Toys, holes and cows........

 
 
 
 
....guess what! There are three diggers here on site, Rod maybe getting his first digger driving lesson tomorrow. Now the hole....can you imagine that there is a 6 metre deep cave and tunnel under a manhole in the kitchen? Apparently the whole place is riddled with caverns and tunnels, I don't think I'll sleep well tonight, it's all a bit spooky and medieval. There is a lot more to this place than meets the eye. We don't want to become part of a mystery! Now the cows....they look beautiful drifting up and down on the other side of the river, apparently there is a leader who decides 'okay guys, everybody to the left side of the paddock and then we'll all drift to the right'. Last toy - Rod also has a ride-on mower, he won't sleep tonight either!!!!
Thinking of you all and miss you heaps ..xxxxx

Market Research.........

 
 
 
...visited the hotel equivalent of our 'big brother' this afternoon - "Bellinter" an establishment about 20km away, indoor pool, of which we enjoyed for a while before heading to the bar and sampling what they had to offer. Very nice. Called into the supermarket at Navan on the way home and you have to check yourself out through an electronic biso which was interesting, especially seeing it didn't recognise 'specials', so a good old fashioned checkout operator had to be called and sort it out. It's 10 o'clock, broad daylight and we're pooped, these long evenings keep you up, in complete defiance we going to go and shut our eyes and make it dark!!!!
Thinking of you all heaps xxxxxxx

When you have a chimney like this.....

 
 
 
 
......you can have a wopping great fire!!!! Rod decided to get rid of some cartons and paper rubbish tonight...
Janey (in the photo) owns the Millhouse and is great to work with, we work hard and laugh a lot. The other photo of the Boyne River, taken from close to the house, we took tonight at 10pm, the evenings are very long and we find we are working until about 7 or 8 thinking its about 4 -5pm! Consequently we are getting to bed after midnight most nights....hope we get to catch up in winter. Bought a car today which we can't collect for several weeks, apparently it takes that long to get MOT'd (Warrant of Fitness) and Taxed (Registered), he said there's a lot of middle men to go through?? Did you know that the international name for Jiff is Ciff?? There you go!!It's funny here in Ireland!!
Miss you all..do feel free to comment or send us an Email, it makes our day xxxxxx

It's a month today.........

 
 
Seems like a lifetime that we left, yet it just seems like yesterday in some ways. Apart from missing family and friends, it’s been fantastic. The Millhouse is challenging on many levels, we aren’t open yet, so a lot of it is making systems out of chaos. Loads of fun, exhausting 13-14 hour days, we didn’t come for a rest! Last night there was a HUGE event across the road at Slane Castle so we had a full house. With an incomplete setup and a house full of people we went for it…..the fun part was climbing up through the attic onto the roof in the rain for the fireworks! Rod spent several hours trying to sell some of our surplus parking to punters. He filled 12 of our 300 odd spare parks, we’re sure Radar would have done much better! Still he met some interesting people, the coast guard, patrolling the 10 mtr across Boyne River, the Guarda (police) and several hawkers, familiar territory really! They could see he was an event pro…….
Barbara slipped up into Northern Ireland on Friday to buy some building supplies, we are EU and they are British, hard to believe that until very recently there was so much unrest there, seeing the white crosses of the young men who starved themselves to death was very sobering though.
The language is a challenge, we miss a lot and have to ask people to slow down….they don’t understand us either, but seems to work out…..so much for learning French!!! Never mind, the craic is good!

Ireland

 
 
 
 
Trained through west England and Wales to Holyhead, ferried across to Ireland in the company of some of Liverpool's finest - on a stag weekend to Dublin - talk about loud and in your face!!! We finally arrived in Slane and found The Millhouse after a series of small adventures - Now, if we had known it was across the road from 'Slane Castle" (remember the Robbie Williams concert a few years ago?), it may have been easier to find!! Janey welcomed us with open arms (I'd been emailing her for several months). We slept our first night in Ireland in our new home The Millhouse, a 1765 Georgian Manor House, in the canopied bed pictured. Breakfasted looking out into the Boyne River and valley, then spent the day exploring and absorbing Janey's vision for the restoration and development of the old mill site. The manor house is just about up and running and we have sprinted (a 13 hour sprint!) back to London to pick up our gear. We fly back tomorrow and will take up the vision and challenge in earnest. Love you all and miss you heaps xxxxx

Beckenham

 
 
 
 
It isn't France, but it's pretty. Spending a few days in Beckenham with Aaron and Ellie, it's fantastic to have a base. It's also been good to have time to reorganise our 'stuff'. When everything is really confined it's very easy to misplace 'important things' that you know you've tucked in a 'safe place' - Barb put all our GBP's in a very safe place in an envelope before we went to France, spent a slightly frantic hour going through our 2 large and 2 small bags looking for the safe place...!
Off to Ireland for the weekend tomorrow, by early train to Wales and then ferry across to Dublin. Thinking of you lots and will blog when we return.xxxxx

Calais to Dover

 

 

