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Towards the end of June the decorators arrived at the house to paint the exterior and put right the remedial cracks inside, predominantly around the oak ceiling beams which have hopefully now shrunk as much as they are going to over the four years since they have been installed. So, with a team of men in and around the place for a month, we had to stay around, opening and closing windows, shifting furniture and generally having a good Spring clean. The job was completed by the end of July and so without much persuasion we were off again on our travels. First destination was a quick couple of visits once again up to The Lake District, but this time we were on a mission to find a suitable holiday home, having always wanted to find the perfect weekend retreat; you know, something simple and manageable in a quiet backwater. In reality we soon found the dream to be more of a nightmare having viewed places that we wouldn't have stayed in if we were paid. Although the budget grew, the standard of properties didn't. We saw damp relics from the 60's fit only for knocking down with £1m price tags, gardens riddled with public footpaths, bungalows that resembled public toilets, and were just about to give up on the whole idea when we came across one country house that really appealed. Sitting in the middle of it's grounds of nearly 60 acres and with a nice long private driveway, 5 garages and all the accommodation we'd need, we have since been thinking very seriously about this former farm, but we've realised that it would be difficult to run as a second home, and Dennis wouldn't want to spend the majority of his time in The Lakes, particularly in the Winter. However, we were serious enough to make a flying second visit and enquire with builders about an internal renovation job to install new heating systems etc, but for the time being, Bank House at Sharrow Bay on Ullswater continues to be our preferred place of rest when up in Cumbria. Over previous newsletters I've covered the location from every angle through all seasons, but here's a couple more pictures anyway, photographed on a tranquil July evening.
Recently refurbished, Bank House has 5 bedroom suites and during our midweek stay there we were the only guests, with all the other visitors to Sharrow staying in the main hotel. After a full day's house hunting, we arrived at Bank House mid afternoon where Paula greeted us with a nice pot of tea. We had eaten a full lunch at The Drunken Duck in Hawkshead, and so decided to forgo the evening extravaganza, and so Paula made us a large plate of mixed sandwiches at 6 o'clock. With the sun still shining late into the evening, we took a drive around the lake and had a couple of beers in Pooley Bridge, for the first time in 25 years of visiting Sharrow, going to bed on a relatively empty stomach and enjoying a good night's sleep! As usual I was up bright and early running the Fells before the famous Sharrow breakfast. With another day full of appointments viewing property, we headed off towards Grasmere to view a refurbishment of a former hotel, 'Michaels' Nook'. The hotelier has apparently decided to try his hand at property development. Perhaps someone should have told him that nowadays lino floors are definitely 'out'! (particularly with a £1.3m price tag per apartment!) Anyway, the 'piece de la resistance' of disappointments awaited us later that day as we fought our way through overgrown brambles to the top of a neglected 18 acre site where a hideous relic to the 60's lay. Dripping with damp and deemed by us as uninhabitable, the agent insisted that the owner was happily living there until a week ago. 'Where is he now?' we enquired. 'Well he's just gone into a mental home with senile dementia' he confessed! Back at Sharrow, we decided to dine in the second night, and Nick the General Manager joined us at Bank House for pre-dinner drinks. We asked if he'd given us a favourite table overlooking the lake in the dining room and he assured us he'd sorted it. It was quite a surprise when Paul McCartney and his wife Heather walked in, also being given the table with the view. They were celebrating their anniversary, and we remember the late Brian Sack proudly telling us that Paul had proposed to Heather whilst staying at Sharrow a few years back. So there we were tucking into our Angus beef whilst Sir Paul and his wife stuck to their veggie diet. He was the perfect gentleman and true romantic and we've never seen a man to be so attentive and well mannered to his wife. We returned to The Cotswolds the following day, with our next trip already in the pipeline thanks to an invite from Ken & Lesley to join them for a couple of days down in Suffolk at their country house. With a full fry up breakfast promised, we arrived at their house at one minute to nine in the morning after an early cross country run, avoiding the rush hour traffic around the M25. They had a full day ahead planned and we took off with Boolee and Rosie, their two alsation dogs, in the back of the car for a detailed tour of the very pretty villages and countryside of Suffolk. It's a beautiful part of rural England where life seems to be lived at a much slower and more relaxed pace, yet it's only a couple of hours away from the hectic city life of London.
There's Boolee above on the left and Rosie showing off her nice pearly white teeth having just flossed! The colourful timber framed cottages on the right are typical of every village high street, whilst the village churches are all rather grand, reflecting the farming wealth from times gone by thanks to the wool trade. With the sun threatening to break through the clouds by mid afternoon, we returned to Ken & Lesley's home to take a dip in the outdoor pool (heated of course!) with lifeguard Rosie dashing around the edge of the pool wondering what on earth we were doing in the water. (after all that's a 'dog thing' isn't it, to jump into water?!)
