Christmas

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas....we ate and drank plenty (possibly plenty too much!) and had a lovely time with our friends in Hunningham. We spent the day with Anne and Mark and their family. It was lovely to spend the day with them and eat a traditional turkey dinner. Thank you!

Now, bring on New Years!!

Ted curled up with Pepper while we opened presents

Mark and Ann

Darcie and Leah looking angelic (Mark and Ann’s kids)

Ben with the lovely Ted

Vermin the cat at the end of the night....this is actually how she sleeps in the centre of the room!

Merry Christmas!

These are some of our Christmas decorations including the new snowman and handmade ducky from Denise and Adam. The bottom is Bens....in his new Christmas pants from Denise and Adam! Have an awesome Christmas everyone!!!

Excellent News!

My lovely little sister Denise and her husband Adam are having a baby!!!

They are expecting their first child in July and I am ridiculously excited and happy for them. Mum and Dad are very excited about being Grandparents for the first time too.

Good luck with everything and we will be back to celebrate with you both soon xxx

Congratulations!!!

Congratulations to Nadine and Peter on the birth of their second son, Christian Francis!!!!

Welcome to the world little Christian, we can’t wait to meet you when we come home.

Lots of love and kisses, Aunty Corinne and Uncle (’ The Godfather’) Buck

(Picture from Athens bench overlooking the Parthenon. Found under Ben’s bottom)

Finally!

After 6 weeks we have finally moved from the dumpy 1 bedroom flat above my vet clinic to......

A newly renovated 3 bedroom terrace house!!!!

It is clean, bright and huge! Compared to the 1 bedroom flat it is luxurious. It will be very nice staying here for the next 8 weeks before we head back to Oz.

Here’s my lovely little Christmas tree covered in decorations I have collected from our travels. My favourite is still little Caga Tio sitting under the tree....In case you’ve forgotten: he’s the Christmas log that sits under the tree and poops out Christmas presents when the kids beat him (from Spain- I know, they’re weird in Spain)

And finally....check out this cheese!!! We couldn’t resist getting this massive cheese which we will devour on Christmas day- who needs a turkey!

Awesome Weekend- Part 2

The second part of our awesome weekend on Sunday was the very awesome day of Falconry that I had organized for Ben’s 30th Birthday. We had the best day- it was so much fun to watch and hang out with the beautiful birds and ferrets. We spent all day with falconer Bob Edwards, two ferrets and his two Harris hawks- the female Tweed and the male, Richard. We were back in Hunningham for the day (where we lived at the beginning of the year) which is such a beautiful part of England.

The day started with a very clear frosty morning (it had been -7C overnight, so it was very cold!). Hunting involves releasing the ferrets down rabbit holes. The Hawks sit on branches high above us and watch for any prey. When a rabbit gets flushed out the hawks swoop down and grab it with their talons and then tear the skin around their neck to kill them. They are so fast and so clever. When we were walking around looking for warrens and prey they would fly along behind us. We would hold up our leather-gloved hands and let them glide to us for a treat of a piece of chick. They wear telemetry trackers so that if they fly too far we can find them. The young male hawk, Richard is a bit naughty and obsessed with food, so at one point he flew off and caught a baby pheasant and we couldn’t find him for a while. The female hawk, Tweed was very clever and seemed to really love the chase and hunt. The ferrets were very cute, well behaved and loved to duck down the rabbit holes- they seem to know exactly what to do. They also wore telemetry collars and when they are underground and we can’t find them you can use a beeping ferret tracker to find them.

We had a very successful day, catching a pheasant and a rabbit which we were allowed to keep. Ben will cook us a game stew or something with them. We both had a great time and Ben really enjoyed his birthday present. Awesome!

The lovely barn owl we handled before heading out falconing.

Ben the falconer with his hawk and box of ferrets.

Tweed flying along beside us. The weather was perfect- look how blue that sky is!

Ben releasing the ferrets down a rabbit hole.

The hawks waiting in the trees for the rabbits to run.

Tweed with the pheasant that Richard had actually caught first...she’s in charge!

Me with one of the lovely little ferrets.

Tweed flying to Ben to get a piece of rabbits liver- the normal end of the hunt routine. They loved the liver!

The end of our awesome weekend!

Awesome Weekend- Part 1

We just had an awesome weekend!

On Friday we went into London to get our British driver’s licences (I want to keep my Aussie licence!) and stopped off at the Borough Markets at London Bridge on the way home. It is a fantastic food market which sells luxury food items, fruit and veges, meat, grog and yummy food. We love a market and this one was great. We drank mulled cider as we wandered around. I even found some real Raclette- proper raclette cheese melted onto potatoes and it even had small pickles! We finished off the trip with a beer outside a pub looking at the markets and listening to Christmas carols. Awesome!

Corfu

Ok...we’re almost finished with Greece...sorry it has taken so long,,but there are so many lovely photos and I have some spare time so you’ll all just have to put up with some more of Greece!

