It’s been ages since our last update, and to be honest, we just have not had time! Since the beginning of November, we seem to have been all over the place without a minute to ourselves. Busy, but we wouldn’t have had it any other way.
We started with a weekend in Manchester, visiting Tessa and Bronwyn (Gwyn’s mom and sister). They have a lovely semi detached in a suburban area in Manchester, close to just about everything. We flew in on Friday night and spent Saturday in an old private estate/national park called Tatton Park. It was beautiful, you could almost smell the history. We spent ages walking around the grounds (or should I say mud), exploring the Christmas market and wondering around the private gardens. You could spend an entire day just doing that! Most importantly Lol saw his first reindeer, a total highlight!{mosimage} That Sunday we spent a quiet day at the house, enjoying a family lunch as a bit of a birthday celebration, before heading back to the airport.
The next day was Gwyn’s birthday, a whole bunch of us went of to one of our favourite Italian restaurants in Richmond (Prezzo). It was a great day, it’s weird not to see the gang and family, but enjoyable nonetheless.
The weekend after the birthday, we hired a car and made our way through the Cotswolds towards Birmingham. We cautiously made our way out of London and on through Oxford and stopped at 2 small towns, Stow-on-the-Wold and Broadway. Both towns are so small (blink and you miss it kind of towns), but very quaint. It was cold and rainy, so we enjoying cosying up in a 200 year old pub with bangers and mash.
We then slowly made our way to Birmingham to visit Kitch and Lucy (Lol’s grandparents). We managed to explore Birmingham city centre (their version of the London Eye and the Aquarium mainly). We also spent some quality time with Brian, Bridget and the cousins Ciara and Christoher. I (Gwyn) am glad to say that I seem to be the favourite at this stage with the kids, much to Lol’s disgust.
On our way back from Birmingham, we popped into Stratford-upon-Avon. We only managed to fit Anne Hathaways Cottage in, but it was beautiful. We will definitely go back there for a weekend. It looks as though you can hire bikes and make your way across the town and there are a number of lovely walks as well. So we will be going back there in the spring.
We started this week off by going Ice Skating at the Tower of London. Who would have thought we would be doing that? We went with some of Lol’s colleagues and we didn’t fall once!! We wouldn’t have hurt ourselves anyway because we were so well padded. We then spent an hour walking around London and over the bridge again and again. We were looking for a specific restaurant and no one knew what the address was…in the cold!! We found it eventually and had a great time anyway.
Other than that, the biggest news is that Winter has officially arrived. It really felt like it was overnight. Maximum of 6 degrees and minimum of 1 on average so far and snow in Scotland. Should be a white Christmas in Edinburgh (think positive, think positive). The funniest thing, the other morning we were walking to work and jumping in all the puddles, weird, but they were all blocks of ice! I keep telling them at work that if I am late, it’s because I am building snow men in the garden.
So we have some great photos http://photos.yahoo.com/the_bowens have a look let us know how you are all doing!!
Miss you all.
L&G
