Wanderer Returns - Pt1

It's been a long and tiring two weeks, and now I have to go back to work. Regular readers will know that I spent the last two weeks at home in the UK visiting friends & family. It was a packed schedule, planned with military precision to maximise socialising and golfing opportunities.

We landed at 5:30am and jumped straight into a rental car, headed for Scotland via the Lake District. We spent that first night with some friends at their farm/stables/guest house catching up on all the old skiing gossip from Soll. We even got AJ on a horse for her first assisted "ride". There are a few more pictures here of AJ on the horse. We left the farm mid morning and wended our way further northwards to visit my family who had never met the baby.

We had checked into another guest house in Ayr, call By The Sea which we can thoroughly recommend. It has recently reopened with new ownership and a significant refit. The location is great, one block from the beach, and close to the town, and the style/decor and most of all the welcome is second to none.

We spent the next 4 days back and forth to Kilmarnock, familiarising ourselves with the new average speed camera or SPECS sections of the A77. The family were delighted to meet her, and mum, sisters, aunties, partners of most of the above, all came to visit almost every day for the duration. Click here to check out the pics with my family. I managed a couple of rounds with some old friends, guys who I went to school with over 25 years ago!

One afternoon we went off to Loch Lomond, as Lorraine had not seen much of the country on any of our trips, something I will have to rectify in future. The weather was fabulous all week long in Scotland; they do say that the sun shines on the righteous!


It was great to catch up with everyone, and it was all over too soon before we had to head back south to England for my Aston Martin day, the gift from my in laws for my 40th. More of that in the next post, but I couldn't resist posting this one picture for now (If you look closely you can see it is me driving). On the way however we did stop in Wakefield to meet another old friend, an old boss in fact from my days in the UK.

He is now managing a property, the house, grounds, tourism, etc for the National Trust. Nostell Priory is gorgeous, and quite the departure from managing an IT department for an international company. He tells me, however, that the daily issues and challenges are not really that different. Tight budgets, cost control, people issues, etc.

One last random picture from Loch Lomond. Whilst Lorraine was shopping for gifts, AJ and I had the privilege to see one of the UK's finest instituations. The Royal Navy Rescue Helicopter.