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Two days before starting our World tour, we secured the purchase of a beautiful new build house in the English Cotswolds whose construction we had been following over 2001 before it was available. It's a substantial classical country house built in stone, incorporating many reclaimed materials to give a traditional and established feel to the property, but with all the advantages gained by buying a new home, for instance, good insulation, heating, water and electric systems, and of course state of the art kitchen and bathrooms, of which there are seven!
Here's a picture taken this Summer. The garage block and guest house is to the right of the picture, with main house to the left, with central brick section behind the front courtyard, and two wings in Cotswold stone either side. Gardens surround the house to all sides, and the views from the back, over the undulating hills of the open countryside, are beautiful. Sitting in the middle of the field which we are reclaiming as garden next Spring, is an ancient oak tree which led us christen the house 'Oakfield Manor'. Since returning from the world tour we have had 6 intensive months furnishing, curtaining and generally getting the house straight inside, and have already had a conservatory added on to the side, opening out the kitchen to create a garden room, ideal for breakfasts. We are now experiencing our first proper Winter for 15 years and already the novelty of the dark cold afternoons has worn off and our thoughts should soon return to travelling again to sunnier climes!
However, we've not exactly done badly for travelling over the year. When in London last December, Christmas shopping, we simply bought a couple of first class tickets, allowing us to fly between 6 continents, using up to 5 flights per continent, within a 12 month period, with the only stipulation being that we carried on either East to West, or vice versa. We sat down and planned the whole tour then and there, and the route we chose saw us flying firstly to Bangkok, then on to Phuket island, Thailand, Singapore, Bali, Australia, New Zealand, the west coast of North America, Las Vegas, down to Costa Rica in Central America, and back to Florida, Turks & Caicos islands, and finishing off in New York before returning to London to prepare to move in to 'Oakfield'. The experiences during the trip are too numerous to mention casually here so I'm going to dedicate plenty of space on this website in future to describe some of our fantastic experiences. All I will say for now is that it really was 'the trip of a lifetime'. We travelled first class all the way, staying in the best hotels the world has to offer, and guess what, the sun just followed us everywhere we went, with only one day's rain in 5 months! Anyway, just to whet your appetite here are some pictures taken in various parts of the world.
Much of the holiday was spent flying in private sea planes and helicopters to access the more remote places, and so the top left picture finds us on a deserted sandy island lunching somewhere between the Queensland coast by Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef. The helicopter took us up to the top of a volcanic mountain above Lake Taupo on the North island of New Zealand, where again we dropped down for a picnic beside a mountain river full of trout. The night picture can only be Las Vegas (no, not Paris!) with The Bellagio fountains in full display, and finally, that Des. Res. called Alcatraz in San Francisco bay, which we visited and on that particular day flew over, again in a sea plane we found idle in the harbour! Did we get tired of travelling? You must be joking! We could have continued indefinitely! Every week saw us in a new location, country or situation, with the excitement of the next destination to look forward to. We met up with friends old and new, bumped in to such famous people as the Queen of England, Tony Curtis, Al Gore, Paul McCartney, and didn't even have a delayed flight or lost luggage…..er….until we arrived back at Heathrow when all bags were lost on the short hop up to Manchester after the 5 hour wait! Oh well, Welcome Home I suppose! So, we've packed what seems like a year and a half into 2002, and can look forward to relaxing a bit in the run up to the New Year, and if you believe that you'll believe anything! Our next immediate project is to add another 3 garages for the cars Dennis is currently acquiring. I've decided to go on a crash course in getting fit again and we want to get stuck in to creating an English country garden to complement the house, oh, and we even ordered the turkey today for Christmas. We hope you enjoy navigating around our site as we add our current and backlog news. To follow on the world tour Click here |
