Summer 2013, a review.

Caveat depascor!  Rather than being something that may interest my blog followers, this post has been written as an aide-mémoire to myself.  I shall be editing it as and when the records and notes I have made in many places come to light.

Burgundy, June 2013

My drive home in June from Ireland through Scotland, England, France and Italy was slow and comfortable.  I stopped frequently and, in France and Italy, found several B&Bs which were new to me and, in their originality and differences, interesting.

Tiled bathroom at amazing B&B:
'Il Torchio, Calco, Italy

By 27^th June I was home in Greece.  I had been away for two months during which much had happened around the house.  Seeds of all manner of plants, unseen when I left in April, had germinated.  Plants, largely unwanted weeds, many of them huge had, in hot wet spring conditions, grown set seed and were now dying for want of water.  Deep-rooted perennial plants had put on incredible growth; vines, just budding when I left, now drooped new growth heavy with leaf to make drapes of shade below balconies and across the steps I needed to climb to reach the door into the house.  But for a light layer of dust, inside the house was much as I had left it.

I had not been home many weeks when the first of my visitors arrived; my elder daughter, her partner and their two young daughters.  Two and half weeks later they all flew home on the plane on which my younger daughter and her three children arrived to stay with me until, on 20^th August they left with me to drive back across Europe to be in the U.K. by  Friday 30^th August to attend the wedding of Tom, Lisi’s second son, to his fiancé Kate.

The wedding service, held at one o’clock in the chapel of Wren’s Naval College at Greenwich, was memorable for both its setting and content.  During the afternoon the new Mr and Mrs Palmer treated their guests to cream teas on a chartered boat trip up river to the pool of London and back.  By early evening we had returned to the Naval College where the wedding banquet was held in the fabulous, ‘Painted Hall’.  The day finished with a wild party in the vaulted space below the ‘Painted Hall’; it was a day I shall remember!

I spent most of September drifting around in the U.K.  The week after the wedding I spent in a ‘Mobile Home’ on a pleasant site near Canterbury after which I travelled, with Lisi, to Lincolnshire where we house, dog and hen sat for her sister and brother-in-law while they took a short holiday in Florence.  From Lincolnshire we move on to spend a week in Derbyshire thence to Scotland to visit my own sister and brother-in-law and to visit The Helix, a project being overseen by my eldest nephew.

Work in progress building Andy Scott's thirty metre high sculptures at The Helix, Falkirk, Scotland.

Last Wednesday, free for a while of family commitments, we returned again to Ireland, driving as quickly as possible across the six counties to reach Carrick on Shannon late in the afternoon.

After a tasty early supper at the ‘Oarsman’, after an interval of almost four months, we arrived back at ‘Lough Key House’, to tea and a wonderfully warm greeting from Frances.

Big bed, Lough Key House, Boyle, Co. Roscommon, Ireland