Back home in the UK with family and friends for May 2016
England was greening with new spring growth when we started our drive south from Heathrow to Dorset and my side of our family. Henry and Ruby were getting ready for bed and Emily hadn’t told them we were coming so they would have a surprise. Also they were still in school so rather than get them excited just before bedtime and before school the next morning we decided on an approach by stealth.
We had a welcome drink at the Lamb Inn just up the road, ‘ah’, a pint of clear English bitter, so refreshing, especially under beams of oak and beams on the bar staff.
When the children were fast asleep we arrived at the house and after an evening of news and chat, remained in our bedroom the next morning until Henry and Ruby were safely off to school. A few hours later we stood in the playground, watching Ruby’s classroom door open first as she finishes just before Henry.
Well the look on her face when she spotted us standing with Emily was worth the long haul flight alone. As she ran down the slope towards us we prayed she would not trip up, but fate was kind.
Emily went off to collect Henry who in mid flood of information on the day’s events to his mum suddenly stopped talking and then said “Granny and Grandad!”
A few blissful family days later, which included a walk from Lulworth across the hill to Durdledoor and a beach picnic in superb weather and a good look around Tyneham Village, evacuated since the second world war operations but now partially restored, plus a walk with Toby and his friends, we headed west to visit brother Robin and his youngest son Christopher on their Devonshire dairy farm.
During our stay grandson number three arrived. George weighed in at a healthy 9lb 13oz and gave his mum, Juliana, a relatively short delivery.
I always love walking around the farm with Robin’s two springer spaniels Jim and Bud and Jack the Jack Russell. Rob and Kit keep the farmland in fine agricultural condition with neat hedges, well dug ditches, hard dry gateways and lush green grass for the well fed and shiny coated Brown Swiss cows and the sheep. Plus the views south east to Dartmoor and south west towards Bodmin Moor are truly beautiful.
Speaking of sheep hubby Rob, the dogs and I were sent by brother Rob to “Could you just get those seven wayward sheep back with the rest and then run some fencing across the hole while I deal with the auditor who is inspecting the farm please, sister dear?” That wasn’t really a question mark at the end there.
Rob stood by the hole so they wouldn’t run past it and I morphed into Shep and started rounding them up, ever so carefully, one false move would freak them into another field circumnavigation. Slowly they approached the hole and looked at it. They could see their chums on the other side and the big mummy sheep in her dried blood red fleece made to jump the wire across the hole, all would have been perfect but she got her back leg caught, so she struggled herself clear and off we went for another circuit of the field.
This time Jack thought he would lend a paw, which didn’t improve things, so he was politely told to go back to his mates, Bud and Jim. On this attempt one of the young white lambs, lighter and with more spring leaped over the wire and led the way back to the flock.
Hubby Rob and I took a foggy day off and went to explore Port Isaac, its historical identity now buried under the frenzied need of visitors to be photographed outside Doc Martin’s house, from the TV series of the same name.
Padstow, or PadStein as it is sometimes referred to, by contrast, still has its own identity with the bigger of Rick Stein’s business interests, his cookery school, set away from the town centre. It is a pretty, busy place with lovely vistas over the harbour and river estuary and at least one decent pub.
Back on the farm our next task was to collect Rob’s 250,000 miles so far Audi 80 from the garage where it had been fitted with a new fan belt. I could not drive our hire car as we would have had to pay another £11 a day on the rental, so on arrival at the garage I sat in the driver seat of the Audi and tried to pull it forward from long legged farmer position to short legged sister spot. Well amidst the hay and straw, paper receipts and a fair amount of dust and muck the seat moved, surprisingly, but it would not click into place, the hole maybe clogged with any of the afore mentioned detritus.
So as I approached junctions I kept a firm right hand on the wheel to hold me forward and prevent my seat sliding back when I pressed down on the pedals. I made it back to the farm, but not before my Robs began to wonder where I had got to.
The Bay View Hotel at Widemouth on the west Cornish coast, is a favourite haunt of our family and on the day we all visited for lunch it was bathed in sunlight. We watched the beach walkers and surfers enjoying the fabulous weather as we tucked into fish and chips. On the way home Rob took us to a new micro-brewery, set up by a westward bound London solicitor and we loaded up with various real ales for our stay in Oakham.
