Southern France 1 (Apr 16 - Apr 28)

Bonjour - on Apr 16 we flew with Ryanair (well-known European discount carrier) from London to Perpignan in the south of France. We rented a small car, re-adjusted ourselves to drive again on the right side of the road (after 2 months of driving on the left side in the UK and NZ), and then drove about an hour and a half to the small village of Villelongue dels-Monts, where we are pet and housesitting for a month. The homeowners, Erik and Anette (E & A) were originally from Norway and Austria, then lived in Denmark and Spain before moving to France about 20 years ago. They are a lovely couple who, like most Europeans we seem to meet, are multi-lingual including having an excellent command of English. They own a large house with a pool situated on an acreage that has vineyards and olive orchards on either side of their property. Their pets include 3 dogs, 6 chickens and about 10 semi-wild cats. Across the road from the property, where we walk Loupy (they took the 2 younger dogs with them) you can see the Pyrenees mountains, which this early in spring are still snow-covered.

E & A hosted us for supper and breakfast the next morning and gave us a glimpse into the importance the French put into enjoying good food and wine. They typically eat 2 meals a day, a large late morning breakfast and then a large evening meal. Before they left on their trip, they left us with maps and guide books of the area and Erik graciously took a couple of hours to take us on a quick tour of several nearby villages. Wow, what another amazing location to discover and experience.

House we are taking care of in Southern France

Back veranda where we eat when the sun is shining

Summer kitchen where we eat when the sun isn't shining

Sitting, dining and TV room

Back porch

Betty, Bianca, Laura, Molly, Maggie and Rosie provide fresh eggs daily

Loupy - our affectionate companion

View of the Pyrenees from the path where we walk Loupy each day 

Spotted from our bedroom window

Sunset over the Pyrenees

Vineyards with the Mediterranean Sea in the background

Fortress in Collioure

Someone's creative Easter decorations - taken on Easter Sunday

"Picture in a picture" of fortress in Collioure

What became obvious to us very quickly was that we could not assume that people would be able to communicate with us in English. For example, on the way from the airport to the house, we stopped to ask a man for directions and discovered that he had no knowledge of English. This should not have surprised us but made us realize that we need to learn some basic French ASAP. Olive is doing her best to try to remember any French from her early schooling days, we are both trying to figure out if we can use any words from a French song or two that we heard in the past (remember "Frere Jacques" and the lyrics in the song "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir" - wow, good thing I looked this up before trying it out on someone!) and, we are trying to see how much French we know simply from reading the dual labeling of all products in Canada!

Now that we have been here for almost 2 weeks and have gone shopping several times, we are pleased that we have managed pretty well with very limited French. Fortunately, we have met people who have some English and the language translation app on our cellphone has helped.

Here's a few things we have experienced/enjoyed so far:

• visiting the farmers market held on Saturdays at the nearby village of Ceret. All the central streets are closed off to vehicle traffic and stalls are erected that offer all kinds of foods, wines, juices, arts and crafts, jewelery, plants and more.
• exploring a village on the Mediterranean called Collioure. There are several fortresses here including one still in use by the French military.
• wandering around another small village called Laroque des Alberes. This village  has an underground spring from where E & A get their drinking water.
• the peace and quiet of the property we are staying at. It is somewhat isolated as we are told the French tend to live in community in the villages, not on their farms so although there are neighbours, we hardly see them.
• the wines - available in grocery stores here, you can pick up a bottle of wine starting at around $5 and for $15 you get a really good bottle of wine!
• the breads and pasteries - we bought a cream-filled cake for Olive's birthday and have tried several different breads.
• the cheeses (the farmers market allows you to sample cheeses & sausages).
• being "settled" in one place for a longer period so that Olive can focus again on her writing.
• hearing the church bells from churches in 2 nearby villages on the hour and half hour.

Our plan is to stay here until May 15, then to catch a train to Barcelona.

England 2, High Wycombe, Oxford, Cambridge (Apr 2 - 15)

In the early afternoon of Apr 2 we showed up, as planned, at a large country farmhouse and met Rob & Susan and their 2 large dogs, 3 cats and 31 chickens to begin our housesitting assignment. They were busy packing up their campervan and making final arrangements for their holiday to Scotland. They provided detailed instructions on how to care for the chickens, instructions on how to use the aga (the stove in the kitchen which was heated by oil and was always instantly hot), contact information for neighbours and friends in case of emergency and encouragement to eat all the eggs we could possibly consume!

Rob & Sue and dogs

Rob spent his whole life in this area, including the past 30 years in the house he built, which we stayed in. It was definitely a farmhouse, animals were allowed in and out of the house at their leisure and the free range chickens spent a lot of time pecking the lawn in front of the door but also leaving plenty of evidence of their presence (which seemed to continuously get tracked into the house!) R & S were big into gardening, composting, cooking and walking the trails in the area. When we walked the trails we regularly saw deer, pheasants, red-tailed hawks and song birds.

One of the sitting rooms

Kitchen

The fields on two sides of the house had sheep and it was birthing time so we were able to watch the day to day changes as newborn lambs learned to walk and then days later, to jump and frolic about - great entertainment!

I enjoyed getting to be a farmer for 10 days

Lambing season

Ring-necked pheasants like I remember as a child in Canada

For 3 days while doing the housesit, we spent long days attending the Skoll World Forum for Social Entrepreneurs, an annual event held in Oxford. The forum was by invitation-only and attracted 1,000 entrepreneurs from around the world. Seminars were interspersed with networking opportunities, plenary sessions, an awards banquet, a Canadian delegate breakfast and some entertainment.

