BACK TO AUSTRALIA

 

Here’s proof. I did see Cranes in the field next to Gun and Olofs’ at 5.30am.

Here’s proof also that we came home via Bangkok. We have to thank Thai Airways (In partnership with Canadian Airlines) who brought us home safely. The food and service was good, the seats had plenty of leg room but the entertainment was very average. The old fashioned communal screen on the leg from Stockholm to Bangkok and personal screen programs on the second leg which in my case jammed twice. The earplugs kept falling out anyway so I gave up trying to watch films I’d never heard of.

A word of advice to anyone planning to stay away from home for three months – make sure telephone, water and electricity utilities are paid by automatic debit. We have managed OK in the past but this time it all went haywire and it has taken some time to get services back to normal!

 

Wild birds feeding on Andrew and Rebecca's back veranda.

Aria and Soraya drop by for a snack.

 

Back to work.

One of our Rock Wallaby’s carrying a joey. We counted three wallaby’s feeding out the back at the same time.

 

Spring flowers are out.

SWEDEN 2010

Our Around-the-World airline tickets allowed us to call in at another stop as long as we continued to move in an Easterly direction. This meant that we were able to add Stockholm, Sweden to our list and a visit to Gun and Olof's farmhouse in Heby (Hayboo). 

The farmhouse.

 

Neighbouring farmer Joachim cutting their grass.

Finds time to stop for a chat with Gun and Cathy.

 

We go to an art exhibition at Avesta in an old copper mine.

Welcome?!

 

And to the Opera (My first ever) at Kopparberg.

 

An extraordinary venue, an old timber drying shed.

In a beautiful setting.

Big audience.

And stage.

 

OLof, Gun and Cathy.

 

Meeting the cast afterwards.

 

Interesting old buildings in Kopperberg.

 

Our friend (Dating from our arrival in Australia in 1966) Henry comes to visit.

 

The dishwasher dies! We were here at its installation!

Olof and Guns son Adam, cutting the lawn at his summer house.

The house. Wife Stina about to sit down and Gun with baby Emilio.

 

Now to golf!

FINAL PHOTO SHOOT FRANCE 2010

 

This is the back room downstairs with the walls pointed.

 

A detail of the corner of the room where 40kg of concrete was pumped in at the join of the two beams to reinforce the area after removal of dry rot.

 

The book shelves in the same room. The sign we picked up at an antique shop in Waitsfield, Vermont.

 

Looking out to the front courtyard.

 

View from the nook.

Upstairs in what is now the TV room.

 

  There it is. Cute isn’t it!? The antique cupboard is a story in itself.

Then there’s the attic in the back house with an extension to the floor.

Had to go to Pontivy for a few last minute things. It always looks beautiful at this time of year.

By the canal.

The crops are looking good too.

Hay bales.

Forget solar power. They are putting windmills on their roofs here!  

FRANCE MID JULY 2010

Festivals are in full swing. This is a group of Breton dancers at nearby LE FAOUEL.

 

Plus a few more.

 

Holland and Spain play in the World Cup soccer final in South Africa. Watching with Scottish visitors  in the unfinished lounge room!

 

The weather has been terrific so we took our visitors to the seaside at Guidel Plage about 50 mins South of Guemene.

 

Sitting on the beach.

 

How’s this for a traffic pacifier? Stay below 30Kph – BIG SMILE

 

Exceed 30 Kph – NOT HAPPY JAN!

 

Sculpture at the same town, Pont Scorff, fabricated from car parts.

 

Les girls or Three muscateers.

 

We’ve had a problem with mice. This idea supplied to us by our Scots visitors is brilliant. Cellotape a piece of smelly cheese to the corner of the bowl and prop up with a coin. The mouse goes under to check out the cheese reaches up for it and – bingo – coin topples and mouse is trapped. We have caught 8 mice this way. In the morning slide a plastic sheet under and take mouse for a walk to the other side of the river. Hopefully we are not trapping the same mouse over and over! We are contemplating purple dye! We caught the first mouse in a conventional trap but it looked like a hampster (Fawlty). We decided the next one would be trapped humanely (They all look like mice! The first one must have been an interloper)