After the wonderful Naxos we flew, (via Athens), up to the Ionian Islands- first port of call being Corfu. We stayed in Paleokastritsa, a beachside resort about 30 minutes from Corfu Town. The weather was much colder than the rest of Greece. Unfortunately we didn’t have the best time in Corfu. It’s very touristy and we stayed in a very tacky hotel with heaps of English tourists who stayed around the pool, ate the worst buffet breakfast known to man, ate lunch at the pool and a roast dinner buffet in the hotel, then consumed cocktails and watched the soccer in the hotel- all this despite being in Greece, having the beautiful beach at their doorstep, having great food at tavernas across the road and plenty of nice places to spend an evening! That pretty much sums up how the English like to holiday (sorry if there are any English people reading this, but it’s true!). Despite this the scenery was beautiful and we did some great walking up behind our hotel, ate some great food and met a lovely kitten that we wanted to steal!

Here are some scenes from Corfu Town- we did a day trip to explore the old town.

Always time for a refreshing beverage under the trees!

Moat around the old fortress in town- the middle picture in the collage is us on top of the fortress.

View from the top of the mountain behind Paleokastritsa.

Our dodgy pink hotel (don’t stay here!!)

......It did however have a beautiful view from the window.

Olive groves on the walk we did up the mountain behind Paleokastritsa. In the Ionians they let their olive trees grow very tall and catch the small olives underneath it with big nets that they lay under the trees. In the rest of Greece the olive trees were kept stunted so they can reach the olives more easily.

Au Revoir!

Bye bye Liv and Downy,

This weekend we traveled to the very cold Isle of Wight by Hovercraft to visit Liv and Downy for the last time before they head back to the wonderful land of Oz. They are off to Australia in another couple of weeks which is fantastic for them but very sad for us.

It has been lots of fun visiting them and having them visit us all over the UK (and the world!). We’ve visited lots of pubs through England, played in the snow, gambled in Las Vegas, slept in the same rooms around America (separate double beds!- sorry about the snoring!!), visited Disneyland, ate a gazillion burgers, visited friends in Canada, attended a lavish New Year’s eve wedding for Matt and Kay, shopped in NY, purged Vet-related stories for hours, purged ’Australia-is-the-best-country-in-the-world’ stories, drunk lots, nursed hangovers together with tea and Sunday papers and generally had a great time.

So, we just want to say bye to both of you for now. We can’t wait for your wedding next year and to heaps more visits back in Oz one day!

Naxos

Ahhh, Naxos! This was my favourite place in Greece. I absolutely loved it and highly recommend visiting.

It is such a beautiful, laid-back island with lovely shops and restaurants, gorgeous scenery and beaches, lovely old towns to explore and heaps of back country to hoon around on the quad bike. It isn’t quite as touristy and polished as the rest of Greece and the people were lovely. We ate some fantastic meals here and found a little old shop with sacks of herbs, bags of olives, prunes, plastic bottles of home-made wine and big rounds of local cheese which we shopped in for dinner at the Pension a couple of times. We found the best beaches here, some sandy and some pebbled. We hired a quad bike again and spent most of our time driving out around the fantastic countryside, visiting little towns, checking out all the amazing scenery and visiting the beaches.

Beautiful view of Naxos town in the evening.

Ben sun baking

We spent a lot of time swimming and sun baking at the gorgeous beaches. Ben snorkeled around the rocks and the pebbles were lovely to sun bake on.

The very different scenery in the back country, looking out over the hills that we drove around. We would drive up over the mountain ranges and come across gorgeous views to the ocean and then down into valleys with lush green farms. The smell of goat was quite powerful when we drove past them. The goats were everywhere when we drove around: up trees, on rocks, hiding under the road overhang...

Our luxury model quad bike: note the lock box on the back. This was 150cc (rather than the 50 we had in Santorini) which means it went much faster. We would get whacked in the face by big bugs- which actually hurt quite a bit- while we were driving along.

The ’portas’ or temple entrance to the town of Naxos. We spent our evenings up here with some beers or a bottle of wine admiring the sunsets and people watching before we had dinner.

Dinner of meat balls (they have the best tinned meat balls), dolmades, white beans in tomato sauce, olives and fetta (from the owner of our Pension-see below) and bread from a local bakery.

The excellent Pension Sofie where we stayed. It was owned/managed by a father and daughter. They were so friendly and invited us in to their kitchen where they gave us fetta, tomatoes and wine that the Dad had grown and made himself on his farm outside of town. It was really well priced and a great place to stay.

Sunday in Guildford

Sunday evening in our flat in Guildford, Surrey....

My lovely huzzy Ben cooking our Sunday pot roast.

Very tasty lamb pot roast and veges. Note the Jacob’s Creek wine...we only drink Aussie wine over here because it’s so good (and cheap!)

View out the back of our flat over the terraced housing of Guildford....It’s been a lovely Sunday evening!