Have been having some great weekends over the last couple of months!! (Haven't updated this very recently!)

Pete came and visited us in Bath for a couple of weeks while he was in the UK, which was great! And a great excuse for me to see some of the sights in Bath that I hadn't got round to seeing yet! It was a week of visitors, as we also met up with the McGregors (Ange's mum and dad) and their friends, who were all over on the rugby world cup tour. They were in Bath for a couple of days, and then we met up with them for a drink before the quarter final which we went to as well in Cardiff!

The Crescent on a beautiful day

Roman baths

Us at the millenium stadium (before the game). Amazing stadium, felt like we were so close to the ground!

Another weekend we went to visit Westonbirt Arboretum, which I've been meaning to go to for ages... as it happens, it was good we waited til autumn to go, as it was amazing to see all the beautiful autumn colours.
And another weekend Nath organised a surprise trip to the Eden Project, which was great. Just an amazing site. Wandered about the domes, and just had a pretty chilled out weekend.

Bensons

We went to visit the Bensons (Mike's my cousin once removed) in Sussex for the long weekend, which was great - lovely to have quite a low key one - we went for a few walks and just hung out for a bit.

On the way there we went past stonehenge - which was quite funny actually, to just see it sitting in a field like that

We went for a walk up on the South downs, and came across some Paragliders.

We also went with Michael and Mary to church, went for a pub lunch, had some swims in the neighbours pool, and went for a walk in the 'forest' (with no trees!).

And on the way home we decided on a whim to stop by Brighton (half an hour out of the way) - which was fun, and funny to see the stereotypes confirmed!

We also stopped at a random village fair, where there were lots of old cars.

Dublin

Ahh, I'm falling seriously behind on these. OK, Dublin...

We were staying in Trinity College right in the middle of the city, which was great, and were in one of the tourist attractions which we later did a tour around!

Did the obligatory guiness brewery tour - which was really very well done, lots of interactive video presentations and very interesting... and on the top floor got to pour our own guiness and went up to a bar with an amazing view over the city.

We also did the Jameson Whiskey tour... which also included a free glass at the end to taste test.

Trinity college where we stayed.

Just sort of wandered about the city and around the temple bar area. Good fun.

Nana's visit

Nathan's Nanna came to visit us for a week or so - unfortunately I had to work so couldn't go up to London with them but we did lots in Bath as well...



We went and did one of those red bus tours of Bath, went out to the river, went out for fish and chips, and went to the Raven for a pub meal, they came and met me in Bristol for lunch one day and went to the Wesley chapel, and we all just spent lots of time together at one place or another which was really lovely.





We had a bit of a bbq at my place on Sunday, so she could meet some of our friends...

Topsham

Topsham is the place I stay at when I am down in the Exeter office for 2days together. As much as I complain about having to go away with work, it's one of the nicer places to have to go to - it's a really cute little town, and I do quite enjoy being there, when I'm not missing out on things back in Bath.

Anyway, one time when I was down there I rounded a corner on the way back from dinner and came across this:

Random.

Some particular kind of Morris dancers apparently - funny old English people. They were actually not bad - and the band was excellent, especially one of the guys dressed in a badger skin who was beating his drum with a teddy bear!! Hahaha. Didn't manage to quite capture it on film but was very entertaining, and right outside my hotel.

While I'm on random English things, how about this:

An 'urban beach' set up in the middle of Bristol, next to the river that you certainly wouldn't want to swim in.

So strange.

Nath and I went down there for a day trip one saturday.

We had devonshire tea, and I got a bit artistic!

Sheep Racing

We went to Alex and Nicky's parents little village - Nether Compton - for their village fete - the highlight of which is the sheep racing! Most of our homegroup went, along with a few hangers-on, so it was a reasonably full household.

Here we are:

Kate, Sarah, Mike (Sarah's boyfriend), Mim, Julia, Luke (married), Alex&Nicky's mum, Nath, me, Luke (friend of mine from NZ), Alex, Nicky (sisters), Chris (married to Alex).

Enjoying pims on the lawn.

The sheep!

There was other entertainment as well including coconut shy, raffles, lucky dips, ice creams... did I mention pimms? :)

Cornwall

We went down to Cornwall for a fantastic weekend with family and boats on the water!

'sunny' British summer... hmm...

The Benson's are pretty well set up down there - they go there for a couple of weeks every summer with kids and grandkids... in total the families have a laser, a mirror, an RS, a topper, and a rib with waterskis and wakeboard.
Nath and I had a go in a couple of boats each, and were trusted to go out together in the mirror, which was so much fun!! Though coming back into shore was a bit tricky and took a few goes.

Really nice to get to know the rest of the family a bit better - and with 3 years since I last saw them, the younger generation have grown up heaps!

This was also the weekend there were crazy floods in much of England... fortunatley we were ok with the trains... until the way home when we were delayed for about an hour, but not too bad.

Nice is nice (ha ha bet no-one's thought of that before...)

I got a flight over on Friday evening - and a slight complication getting to the hostel from the airport in that some people gave me bad directions, and I walked in totally the wrong direction from the bus stop! But then I spied some nice french people to ask for directions and they actually gave me a lift right to the door of the hotel in their car despite not being able to speak any english at all!! So nice, and I would have been not a very happy camper without them. :)

Nice was fantastic. So nice and hot, and sunny, and not at all like England (we're having really bad weather at the mo - supposed to be summer!) So, Anna arrived the next morning on the train and we got a local train to Monaco at about lunchtime. Her boyfriend spent about 6months working on superyachts in Nice, so he'd given her some tips on where to go, and they were great tips! So we went up to Monaco (great train service all along the French riviera) and wandered about there chatting for a bit - did the obligatory visit to the casino (didn't go in though as had to pay :)) and saw the changing of the guard.

Then we headed back towards Nice on the train stopping first at Cap d'Ail and Villafrancia. Found ourselves a primo swimming spot at Cap D'ail and stayed there for a couple of hours chilling.

More swimming accompanied by ice cream strolling along the parade, and a nice meal at Villafrancia (another sort of seaside stopoff).

The next day we went to collect our hire car and Anna managed fantastically with the slightly frightening experience of driving on the wrong side in the reasonably chaotic Nice, with traffic lights every few meters and lots of lane changing :). We then spent most of the day driving out to Moustier San Marie. The drive took us around the Northern edge of the Gorge du Verdon, which is known as the grand canyon of Europe. We stopped at each of the viewing points on our map, and it was very spectacular - though after a bit we got used to it and lots of them were quite similar views.

We parked the car at some random layby and had a picnic (of french bread and cheese) and swim in the river which was gorgeous! If a bit colder than the sea. We also stopped at some village market along the way which was quite cute (strangely selling both mattresses and grandfather clocks). Upon arrival (fairly late) we fell in love with the little town we were staying in, and so the next morning we spent a bit of time walking around before driving back around the south of the gorge. So CUTE! And the B&B we were staying at was lovely.

There was also this amazing colour lake, which we couldn’t resist a swim in as we made our way home - like an enormous swimming pool. Be a great place to go back to. Then the drive home - including Anna's close encounter of the snake kind :) and a stand-off with a huge bus trying to come up the road that wasn't big enough for the both of us. I had to back the (brand new) hire car up very close to the stone wall and pull in the wing mirror to let him pass. When we got back we picked up Anna's friend Sally from Nice, and they dropped me at the airport - and went on to have more fun adventures. My flight was delayed a bit unfortunately but lovelyMim picked me up from the airport and dropped me home just before midnight.
It was awesome!!