August at home

We came home to Lincoln for the month of August – to our new garden being frazzled by the heat and to a houseful! William (Adrian’s eldest son) and Amy had come up for a week’s holiday. So when we arrived they and Lisa had planned a welcome home meal for us which was great fun! Amy particularly enjoyed mixing the Sangria…..

We had a lovely few days together – and I won at Crazy Golf! Yeah! not that I’m competitive, you understand!

I manged to nip down to Littlehampton to see Peter and Marcelle (bro and sister in law). Peter has been very poorly whilst we were on the Somme so I wanted to visit before we headed back to France.

Soon after William and Amy left Nadine arrived for a few days. I first met Nadine on a tour of New Zealand back in 2008 and we have been friends ever since and done lots of things together over the years. She came to crew on Misty Morning many times; she’s been here, I’ve visited her in Canberra, we’ve met up in London & Paris and we’ve toured Morroco together. But we haven’t seen each other for several years because of Covid. So when she said that she was coming to the UK for a cruise from Southampton she just had to visit us in Lincoln. We had a lovely few days.

Family dinner to celebrate Nadine’s arrival and to toast Lisa and Alex’s engagement – Freddie does not like having his picture taken!

A highlight of Nadine’s visit was the sculpture exhibition at Doddington Hall. Apparently this is a biennial event. We love Doddington Hall but this was just stunning!

In amongst all these lovely sculptures we spotted insects at work – notably busy bees and a hummingbird Hawk-moth! Apparently these moths have been seen more frequently in the UK this year – we were fascinated to watch it hovering over the flowers with its long tongue gathering nectar.

We are now beginning to prepare for our return to France again ….. see you on the ‘other side’!