Heron House

We're having a great time here in UK Tour 08. Had a fab time with the Richardson side of the rellies. We toured Greater Manchester with Jo's Aunt and Uncle, including lots of great industrial history and canal tours and such (I love a good bit of industry). I liked Manchester much more than I expected, especially considering how cold and wet it was! Then Saturday night the cousins came to join us and we had an early Christmas dinner with all the trimmings including chestnut stuffing and apple cider jelly.

Sunday we headed up to Leeds with Jo's cousin Andrea and her chosen other half Ronnie (great lad). They took us to a fabulous outdoor German Christmas market for shopping and sausages and potato pancakes, wonderful in the cold! We spent a lovely day and a bit with them, then this afternoon they got us on the train to Bedford via London. I'm so glad we chose 'rail tour 08' over hiring a car, oh boy. We were both able to enjoy looking out the window and checking out the gorgeous countryside, so wet and green and non-texas like! The only downside was sharing the carriage with a group of obnoxious drunk folk. We had to change trains at St Pancras and while staring at the board waiting for our platform number to show and handsome pixie-like fellow came over to us and said "Hello, I'm your uncle Tim" and he was! He had cleverly arranged to be on the same train so we traveled the rest of the way chatting to Tim, brilliant!

Arrived in Bedford at around 5pm (in the dark of course) and met Ruthie. it's hard to explain how good it is to meet people who you have been looking forward to meeting for so long and feel like you already know, and there were no letdowns (except maybe on their part but we'll see, I have time to charm them yet)

So now we are at Heron House, hanging out with all the family like this is something we've been doing for years. Heading to London tomorrow for shopping, sightseeing, dinner and a show! More news soon.

[Had to edit this for horrendous spelling errors!!]