The cliffs of Moher on Ireland’s West coast
Apologies for not having written a blog for a couple of months. We have been touring around Europe, visiting family and friends and having a very long, social and very gluttonous holiday!
A Christmas celebration down at the pub with Dad and Anne, Toby and Luke
We spent a fair bit of our time in the UK with my parents. We had not been back since we left Jakarta a couple of years ago so it was really good to have plenty of time to get beyond the “catching-up” stage and actually get involved in their day to day lives. We enjoyed drives through the country and pub lunches, mornings drinking coffee and cozy evenings sitting chatting by the fire. We did try to earn our keep doing odd jobs around the house and garden; Neil chopped a mountain of firewood and I raked leaves, cut down bamboo and took the dogs for long walks.
Working in the garden at Dad’s place – raking leaves, cutting logs and having great bonfires
The timing of our holiday was planned not just to coincide with Christmas but also with Maya (Neil’s daughter) who had been back-packing around Europe for the last few months. It was great to be able to spend lots of time together with her and to reacquaint her with my various family members. She first met up with us in Portugal when we visited my brother in Lagos. He had recently bought a new house and we were his first guests! His place is an old farm house which he has been extensively refurbished, it is almost finished is looking very cool! It is in the countryside about 5km outside Lagos and it was great to wake up and hear donkeys braying, dogs barking and cockerels crowing!
Storks nesting in the countryside outside Lagos, Portugal
The weather in Portugal was superb and Toby took time off to hang out with us. One day we went out to the west coast where he and Neil went surfing, another day we drove up to Monchique and bought some rich, green, pungent olive oil straight from the press. We went to the fair in Portimao one evening and had a stomach-churning ride on the Waltzer. Toby always takes us to interesting restaurants which are a bit off the beaten track and where the Portuguese eat. We enjoyed local delicacies washed down with Portuguese wine and macieira, a local liqueur. I think Portugal has one of the best cuisines in the world.
Mimi and Maya enjoying breakfast in a tea room in Copet
From Portugal we flew over to Geneva to visit my sister and her family. It was lovely to see Josephine and Andre and catch-up with Mimi, my god-daughter who is in her second year of law at university in Geneva. She and Maya got along like a house-on-fire and did not stop chatting through the entire visit. Gaia (Mimi’s new Boxer puppy) was the centre of attention; she is full of energy and inquisitiveness and was great fun to take for walks in the woods. We visited the Sunday market across the border in Divonne and another day we drove through the vinyards to Josephine’s favourite chocolate shop in Bougy-Villars. We had a couple of mornings in Geneva visiting the museums and eating Peking Duck in Mimi and Jeff’s favourite restaurant.
Clay pigeon shooting in Bampton, Devon was awesome fun
Once we had returned to the UK and were down in Devon again with my parents, we took Maya clay pigeon shooting. There are several outfits in the foothills of Exemoor that offer the opportunity to bang off a few clays with a bit of instruction to make sure we all got home in one piece. It was a real pleasure to be out in the Devon countryside on a bright winter’s day learning to shoot. We soon got the hang of it and were hitting about 30% of our targets but it was also very cold and after a couple of hours it was time to retire to the fireside with a glass of red wine!
Enjoying a walk with Evie and Kirana outside Windsor Castle
In December we rented a very comfortable Volvo V60 (with bum-burners – the height of luxury!) and took a roadtrip across the country. We started the tour with a visit to Windsor to see Evie and Goz, some good friends from Jakarta. Since we last saw them they have had a little girl, Kirana, who is now three years old and is very shy and sweet and speaks an enchanting mixture of Bahasa and English. We went down to Runnymede where the Magna Carta was signed and had a walk in Windsor Great Park and peeped through the fence at the splendid Windsor Castle. It was really great to see Goz’s family finally happily settled in the England.
Unashamed godwotery on display on the bank of the Leeds-Liverpool canal
From Windsor we drove up the M1 to Leeds to catch-up with some other close Jakarta friends, Laura and Paul. They too have been busy pro-creating and have a very cute, noisy two year old called Max who loves destroying things! They managed to hand him over to his Aunty for an evening and we went out on the town. Leeds has a beautiful city centre full of old Victorian buildings from it’s heyday as a wool market town. Modern shopping malls have been imaginatively constructed to blend in with the old buildings giving a vibrant, lively feel to the city. We stopped off at a couple of pubs boisterous with pre-Christmas cheer, and ate an excellent Indian meal at a new restaurant called Kaveri’s Kitchen (if you want good Indian food – go to Leeds). The next day we blew away the cobwebs with a lovely walk along the Leeds Liverpool Canal.
