Thursday 16 June 2011

Back home for a while...

The last supper?
 Sorry for the delay in bringing out the next instalment of this blog but last week at this time I was on the ferry from Zeebrugge and I don't seem to have stopped since.

Sandra, Geoff and I went out to Scary Mary's (the penguin) in Vasiliki the night before we set off for home with Debbie & Jez,  Debbie's mum, Liz & Tony and also Liz'z son and daughter in law Jimmy & Els, for a farewell meal.  We had a really good night and as usual Mary sent us away with some extra wine and a full belly for the journey.  The next morning we had to be up early for the trip to Igoumenitsa to catch the ferry for Venice.  This trip takes about two hours or so and you are supposed to be there a hour before the ship disembarks so for us this meant setting off around five am.
Ferry just arriving at Igoumenitsa.

The trip home was uneventful (thankfully!) and enjoyable we travelled from Venice after getting off the ferry next morning across the top of Italy to Milan and from there north into Switzerland via the Gottard tunnel toward Basel and into Germany heading for Strasbourg.  We stopped at our normal overnight stop maybe fifty miles short of Strasbourg at a small German town called Kepple-Grafenhausen.  This is a good overnight stop as it's affordable, within half a mile of the motorway and has good food available in the town.  The Next day it was onward and northwards towards Brussels via Germany, France, Luxembourg and Belgium finally finishing at the port of Zeebrugge to get our Ferry to Hull.  The road miles (driven miles) is about 950 to Hull so out of a trip of about 2000 miles this isn't too bad.  I did get some diesel in Belgium before getting on the ferry for €1.239 (about £1.10) per litre this was the cheapest I saw in the whole of Europe.
Starting to sort the collapsed arbour

Back to it's former self.
Our canvas covered dining room cum lounge
Our home for 3 months in the paddock.
 We arrived home by about 11 o'clock in the morning and wasted no time in getting the caravan set up and prepared to be our summer residence complete with Sky+ in the awning and Free-view in the caravan so I don't have to watch soaps when there is some sport on TV.



In the paddock although No. 2 Son Chris had kept the grass under good control all the borders needed doing and the arbour with honeysuckle, Jasmine and Passion flowers growing up it had collapsed in last winters heavy snowfalls so all this needed repairing.  The winter also seemed to have killed my huge Phormiums which used to stand at about 12 feet +, After I have cut all the debris from around them three of the five are showing signs of new growth at the bottom so I may not have lost them altogether.  Several other shrubs have been lost however but never mind, if you are not here to look after them then this is the risk you take.




Our caravan and the paddock is now looking like a home from home and for those in Greece who didn't believe we had a dining table in the awning then here it is complete with fitted carpet Dyson hover and grannies old chair for a bit of comfort!

On a sadder note my Aunt died on Monday before I set off from Greece and although we got back for the funeral we obviously didn't get a chance to see her in time.  Our thought's are with Colin, Dianne, Jim and of course their families.

As yet we have not been to see Mark we have sent him a couple of texts to arrange a time to call but as yet he's not replied, I guess he's busy in training for next years Olympic ping pong team!

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