The photo above left illustrates Ken & Leslies' family holiday home. The house sits well back from the road, surrounded by its own land and has over the years proved to be the ideal retreat to unwind and enjoy the relaxing pace of life down in Suffolk. It's now proving a hit with their grandchildren too!
The next day we continued our exploring of the Suffolk countryside, with the photos above illustrating typical 'Constable' country, with the water meadows, and of course the mill at Flatford by the river made famous by Constable as the scene in his most celebrated painting; 'The Haywain. Later that afternoon we headed back to the Cotswolds, with the next major event in our Summer Social calendar being The Village Flower Show no less! To share such a grand occasion with ourselves, we invited Ken & Leslies' eldest son John ( Dennis's godson ) and his wife Debbie, and children Oliver & Emily. On a lovely warm Summer's afternoon we strolled around the side stalls that provided plenty of entertainment for the children, including a display of barn owls, pony rides, and beetle racing.
At the beginning of this year when making resolutions for things to do and places to visit during 2005, two destinations we particularly wanted to explore for the first time were Italy (Tuscany) and Croatia. Well we made it to Italy in June, and so when a couple of friends we've known now for nearly twenty years through boating in The Med rang us with an invitation to join them on their Superyacht in The Adriatic, cruising the islands off Croatia for a week, we didn't hesitate to say 'Yes!' . 'It's the best phone call I've ever had!' declared Dennis, the icing on the cake being their offer to fly us out there on their private plane which was going out to collect their son and his wife and two children after a holiday on the boat. A couple of days later we were eagerly down at an airfield on the South Coast at dawn for the flight across Europe, landing at Split by midday. We descended over dozens of wild and deserted islands strung offshore from the jagged Croatian coastline, where we spotted numerous inlets and welcoming anchorages. Boating in Spain wouldn't be the same again! Our friends met us at the airport and we drove down to the harbour where their Sunseeker Superyacht had pride of place in the marina. We had only just recently been lamenting over Summers past, spent cruising the warm Mediterranean waters in our own Sunseeker Predator, recalling the lazy afternoons swimming in the water and scrubbing the hull (!) and looking forward to a full hose down on return to the port (the boat, that is!) and all of a sudden here we were on this magnificent boat, in the company of lovely people and the anticipation of a week's exciting island hopping.
We spent our first night in Split, going ashore late afternoon to take a look at the ancient walled town. The coastal terrain of Croatia is very mountainous with hills of limestone clad with old pine trees, in many ways very similar to the landscape of inland Spain, on The Costa Blanca where we lived for 16 years. Croatia is famous for it's white rock, in particular the nearby island of Brac, where limestone quarries provided the stone for the American White House. The following morning we moored at the fuel bay to fill up, and there were several people admiring the boat and one in particular talking to our Captain, so the owners invited him aboard to be shown over the boat. Our crew hostess Diana was thrilled to speak to this man and get his autograph, and afterwards she explained that he was Miroslav Blazevic Ciro who is famous in Croatia as the National football team coach when they came second or third in the 1998 World Cup. Having fuelled up, our first port of call was an idyllic inlet on this island of Brac. The sea was calm as we headed out together with the numerous ferries that linked the network of islands to the mainland. By lunchtime we were already moored, stern tied to the small jetty that led to the only building in the bay, a local restaurant serving the day's catch of fish served with fresh tomatoes and vegetables grown in the garden. The water was refreshing and clear to swim in, and we passed away the afternoon waterskiing behind the inflatable tender after a leisurely lunch of fresh barbequed squid, prepared by our Captain as we sat on the flybridge, surrounded by the beautiful bay below.
A particularly pleasant boating tradition is to enjoy a sundowner, in our case always a long, cold gin and tonic, sitting around a table on the exterior deck as the evening approaches, having showered and looking forward to dinner after a hard day's swimming and sunbathing, and so who were we to argue with that! We're all for maintaining such a tradition! We dined ashore at the beach restaurant at Brac, before making a night crossing back to Split, the moon illuminating our way across the sea as we headed towards the lights of the town. Our next destination in the morning was to be the historic island town of Korcula, after a lengthy sea passage travelling along the length of Hvar, observing its dramatic carved hills of pine, the lower slopes cultivated with vineyards. The shorelines were unspoilt and as yet undeveloped, perhaps as Spain would have been 50 years ago before the building boom. Already we were appreciating the attraction for boating in this part of the Mediterranean. Though lacking the sandy beaches of the Eastern Med, Croatia offered the fabulous opportunity to island hop in the calm protected waters around the chain of islands, each with its protected inlets or marinas for safe overnight anchorages. In this, their high season of August, we preferred to be moored in port by early afternoon to secure a berth large enough to take the Superyacht. In Spain, we simply never even tried to find foreign moorings during this month as each marina, particularly over in Ibiza and Majorca, was full to overflowing. With our Captain watching the weather report, we were safely moored in anticipation of a passing squall late afternoon when a sudden deluge of rain made it very tricky for the late arrivals of the day to tie up. We had already idled away the afternoon exploring the island's coastline by tender, and getting in a spot of wakeboarding (for me, the first time) before returning to the boat in time for a meal ashore in the old town of Korcula. Our plans the following morning were to leave port by mid morning and anchor in a quiet protected bay for another play at waterskiing and snowboarding. We arrived in a totally secluded inlet and dropped anchor. Apart from a local fisherman checking his nets, we remained the only boat there and lowered the large hydraulic stern to the sea to float the tender off it's cradle, the platform also becoming the ideal underwater platform from where we could swim. It was the first time in the sea for Dennis in quite a while. We could see the seabed beneath us 30 ft down in the clear warm water.
