Jamie's visit home for her 26th birthday

It was great having Jamie home for her birthday but the days just flew by. She managed to fit in visiting a school friend, have her eyes tested, spend time with Carly, Adam and Maddie and trip with us to the Historic Dockyards at Chatham. The Dockyards have been around for over 400 years and played a crucial role in supporting the Roayl Navey in the defence of Britain and the develpment of the Empire and Commonwealth (I am not trying to be brainy here I just copied this bit out of the book we bought!!!). We went into a submarine called the HM Ocelot that was commissioned in l961 and retired in 1981, from the outside it looked enormous but the inside was narrow and very cramped. As for the sleeping toilet and washing facilities, they were very very basic and I would not have liked to have been aboard it for more than the 30 minutes we were on it. The hatches you had to go through to get to all parts of the sub were small (look at the picture) for me this wasn't a problem but for the tall people like Jamie and Colin it was not very easy. There was one ship there called the HMS Gannet that Jamie and Colin really wanted to go on, it was built in 1878 and there is a picture of it with Jamie and Colin standing alongside it. We weren't able to go on it as there was a couple getting married on it and was out of bounds until late afternoon. Jamie is so like Colin in her imagination, you could see the pair of them re-enacting what would have happend when the ship was out to see at war in their minds. We had a lovely day and will definately go back to visit all the bits we missed.

Meeting up with Val and Rob

Last Saturday we met up with some old friends from when we lived in Hastings. We haven't seen them for five years so thought it was about time we changed that. Val and Rob used to live around the road from us and also have three children, Sarah, Louise and Michael. We became friends not long after Sarah was born and I was carrying Marisa, so, you can see we have been friends for a very long time. Rob used to work in the Ordanance Survey Dept. in Hastings and he found a place that was sort of half way between us to meet up, I have to say that they now live in Southampton not in Hastings. Anyway, we met up in this little village called Wineham at a local 'hostlery'! had a meal and then according to Rob, we would take a 2 mile stroll across the country side!!! thats the last time I will believe him and his little strolls. We walked across some lovely countryside in the rain, getting rather damp but to be honest, Val and I talked so much, well we had 5 years of news to catch up on, we didn't realise that the 2 mile stroll probably was more like 6 miles and we were rather wet. We walked for about 3 hours, eventually found our way back to the pub via a very old Ordanance Survey map that was out of date to have another drink in the pub. It was great to catch up with them and we have said we will not leave it another 5 years to catch up again.

Giants Causeway, Nth Ireland

Adam has never been to Ireland so on the day we were coming back we took a drive up to Giants Causeway. The weather was lovely and warm with a slight breeze. Win and George decided not to take the walk down to the Causeway with us as it was very hilly, they stayed by the cafe and had an ice cream instead but we did manage to get a picture of them at the very top.