Exploring new Territories

Life continues in our new cottage and amazingly we are almost completely unpacked and nearly everything has found its place to live. We flattened 83 boxes yesterday, and there are still some full of books which kind of travel with us and never manage to get unpacked... maybe this time!!!! My studio needs some organising but that is a task that I look forward to and will evolve as I start to use the room.

The weekend weather was reasonably clement for mid February and we had some friends come and visit. We spent some time almost basking in the sunny courtyard garden ad Dr Fred enlisted help to clear the flags ready for the pots we hope to furnish it with as soon as we get Beryl back!!!

We also started some exploring of the local village and countryside. We went for a nice walk down through the quite picturesque village and up past to the gallops where the race horse breeding farm were exercising some of the horses. Apparently there are 98 horses living there - some have been big race winners…. Not anything I have any idea about!!! They were very stunning though.

We climbed the stile and walked along by a stream for a couple of miles it was pretty and its nice to know we have a pleasant walk right on the doorstep.

Further up the village there is a hall and a small chapel. In the grounds of the chapel there are some gargoyles - they probably warrant further investigation at some point.

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Almost last chapter... In which our Go Stargazing team watch Astonishing Aurora Borealis seen from the deck of the Astonishing Borealis!!!

The weather brightened considerably and the snowy peaks lining our sail down the fjiords looked glorious and sparkly in the sunshine against a (mainly) blue sky back drop. More awesome scenary.... the Go Stargazing team wrapt up their lectures ... only searching for the illusive Northern Lights remained. The tension from the night before dissolved in the sunshine the forecast for Aurora borealis was looking fairly positive - it was the captains farewell cocktsil party so everyone had their gladrags on.. We ate dinner and sky remained clear so we headed back to our room and donned as many layers as we could move in and proceeded to deck 10 in anticipation of stars and northern lights..... it did not dissappiont - just we got there as the bridge announced that the lights could be seen on the starboard side of the ship. It was stunning. Slowly the intensity built. The auroral green became brighter and bigger areas appe...

Vigo

We left the ship to explore Vigo. Its a much larger place then we expected... although tbh I hadn't given ut a lot of thought. Its a real mish mash of old and new and having got a map from tourist info we decided to follow the walking trail to the Monte Castro... the highest point of the town. Most of the town was pretty much as everywhere else... lots of traffic... lots of people... one or two interesting buildings and a lot of shopping. We headed to the art gallery - this has been a year of gallery visits so we we seen o reason to change now. The Museo de Marco is housed in the towns ex prison building and its very grand. In fact, I think that on this occaision the building might have been more interesting than the art.... Although the visiting exhibition by Susanne S D Themlitz was strangely compelling. It was a huge varied collection of eclectic items... found, salavaged, manipulated and arranged in lots of ways - weirdly inspiring - and mostly enjoyable to look at...

verdant lushness

Its a never ending island hop... today we hopped of the boat at Kingstown, on the island St. Vincents and Grenadine. Once through the usual port duty free - cheap booze and diamonds to go milarkey we were straight into the town... crazy noisy smelly chaos... refreshingly no tat shops for tourists, just local markets and street traders all vying for local sales. Music blasting from everywhere, cars (very battered and often very pimped) all over the roads - parked in the middle of the street, loading, unloading, chatting seemingly oblivious to the total traffic jam caused behind them... We walked through this mayhem - the temperatures were rising probably about 30 degrees - tourists evident by trying to walk on the shady side of the street - even when we turned off the main drag and there were less people it was still like carnival time with music blasting everywhere. Its very atmospheric and mostly promotes a good vibe although I have heard '3 little birds' everywhich way a...

Planet Ruby Starrs

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