We finally decided after much deliberating that we should take a 4 week trip back to the UK in order to see family and friends and also to renovate our property.
We only had a short time to book flights from Darwin but we reasoned with ourselves that this was the best time and place for us to leave Australia from as flights would be cheaper and also shorter in duration.
Conversations with other campers in the swimming pool soon organised a lift to the airport for an early morning flight and also our friends Adriana and Pete agreed to pick us up at the airport on return! All very good of the people we were camping with!
The date soon came round and we departed Darwin, en route to London, via Kuala Lumpur. The flights were comfortable and uneventful and we soon found ourselves in London, sorting out our hire car and then braving the terrible M25 traffic en route to our niece's house in Surrey. We suddenly realised that we had no internet access on our phones and that we had no real idea how to get to our Nieces house! By a series of lucky flukes and general good decisions we managed to get to the house and had a great time, seeing them and catching up on the years.
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| Saying goodbye to our beautiful Great Nieces, on their way to school |
After a great time with our Nieces family, we headed off to see Richard's sister Gillian and nephew Alex in Southend. It was so lovely to catch up with them as it has been 6 years since we have seen each other.
The following day, we headed up to our house in Holton le Clay via Lincoln to call in on Michael and Janet where we knew more of our relatives would be as they flew in from Dubai the day after we landed!!! it was just wonderful and amazing to see all our beautiful young relatives (who we haven't seen for a number of years! We left Lincoln after an hour or so and continued our journey to the house, admitting to each other that we were a little apprehensive about the condition of the property as we had not lived there for 8 years.
Our great friends Margaret and Tony, welcomed us back to Holton le Clay we are going to stay with them for a few nights, before collecting our provisions as we intend to campout in the house.
Many of our provisions came from Zoe and Glenn Martin, Pat and Steve Humphrey, Dave Thomas, Mike and Helen Lane, Edwina and Paul and Alison Hansen, all of these beautiful friends, gave us beds, kettle, fridge, airbed, bedding, camp chairs and a TV.....not too mention feeding both of us! their help and assistance in the work needed on our house was invaluable, it is something we will never forget and probably will not even be able to repay.
Margaret and Tony joined us on our first visit to the house and we were all pleasantly surprised as to how good the place seemed to be. It needed a little updating and decorating but we soon had a plan hatched to sort the place out.
We enlisted the services of a Real estate agent who advised us how to prepare the property for re rental and so we set about decorating and renovating!
Our first Saturday night in England and we had informed so many people that we would be at the Jug and Bottle for anyone who would like to see us!!! Well it was so busy but, it became even busier when lots of our friends, ex colleagues turned up.
Sue Bird, Paul and Sally Holmes, Steve Allen, Judith and Malcolm Towle, Pam Fyfe, Brian Chappell and our first sighting of the Hansen family who were on their way to Alison's Dad's 80th birthday party... A very emotional time. Richard always sheds a few tears!!
Various photos of the house as we fixed it up
We soon left the comforts of Margaret and Tony's, as they had more important visitors to put up, mainly their daughter Linsey, Adam and two gorgeous granddaughters from Singapore. How lucky were we to be there and catch up with them all?
A night in Derbyshire with the family was undertaken and we just wished we could stay longer, but, we did all meet up again.
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| Fun in Derbyshire, with, Sam, Lila, Seren, Fina and Sylvie |
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| More FUN |
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| Molly |
We visited relatives in Doncaster, Richard's sister Janice and husband Brian. The first time we visited Janice, our nephew Mark, wife Jo and their little girl Molly (another great niece) were there and a very tearful meeting was had!!!
Not far from Richard's sister, in fact just around the corner lives Helen's brother Ian and wife Jean this was another emotional visit but good day and night was had. We did manage to see our friends Jim and Sandra Drury as we called in to them after a little lack of communication as they had been to our house and we weren't there!!! unfortunately, time was not on our hands and we did our utmost to see as many people as possible.
Billy and Diane Bacon drove up to Grimsby and we all had another wonderful dinner and evening at Paul and Alison's building site!! There's another story!!
Mavis our dear friend was in England and she and Eric drove over from Ripon to see us and on the same day another good friend Ken and his wife Grace joined us from Huddersfield.
We had a very busy time but it was such a nice time too, eating at Holton le Clay's famous Jug and Bottle numerous times and Alis Indian Restaurant with friends, Helen and Mike Lane, Sandie, Patrick, Joy and Brian, other friends Pauline and Geoff Cook were in there celebrating their wedding anniversary....a brilliant time was had by all!!
Helen had an evening out with here ex colleagues and had a very nice meal in a pub on Seaview Street, Cleethorpes.... with Sally, Julie, Jane, Zoe etc, etc
But, probably, the best place ever is Steels Fish Restaurant where we only managed to get there once!!.... We love it!
Helen, would have loved the time to go to the Kingsway Hotel another one of her favourites but we didn't get there this time.
Richard put the word out and invited a lots of friends for a pot luck evening on our final Saturday night in England a bit of panic set in but, everything went well and out last guests left at 1:30
Photographs below of our pot luck!
We haven't gone into how we managed to get the decoration done but, we arose every morning very early as the sun was up at 4 a.m. and we picked up the paint brushes and started. We pulled up a massive carpet and had new fitted in our back garden room. We painted all the wood white as suggested by our rental agent. In fact we felt it did look 100% better! The light nights and light mornings seem to confuse us too... We both thought it was still 4 p.m. in the afternoon when actually it was 9 p.m. at night!! very strange to us. Unfortunately we didn't see the finished en suite before we left but have received photographs and it looks really good. We did get a tenant within 2 hours of it being on the internet, so we were both very pleased.
We have so many wonderful family and friends and we both had very mixed emotions about leaving Holton le lay and Cleethorpes. Lots of happy times and amazing memories. We are sorry if we didn't mention everyone, please forgive us we love you all.
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