After lunch we raised anchor and headed out in a rough sea towards the neighbouring island of Viz. Formerly a military base with its big protected natural harbour, the island has since been adopted by the locals whose restaurants and shops lined the long shoreline, already full of visiting yachts seeking protection from the unusually windy conditions of the day. We chose to drop anchor and remain overnight in a small inlet around the corner from the main harbour, with the crew on night watch to ensure our boat's safety. Between this island, Viz and the large holiday island of Hvar (reputedly the New Ibiza as a tourist hot spot) lies the pretty island of Palmazera where we hoped to moor the following night. In anticipation of a strong demand for the limited moorings in their marina, we headed out of Viz early morning and soon made the crossing in a steadily calming sea, entering the port before midday. We secured the final berth available where the rule of 'first come first served' is the order of the day. Safely tied stern to, we again launched the tender to take us over to Hvar for an afternoon stroll around the bustling town. The port of Hvar was teeming with boats randomly anchored in confusion, slopping around in the heavy swell of this rather open and unprotected harbour. The massive visiting ferries squeezed their way between the charter yachts , oblivious to the obstruction they were causing! The harbour front was alive with busy cafes and hundreds of people, ready and waiting to board their appropriate ferries. After a meander through the atmospheric narrow cobbled backstreets of this historic town, we returned to our tender, tied up on the quay, for the short crossing over to Palmazera. Our last night aboard this fabulous Sunseeker, after the welcoming pre-dinner drinks, we all headed ashore to a local restaurant for our final dinner together.We intended to arrive back at the home port of Split by late morning the next day.
With the weather once again set fair and the morning sun shimmering on a calm sea, the boat cruised effortlessly towards the mainland, briefly stopping by a deserted island where we could take a final dip in the sea before returning to Split. Safely moored and saying our farewells to the wonderful crew who had helped to make the holiday so enjoyable, the four of us headed to the airport to fly back to England. In the comfort of the Citation CJ2 jet, flying at 480 knots, 38,000 ft above sea level, we were soon flying over the South coast of England, bathed in a sultry hazy sun. What an absolutely fabulous experience the week had been. We can't thank our friends enough for their generosity and consideration towards us to ensure we had such an unforgettable time aboard their beautiful boat in Croatia. Returning to reality and we were soon back in the swing of things, with lawns cut, washing done and a backlog of post to go through! Our final bit of news to finish off this newsletter takes us over to a small village in a very attractive valley N.W. of Stratford upon Avon, called Shelsley Walsh, where we were invited by Aston Martin and Stratstone to a famous hill climb event, this year celebrating it's centenary. Since 1905, cars have been annually racing up this particular hill and it's understandably the oldest event of it's type in the World. On a glorious Summer's day, we set off mid morning and were soon parked and soaking up the atmosphere, walking around the pits where cars of all vintages prepared for the hill climb, some reaching speeds of 145m.p.h. on their ascent. We enjoyed a tasty barbeque in Stratstone's hospitality tent, surrounded by a selection of their latest cars, including the yet to be launched and eagerly awaited new Aston Martin Vantage. We took a good look over this stunning sports car, really now looking forward to taking delivery of ours, soon after it's launch in October. With a display of wartime planes flying overhead, vintage cars screaming past us up the hill, busy side stalls selling all kinds of automobile memorabilia, the whole scene was loud and colourful. Here are the final 6 photos illustrating the day.
So, that's what we've been up to this Summer! As ever, we just always try to have a great time, fitting 30 hours into each day, never really knowing what we're going to be up to next or where we'll be. As for plans in the pipeline, no doubt an early Autumn visit to The Lakes could be imminent, and we'll probably catch some late Summer sun in Spain. This weekend we are guests of Strutt and Parker at the Moreton in Marsh country show, and soon after are guests of Sunseeker International on the VIP preview day at the Southampton Boat show, and these will feature in the next newsletter together with any trips we may make to Spain or the Lake District or anywhere else that takes our fancy. Well it's that time again when we take off to the pub, not so much for that gin and tonic sundowner, but instead the usual couple of pints of local Hookie beer! Best regards to everyone, Colin & Dennis. |
