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I haven't got a clue where my last missive ended but I know it did not include Dubai so I think that I will re-start there.
This visit formed the last five days of our World trip and we arrived there from Colombo with mixed feelings about our return to the UK although I would hasten to add that we could not wait to see our kids and friends! This was my third trip to Dubai and we were both excited to arrive as we were staying for a couple of nights in the Hyatt Regency which we had stayed in 10 years ago when we visited as a family. We were also to stay a few nights with an old friend of ours, Lionel, and also to visit Joye and her husband Alan, Joye being a very old friend of Jackies who she met at the start of her Teaching career. Despite an interim visit there by me five years ago on a business trip the whole place, appeared to me, to have expanded rapidly.
We had a wonderful few days in Dubai guided mainly by Lionel and this included a gold and diamond souk, a few bars and a visit to the Burj Khalifa which is an amazing feat of engineering and consstruction. Hopefully the following photographic blogs will demonstrate what an exciting place it is.
Our return home was a bit bemusing but was startetd by a wonderful BBQ Party arranged by Jonathan, Hannah, Alexandra and Matt. It was great to catch up with all the family and our friends. After the weekend we departed for a wonderful few days with another friend of many years Andrew and Janice. This included a wonderful day of golf, avisit to the Dales and a day on the Yokshire Coast and N orth Yorkshire Moors. Our last night wa at the local Pub Quiz and our team won!
on our return home we visited some more long standing friends, Dianne and Ric at their house in Hove , Jackies family in Hampshire and some relations of mine , Jenny, Alan and their daughter Lucy with her new daughter. We met in Cranbrook but Lucy was over for the Summer from Abu Dhabi.
I have to say that the start of our trip to Europe crept up without any real plan. There were a number of fixes during the firdst half of the trip the highlight of which was a week long stay in Annecy with our wonderful immediate family. This area of France is not often visited except for ski-ing but I had visited it many times on business and Jonathan had spent two school exchange visits there many years ago. I was keen to show the area to Jackie and I don't htink it failed.
Our departure was marred by the inability to fit my bike in the car despite the fact that I had bought a protective bag. I don't know how many of you know, but the gears on lightweight road bikes are very delicate and can easily be mis-aligned by continuous removal of the rear wheel. Unfortunately the bike would not fit into the car without doing this and I did not want an external rack on for three months so the bike stayed at home!
We had a week to travel to Annecy which is not far on a direct route so I suggested a visit to the Ardenne in Belgium and to the Alcase region in France which borders Germany and the Rhine. We had travelled through the latter about fifteen years ago on return from a family holiday in Italy. Unbeknown to us it was a French four day holiday and we were unable to get any accommodation at short notice so we finished up driving 1250 miles in 25 hours!
The Ardenne lived up to my memories of fifty years ago and was wonderfully punctuated by a random visit to Practice Day for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa Francorchamps. This was purely by co-incidence in terms of the date but it is a circuit that I have always wanted to go to and I broke all of my personal rules and purchases tickets from a tout which turned out to be about 40% of face value. With free parking a good day was had by all.
As we travelled south to Annect it was amazing how the landscape' arcitecture, food and of course wine changed. Hilly forested areas changed in to a mountainous vista nd then into rolling meadows. Houses turned from heavy stone and slate construction into almost Tudor style exposed timber frames with wall at jaunty angles back to heavy stone again.. It is a shame that all this could become marginally less accessible to us as time goes by.
Despite having had to leave my bike at home when our family arrived in Annecy we did manage to hire six suitable bikes to ride around the Lake which is a distance of 40km or 25miles and all six of us managed to do the first circuit. Jonathan, Matt and I decided that the bikes were not too bad so decided close to the end of the first lap to turn around and do a time trial back on the second lap in the reverse direction. I think that I was only about three minutes behind them in the end - Not bad considering they both did a Half Iron Man earlier in the year and I was giving them both nearly forty years advantage!!
There is a mountain near Annecy which is called Semnoz which is 1699m a.s.l. This formed part of the Tour de France in 2013 and was the penultimate stage before Paris. All of the boys wanted to ride this but we could not hire suitable bikes without booking notice so had to submit to the Lake run. We did however pay it a visit by car and walk up to the summit. On the way down we also visited a dry Luge run which was exciting but sadly no consolation for missing a massive climb. In all it was fabulous to spend some time with our four and to sample the local food and wine.with them.
We had one more visit in France on this first stage of the trip and that was to Grenoble this was to try to take Jackie to a restaurant run by a very old lady who would only allow you to have Cote de Beouf if you ate it 'blue'. Sadly, the restaurant was closed and we had to revert to good old steak frite with a pichet of red. Now off to Italy to sample theirs!!
Thanks to you all for following our meanderings and I hope that you are all well. Bring you up to date further South possibly in Tuscany. It's a hard life, hows the weather at home?
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