As many of you will know, we have recently returned from our great trip to see Ben – what a treat! He has been living in London now for a year, and so it was just superb to go and catch up with his life over there – HUGE thanks to Blair and Nicki and Clare for helping manage everything in our absence – you are all STARS. We started by visiting Barbara’s family in Oxford, Cornwall and Wiltshire with him, and then headed to Ireland to spend a week with Geoffrey’s family and catch up with Barbara’s former vet bosses in Co. Wicklow. On return to London we had a lovely catch up with one of our Physio School friends Rachel Depree, in Richmond, and had just such a fabulous time running on Richmond Common each day with her and Ben – hard to believe that a 2500 acre park can exist in the middle of London in 2016, but indeed it does and it is just SO beautiful in the early morning mist to see great gatherings of wild deer grazing happily in amongst groups of cyclists, runners, walkers, riders, dog walkers, squirrels etc etc. Just such a treat, and I’d strongly recommend you seek it out for exercise if you have not already been. Thank goodness King Henry VIII decided that was going to be his hunting park so we can all still enjoy it.

Photos from our trip!

Pictures showing Ben commuting to work on a Boris bike, and then with the man himself next to the Thames!

We also explored The Globe one evening, which was superb – Macbeth was on, and luckily it was just before the Brexit rain deluge hit, so we had a warm, dry night watching (as the space is totally open to the air!). Another highlight was getting to Wimbledon with Ben – it was so nice to be able to stroll from court to court, seeing the most amazing tennis and all for just “25 quid”! It was a hot, rain-free day until the last few minutes luckily! The day was made complete with the classic bowl of strawbs and icecream with a Pimms.

Our final 10 days were spent travelling with Ben in France, which was superb. We had luckily heard about the marvellous Blue Bike Tours in Paris from Joy Shields here in Dunedin, and they were superb. We would all highly recommend you add one (or four!) to your time in Paris. We knew time was short to explore, and so in our 2.5days there, we managed to fit in 3 biking tours of various parts of the city (including biking one evening to a boat that took us up and down the Seine by night, and then hurtling back on the bikes at 1130pm – magical!), and probably the best was the train then bike tour of Versailles – which included time at a market selecting the most gorgeously fresh and tasty ingredients to make our own picnic lunch, then biking in the grounds and exploring, and having our delicious picnic in between. Heaven on earth!! We then hired a car from the outskirts of Paris and explored our way down the Loire valley to position ourselves at Limoges for the arrival of Le Tour de France, and the following day when they cycled from Limoges steeply up into the mountains. Again such beautiful countryside, and from there we meandered our way along the Dordogne to end up in Bordeaux for our flight to Glasgow, where Geoffrey attended a marvellous conference on Running Rehabilitation over our last weekend. Our final night was spent in Edinburgh with Ben, before we flew back via Dubai on our long 36hour epic, with possibly 3hours sleep if we were lucky! Certainly has taken us a few weeks to feel human again.