Lunch with my cousin Heather, Steve and George and Joe
While in Leeds we also reunited with my cousin Heather who I hadn’t seen for more than 25 years! She and her husband Steve used to live near me in Blackheath, SE London and we became quite close, but they moved up to Yorkshire to the delightfully named village of Giggleswick and I moved overseas and we lost touch. So we met them and their two sons George and Joe in Leeds for lunch. It was fantastic to catch up again but the time was not long enough so Giggleswick will definitely be on the itinerary for our next visit home!
The Christmas Fair in Edinburgh with Suzie and Daermid,, Millie and Tom
The next day we drove across the vast emptiness of the Yorkshire Dales. We crossed the border in to Scotland and by the end of the day we were drinking tea with my step-sister Suzie in Edinburgh. Her twins Millie and Tom are four years old now; they are developing their own personalities and are great fun to be around. One evening we took them to the Christmas Fair and they went ice-skating and on the Helter-skelter. We saw the Christmas lights and watched the lightshow accompanied by bagpipes and highland reels, it was magical. Our stay in Edinburgh was too short so we were glad that we caught up with Suzie and Daermid and the family later in Devon over Christmas.
Visiting the Carmody roots in Ennis, County Clare
We left Edinburgh and flew to Dublin to meet up with Maya again and to explore the Carmody roots. After a calamitous day of train strikes, car breakdowns and troubles with toilet door locks, we were glad to find a comfortable restaurant in Dublin’s Temple Bar and enjoy some Irish hospitality. The Carmody family originate from the west side of Ireland in east Clare, Kerry and Limerick. Ennis, according to the little research we did, was a heartland of the clan and we found a Carmody Street and took lots of photographs. Later we drove to the west coast and had a walk on the magnificent cliffs of Moher, it was a beautiful day and very dramatic scenery. We returned to Dublin for our last night and had a terrific meal in a superb restaurant called the Bank on College Green. Afterwards we explored Temple Bar area, it was great; vibrant with music and lights and people spilling out on to the streets. We went to the actual Temple Bar which was loud and raucous and chokka-block full of Christmas spirit. Dublin has got to be one of the best cities in Europe for nightlife.
Staithes, Yorkshire – the birthplace of Captain Cook
The final stop of our road trip was back in Yorkshire, near Whitby this time, where we stayed with Juliet and Pete who are old friends from our Brunei days. It’s such fun slipping back into old friendships and just starting off from when we were last together, catching-up on the intervening years, present times and future plans. We had a look around Whitby and Staines. Having followed Capt. Cook around Australia and New Zealand and across the Pacific to the bay in Hawaii where he was killed, it seemed appropriate that we should make a pilgrimage to the place of his beginning!
A picnic on the piste in Crans-Montana where we normally ski!
We spent Christmas Day with Maya at my Mum’s house. We had brunch, opened presents and then she cooked us all a slap-up dinner with pudding and mince pies and the works. It was a lovely happy day with the fire alight, the wine flowing and good talks and laughter. A couple of days later we flew back to Switzerland to Crans-Montana to spend New Year with my sister. Unfortunately there was almost no snow and most of the pistes were closed except for those with snow cannons. Instead of skiing we took long walks in the mountains on paths following ancient bisses (irrigation channels) along precipices and across crevasses. We also visited the Château de Tourbillon at Sion, made famous in the Dan Brown novels.
Enjoying the cold winter sunshine in Sion with Josephine and Andre
Before returning to Canada we celebrated Neil’s birthday in Amsterdam. We stayed at the Toren, our favourite hotel located on the Keisergracht so very handy for the Jordan as well as the centre of the city. We spent the days strolling around the streets, shopping, stopping for a coffee or a beer and looking at some of the strange window displays. We also caught up with Kevin, an old mate of Neil’s and founder member of the BYO Band back in Brunei in the early 90’s. We had a very enjoyable evening with him in Den Haag.
An evening out with Maya in Temple Bar, Dublin – what a fab place
So now we are back in Canoe Cove, the weather is hovering around freezing and has been for several weeks. They say this is highly unusual but it is not forecast to finish any time soon. The boat was at ambient temperature (around 0C) and it took us about 24 hours with a single fan heater to warm up the inside to above 10C. There is no water in the boatyard as all the pipes are frozen so we are living out of a couple of jerry cans! I did a big shop yesterday by bus (too cold to cycle) so now we have food, water and warmth – it’s a bit like camping!
Happy New Year to one and all – if it’s not too late to say so!
Suzy