Lots of walking

After our usual fun-filled but fairly packed holiday in France we settled into a much more relaxed life with Jonathan, Amy-Jane(AJ) and Sean in Wareham. While they worked we re-acquainted ourselves with the trails, bridleways and public footpaths right on the doorstep.

We thoroughly explored Wareham Forest and, as the summer progressed, foraged for blackberries on Wareham Common accompanied by the inexhaustible Finn. Finn discovered that he could pick blackberries himself but after a few bramble prickles in his mouth decided that a better course of action was to lie nearby and gaze at you with his big spaniel eyes until you relented and fed him a tasty treat.

AJ and Sean took us back to the Dorset coast path in an epic circular route that included a good number of the path’s steepest ascents and descents but thankfully ended in the Square and Compass at Worth Matravers. Ask us, one day, to tell you the story about an infamous previous landlord and his delightful customer relation skills!

Sue’s sister, Sarah, and her adult ‘children’, Frances and Gregor joined us for a week after they had holidayed in St Ives – a place of many fond memories for the Mooney clan. Thankfully, Claire was able to be there for much of the time too. More walks around Wareham and the forest and another good walk on a different section of the coast path were in order, this time with refreshments at the half-way point. The walk was an essential health activity given that we were being treated to Frances’ exceptional skills as a pastry chef each day! Two highlights were a delicious streuselkuchen made with some of the blackberries for which Nigel had foraged and an absolutely heavenly salted tequila and Grand Marnier slice. Many more walks will be needed!

Time to reminisce

Covid prevented us from catching up with any friends on our last visit to England – not so this time.

We travelled to Kingsbridge on the South Devon coast to meet up with Chris Booth, a friend from university days and his wife, Clare, whom we had never met. We had not seen Chris since we were together at the wedding of another university friend Pete Satchwell and wife Philippa about 36 years ago. So it was entirely appropriate that Pete and Philippa joined us at Chris and Clare’s home for a fabulous weekend of reminiscing, walking, boating and planning for the next get together – Pete and Philippa’s home in the Cotswolds next year.

A weekend of wild weather did not stop us enjoying the South Devon coast path on one day and Salcombe harbour the next.

More celebrations, new people to meet and diving planned

Nigel celebrated his 63rd trip around the sun with the help of an Amy-Jane special carrot cake at the same time as Jonathans’ sister, Debra, came to visit from Germany along with her daughters Natalie and Katie. We had met them several times in the past (see their 2016 visit) and even visited their home in Altenahr, Germany before the devastating floods of July 2021 destroyed much of the town.

This time Natalie was accompanied by her husband, Filipe, and six month old baby, Magnus.

The English summer weather conspired to prevent Nigel from diving. It seemed that whenever Sean attempted to arrange a dive outing the wind picked up. Trying on a dry suit was as close as Nigel got to revisiting any of our old dive sites.

One more catch-up

As usual, time flew by and we needed to head north once again to visit Nigel’s parents before leaving for New Zealand. We broke the train journey north by stopping at Peterborough to visit more friends from university days.

Oz and Den live in Burton Latimer near Kettering. We last saw them in Abu Dhabi when Oz was working in Dubai and Denise came to visit along with daughter Lizzie. Previously we had been camping together in the mountains of Oman (see weatherislovely.com/2016/11/19/a-long-way-from-loughborough).

This visit was a little more sedate with a great night in their local pub and stroll around the nearby town of Oundle, a beautiful old market town that is now dominated by Oundle School . It seems that half the town buildings are owned by the school.