Bit of culture shock after the last few days.....all good though. Calais wasn't the charming little port town that we had in our memories from books and stories. It has been taken over by a very industrial, enormous sprawl of concrete etc. We met a Mexican couple and a Canadian couple and guided them through the maze to catch a bus to the ferry......they didn't realise it was the blind leading the blind!!!! The ferry was of shipping line proportions with bars, shops and restaurants, we read our books! The white cliffs of Dover loomed up out of the mist and this photo is the closest we got to them. We caught trains back to Ellie and Aaron's and worked out that we had made 9 travel connections from the time we left our hotel in Paris to Beckenham. It's lovely being with Ellie and Aaron, but we are aware that our two lots of 20kg's fill their space, so serious planning of our next move has begun - got to wash some clothes and smarten ourselves up now. The UK is almost as good as France!!

More Paris Photos

 
 
 
 

You gotta loveParis...........

 
 
 
 
Hotel Esmeralda…350 years old, Madame Michelle asked me - do I like her Hotel, every room is different, Madame doesn’t like hotel rooms to be all the same, every room here is different, I think ours is the most down beat (ie very small (like you can lie in bed and turn off the light on the other side of the room!) and very Bohemian!!!)
Visited Sainte Chappelle – probably the most beautiful church in Paris. The stain glass and interior is a tribute to creative human achievement, as are most of the icons of Paris.
Caught the Metro to Champs-Eylsées, stood in the middle of the road…see photos!
Then went to the BIG icon (Rod keeps forgetting the name!), popped up out of the Metro, Having spent quite a bit of time and energy getting there….followed a few signs to no avail, then Rod asked a couple in his best Francais “Parlais vous Anglais?” – “Yeah Mate” was the reply, what part of NZ are you from? (they were from Wellie!)………..they gave us directions – back several blocks, we turned around and there it was… it was at our backs, we had been walking away from it……duh!!
Spent a rainy afternoon drinking wine in a café – the trees growing up out of the pavement and through the awnings get watered when it rains! Notre Dame tolls constantly….we love Paris and can’t wait to return.
Were hijacked into a Greek restaurant for dinner, succumbed in honour of Lucy, Barbara did mad Greek dancing but refused to dance on the tables. Followed that by a nightcap at Madame Michelle’s fave, the most amazing bohemian piano bar where French jazz was interspersed with opera singers from goodness knows where, they just kept popping up out of the clientele…..would die happy tonight!
Train to Callais tomorrow and then we’ll ferry to London – work will have to start soon.

Ahhhhh………Paris…….again…….

 
 
 
 


Reluctantly left the peace, beauty and tranquility of the canal boat and dear friends Jennifer and John and caught the train back to Paris…..got the last room available at the Hotel Esmeralda – (1 star!!!!), been a dream of ours since Harry and Maggie told us about it. Rod shlept our gear up four flights of ancient winding stairs, our room is tiny, tiny,tiny we take turns to move around, however it is on edge of the Notre Dame and is in the heart of the Latin Quarter – fabulous. Have had major probs trying to sort out internet access here. In a café last night Rod enrolled the assistance of 2 young guys, one from India and one from Iran, Phd students studying in Holland, they couldn’t sort it either. Even though the French are the friendliest people, do great food and wine they don’t factor in homesick Kiwis who need to keep in touch!!!!
Back to the UK tomorrow and time to get working……..love you all, keep those comments coming, they really make us feel good just to know you’re watching xxxxx

Life on a canal boat……..

 
 
 
 


Met up with Jennifer and John without any trouble in Auxerres, glorious medieval town with buildings and little narrow cobble streets. People just going about their business, cars, people living normal lives, rock and roll blaring out from within 17th century houses!!! Every place we go through has a town built around 1 or more magnificent churches with more history than one can possibly comprehend and little cobbled streets with modern cars literally zooming around them.
Each morning we do a “Boulangerie” run for breakfast, croissants, baguettes and little tarts for a treat later on. On our first day we bought three amazing cheeses because we could! Not aware that there was already a fridge full of cheese….the cheeses we bought were a speciality of the town, wonderful, very rustic, each time we open the fridge the smell nearly knocks you over!!!!.......Lesson…there is no need to buy in bulk here!!!
The river/canal system is great, you navigate into a lock (John gives us our orders), we tie up, and l’ Eclusier (lock keeper) does his thing, letting water in or out of the lock depending on where we are in the river, John gives us more orders and we cast off and are on our way again. Everything closes for an hour at midday and last Sunday, everything closed for 2 hours because it was the election! We wait patiently at locks until l’ Eclusier has had his lunch hour. Fishermen sit along the sides of the river and from time to time you see clumps of wild iris, little or large château’s, forests, wheat fields and wild flowers growing everywhere, very beautiful, occasionally you catch a glimpse of a road or train, then you drift into yet another charming village or town to explore. Swans, ducks and swallows seem to follow us and the other day we saw an otter and several turtles basking in the sun. One could do a lot worse than doofer around on a canal boat in France………………..