Our final task on the farm was to spread father’s ashes along a hedgerow which catches the first morning sun’s rays. He loved working in the fields, clearing ditches and cutting hedges, setting little piles of dry wood ready for burning. He died in 2002 so it was time for his release.
To Oakham for a May wedding.
Onwards and north to Oakham where we stayed with Rob’s mum, Rosemary who looked after us so well. The early morning cups of tea, and bubbly bath were a real luxury. People would ask us “What do you miss about the UK?”
Well apart from our family and friends the list is; A dog in our life, in particular Toby, a bath, accessible and fast Internet, light evenings and twiddling finger rings, (we leave them with Emily for security and wouldn’t wear them when sailing for safety reasons.)
We were also asked about calamitous moments. There have been two, and although they happened at different times they are linked. The first was when we bent the anchor on a fuel barge in Shelter Bay Marina. We will have to see what can be done, short of driving a tractor over it to straighten it out, once we get to New Zealand. The second was when the anchor windlass was ripped off its shelf when we were trying to anchor in San Jose in the Las Perlas islands.
Rob repaired the shelf with plywood and refitted the windlass with large washers on the bolts this time. They had been absent on two of the four bolts securing the windlass previously and one bolt did not even have a nut on it! Unfortunately the windlass would not then work. We bought a new solenoid for it in the UK but this only made it run constantly when the power was switched on.
Our windlass only powers the chain as it comes up, so the deck switch is on or off. The new solenoid is designed for power up and down so the deck switch would need to be three point, on, up or down. So it runs on while there is power to it because it has no ‘off’ setting. Rob happened to find a break in the wire, caused no doubt by the wrenching from its shelf. He fixed this, put the old solenoid back and low and behold it works.
Before we left Plymouth back in June 2015 we knew that Rob’s daughter Charly and Tom were planning a wedding for 29th May 2016, so from the Canary Islands we started making our plans to return to the UK via a trip on the Amazon and trekking to Machu Picchu, all organised for us by Llama Travel. So fate would have it that Zoonie would be in Bahia during one of the most complex seismic events of the century, (not my words).
The venue for the wedding was a beautiful copse of deciduous trees including a ring of tall, whispering poplars, near a little village called Postwick, in rural Norfolk. The marquee resembled an Arabic Bedouin pavilion, with the posts secured in peaks, or vaults at the corners. Our team of family and friends descended upon it to spend a day preparing and decorating with bunting, and setting the round tables with unique ideas like mini bottles of home-made sloe gin as favours and tiny tubes of bubbles complete with wands to satisfy the child in us.
A number of us stayed in a converted farm building, Colt’s Lodge, which I could quite happily have lived in, in another life. Cooking up breakfasts for 12 or so was like being back at Rosemead, my former home on the Isle of Wight, where I loved preparing breakfasts for my B&B guests for 8 years, (therein lies a book). In our little cottage kitchen an Aga made cooking a joyous activity and I had to be surgically removed from it in the end.
The Sunday of the wedding dawned misty with the promise of sun in a cool northerly wind. Guests, seated on scrubbed wooden benches, eagerly awaited the arrival of the bride with her proud father, whose eyes were moist, (he’s a softy).
A guitarist played charming music in the background while Charly, in her soft white dress with pearled and sequinned bodice with her proud dad negotiated the soft natural carpet of leaves and twigs.
Charly and Tom’s dog Darcy was ring bearer and led Rob’s youngest son Jonty up the woodland aisle which was decorated with posies of flowers in glass pots hung from silver painted fence posts. Sunlight dappling through vibrant young green leaves made me wonder when the fairies would appear to watch the beautiful event unroll.
All too soon we were returning the next day to clear up only to find the very same ‘fairies’ in the form of the camping friends had been busy before us and our task took only one and a half hours.
Our return to Zoonie started from Colts Lodge, briefly back to Oakham in the van and then south again for final days with Emily, Gary, Henry and Ruby and then two flights to Guayaquil, via Bogota. Effortless travel over thousands of miles, a little different from Zoonie’s journey.