Catching the Park-and-ride bus into Oxford to attend the Skoll World Forum

A couple of featured speakers were Sir Richard Branson, head of the Virgin companies and Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban on her way to school a few years ago. She had a very inspiring speech. Our purpose for being at the Forum was to promote SPECT, the organization we recently started in response to Christina's (our daughter) vision to reduce the suffering and loss of life in Africa associated with poor surgical practices. We made many contacts and felt the conference was a great way to spread the word about our work. Oh yes, we also had supper in the grand halls which were included in the Harry Potter movies!

Malala Yousafzai speaking at Skoll World Forum

We left the housesit on Apr 13, then spent a day in Cambridge (another beautiful and fascinating place to visit) and then spent a couple of days in London.

At Cambridge Univ Botanic Garden

Popular way to spend Sunday afternoon in Cambridge

Corpus Christi College

Corpus Christi College reflected in window

King's College

Christ's College

One of Christ's College more famous students

Springtime in England, at Christ's Pieces, Cambridge

From here, we have arranged another housesit, this time in the south of France, near to the village of Villelongue-dels-Monts where we plan to stay from Apr 16 to May 15. We hear it is a big house ... anyone want to join us?

England 1 (Mar 28 - Apr 2)

We arrived in London early on March 28, jumped into our rental car and headed for the white cliffs of Dover. Although jetlagged, we took the 45 minute hike along the cliffs out to the lighthouse and then celebrated Dan’s birthday at the little cafe there by having a cup of tea and scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam (it was delicious!). We continued on to Canterbury for the afternoon where we enjoyed exploring the city, walking the narrow streets, watching people and seeing the large Cathedral.

Celebrating my birthday with tea at the Lighthouse

Canterbury Cathedral

Next morning, we headed towards Stonehenge, choosing to drive along very narrow country backroads lined with thickets for fences and drinking in the English countryside. We felt like we were in a fairytale. The combination of old brick houses with thatched roofs, white and black-headed sheep grazing on the rolling hillsides, bunny rabbits hopping about, daffodils in bloom everywhere, sighting ancient castles every now and then and seeing the spires on the cathedrals in each town all contributed to this sense of wonder and enjoyment.

By noon we realized that what looked like a short distance on the map was actually going to take us all day to drive on the back roads, so we found a connecting larger road and then later a highway so that we arrived at Stonehenge in the late afternoon. Okay, so this is getting into some serious history ...  estimates are that these stones were placed there between 3,000 - 2,400 BC! We arrived at the park entrance gate just at closing time so needed to drive to another parking lot where we could see the stones but not actually walk right up to them. Amazingly, while we were walking through the field, we met up with Erin (a friend of our daughter Christina), who we also met when we were on the Africa Mercy Ship last October - small world!

What a surprise to meet Erin, Chris's friend at Stonehenge

Stonehenge, England

Next morning we drove to Salisbury and attended a Sunday morning church service in the large beautiful cathedral there. It happened to be mother's day in England so in honor of mothers, Olive received a bouquet of flowers. In the afternoon we drove to Bath where we toured the ancient Roman baths, watched the entertainers in the market squares, walked the city streets and then stayed at an old flour mill (converted to a hotel) for night.

Salisbury Cathedral

Roman Baths at Bath, England

From here we made our way to Stratford upon Avon, where you can see Shakespeare's birthplace and the homes of his wife (Anne Hathaway), mother (Mary Arden) and other places of significance related to Shakespeare. We enjoyed walking to these sites through the narrow streets and pathways.

Thatched roof house in Stratford upon Avon

In Stratford upon Avon

Next morning we drove to Warwick to see the castle there. Again, serious history here dating back to 914 AD. There was a lot to see and do at the Warwick Castle including dungeons, towers, ramparts, gardens, a trebuchet (catapult used to hurl fireballs that unfortunately was not working while we were there) and shows. It would be best to visit in summer when they have the gardens in full bloom and more live shows including jousting battles!

Warwick Castle

This bald headed eagle landed on the castle wall about 5 ft from me

River flowing by Warwick Castle

In the afternoon, we continued on to Oxford to check out the university area and the school of business where Olive and I will be attending the Skoll World Forum soon.

At Oxford University

On Apr 2 we drove out to a country farmhouse near to High Wycombe where we plan to house and pet sit for the next 11 days while the owners take a trip to Scotland.

New Zealand North Island 2 (Mar 22 - 27)

Our last week on the North Island was relaxed. After crossing the Cook Strait on Mar 22, we headed to the city of Wanganui (also spelled Whanganui) where we checked into a motel and stayed put for 3 days. The motel was right by the river and a large park so was a great place for walks. What we also enjoyed here were the feijoa (a green-skinned, egg-shaped fruit that has the consistency and taste of a guava) and some vegetables from the motel garden.

Interestingly, the beaches on the west side of the north island have black sand. On our drive up to Auckland, we stopped at a place called Parininihi where we walked along some white cliffs with deep black sandy beaches at the base.

In our travels, Olive has always looked for sunsets and since we were on the west side of the island, we finally got to see some nice sunsets.

Next up is flying to London, England and the start of our European adventure.

Crossing the Cook Strait by ferry 

Sunset at Wanganui, NZ

Cliffs at Parininhi

Deep black sandy beaches on west coast of North Island

The Maori name for New Zealand is Aotearoa which means the home of the "Long White Cloud"

Auckland Airport - leaving "Middle Earth"