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!!

Valencia

OK...

We went to Valencia for the first bank holiday in May to see and soak up some of the atmosphere of the second round robin of the Louis Vuitton Cup (big sailing race!). It was great! Much of our time was spent down in the cup village, but we did also hang about in the old town and did some of the touristy stuff. Anyway, here are some pics:

Cup village:

Team NZ:Nathan and the cup:

Nice looking boat!:

Valencia central: lots of big open squares:

The ultra-modern looking Science and Arts park.

As you can see the weather was a mighty bit nicer than in England!!

It was lovely.