Clair minded us dropping in with minimal notice, .........Clair had an interest story to tell us about the cat which I don't think Hamish liked her telling us. We had a great stay with Hamish and his family and they really made us feel welcome.

Here's the family, all off to work, Clair works for some IT company. Below is a couple of photos of an old park that backs on to their place.

Not sure what these ruins are from, it could be from the old railway that used to go through here.

If you walk to the top of the hill there is a massive park where we took the boys, (big Hamish included) to kick the ball around.