Maybe I’m being a little harsh on the old weather conditions – it has been warm, for sure. Well, most of the time, anyway… Last weekend we went to a BBQ at pals Mookie & Dan’s house, and it was bucketing down. They were prepared, with gazebos sheltering the gathered guests, but it’s not what we expect of an August weekend, is it? Bah…
Mind you, the following day Fi & I went for a (surprisingly dry!) yomp along the North Downs Way, from Reigate to Box Hill and back. I’m still breaking in my new boots, so ended up with blisters to beat the band – effing painful, if you must know. And because I was favouring the blistered extremities, I ended up with all kinds of aches and pains throughout my legs and hips. New boots: overrated! I’m certain that my old Rockports were a hell of a lot more comfortable than these things. Still, 15 miles of practice for the three peaks in a couple of weeks – that ought to be fun, if I can keep the blisters at bay!
July was a fun month, with a trip to Spain for Nuria’s wedding to Matt – it was a great production, in a restored castle in the middle of nowhere, and great fun. The usual Spanish style of lots of meat and utterly fantastic local wine (Ribera del Duero – if you haven’t had the pleasure, I can strongly recommend it), late nights and long siestas. The venue was lovely, and the service was excellent – recommended. Our hire car had a satnav to help us get there, but unfortunately we’d also brought reams of directions from Google Maps and other resources – cue arguments over which helper was working for us, and which was getting us hopelessly lost! So the journey was interesting, to say the least.
On the topic of weddings, I’m sure nobody is the least bit interested that we’ve now got our entire collection of digital pics together, but I’m telling you anyway. Close to 2,000 digital images and a few videos as well, so we’ll be able to torment our visitors with endless picture shows complete with commentary. In all seriousness, we’ve got a mammoth task ahead of us to whittle it down to a reasonably-sized collection to print and have as a memoir of the day. Don’t watch this space; we may be some time…
Another enjoyable weekend was spent with learning to sail, on a small boating lake in Danson Park just up the road from us. Another bug has bitten, and I’ll be going back for stage 2, probably in October. That’s where we learn to rescue capsized boats, among other things – think I may need to get a wetsuit!
Oh, and back to the topic of barbecues: we finally got to break in our new gas barbie a couple of weekends ago, and it worked very well indeed. Considering the weather forecasts, it’s amazing we got to have it at all, but in the end the forecasts were complete and utter rubbish. No change there, then. Much laughter and merriment were had, culminating in me taking a plunge off a loose tile on next-door’s patio and gashing my hand. Well, it wouldn’t be a weekend if I didn’t come out with an injury of some description, now would it?
Lots of plans afoot, including a road trip to the South of France to visit our pals there, followed by the aforementioned Three Peaks yomp, then a trip to Amsterdam to catch up with an old friend from Nepal who’s in Europe for a couple of months. And I remember my weekends used to be so chilled… Don’t worry, I’m not complaining!
Take care, y’all…