2010 – aye right!

quick 2009 update first: As per what was ever envisaged, last year proved indeed to be a ‘holding’ year. We could perhaps have begun landscaping and developing our new plot, but that arguably would have been before we had fully understood the intertwining of `hads` and `wants`, and in any event we were kept busy enough with tidying up and odd jobs.

In the event, after a fairly average summer we, like Britain, we plunged into both wet and –for us- cold weather before Christmas, and, like Britain, this has continued with varying intensity until now, with March almost upon us.

We ARE anticipating a much busier incoming summer, so partly with that in mind we have just returned from a short break; essentially a celebratory week driving to and from Gibraltar.

The rock is still there (although never doubt the willingness of ANY politician; or for that matter Foreign Office twonks, to actively seek to remove it, one way or t`other).

Our trip –about 450 miles each way- centred on a three-night stop in La Linea, a few hundred metres from the Gibraltar border runway, and apart from the game-plan theme of celebrating a third of a Century of married life, was a tester for the appropriateness of Sophie, our Cocker Spaniel, accompanying us.

Highlights included

• superb roads throughout; trouble-free driving
• “pets accepted” Hotels (N of) Seville, going, and Moura (Alentejo) coming back
• Sophie, in each case, formally and with Hotel blessing, staying IN OUR ROOM
• T-shirts in Gib: snow on the Portuguese border next afternoon!
• good, treat-y if extravagant BRITISH shopping (at Morrisons) in Gib
• `Woods 100` rum at a fiver a litre

and altogether a v.pleasant break.             ……sometime again, for sure.