We woke at 5am on the 19th Dec to find 2cm of snow around our apartment; As we headed across Belgium toward the coast it became alot heavier. Driving in the snow (and ice!) without AWD and good tyres, is, shall we say, a tad stressful. It was also cold, as our car registered a low of minus 13 C outside. We met chaos in Calais (below), with mountains of backed up traffic in an eerie sea of white and grey. But after a mere four hour delay, while we waited for the tunnel to re-open, we made it to England.
Christmas week for us was a lovely time of catching up with old friends and family, meeting new people, Phil making funky snowmen, a few more hairy moments driving through snow on the M4, being 'iced in' in Holt, Whiltshire, which seemed to avoid the snow in surrounding parts, and long walks with Uncle's dogs in the country side where moats and even the mud was frozen.
Christmas day was a reprieve as the sun shone through to melt the ice on the driveway and we had a grand time eating roast turkey and trimmings including heaps of roast parsnips from Farmer John across the lane. Need I mention my fondness of parsnips?
Boxing day included a fun game of boules on the village green and Morris dancers, which (as I realised last night while watching Black-Adder re-runs) is a very old tradition from coal mining days. For the uninitiated this means dancers with bells on: men dancing impressively with big sticks and hankies hanging out of their pockets, women dancing more graciously while waving their hankies, all with lots of good music.
The last leg of our break included the obligatory sight-seeing in London. Highlights were the Tower of London, big blingy diamonds, the incredible mosaics in St Paul's Cathedral, enjoying a host of amazing paintings at the Courtald and National Galleries, and John Harrison's revolutionary marine chronometers at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich . The richness of history, culture and art was almost overwhelming at times.
Suffocating is a word that came to me often in London - people everywhere, and at times unbearably so. Imagine a huge crowd four people deep trying to look at Van Gogh's Sunflowers, or a 45minute queue to get into the latest exhibition on dinosaurs at the natural history museum... (we had to queue just to get into the museum!). Fortunately, Phil was only interested in looking at rocks and crystals, of which there were many. We hope to go back when the crowds aren't quite as thick - after all, we actually do want to look at those sunflowers!
Happy new year from us!
