Bluebell Hunting

Portbury, Bristol

A wonderful sunny day, just right for bluebell hunting with folk from our church family. Unfortunately, Gary and Alexandra were poorly and couldn't join us

Happy Easter to you!

Spring splendour

There has been such a huge change in the weather in the last couple of weeks - not that we have had a cold winter; in fact it's been quite warm mild for winter! But Spring is definitely in the air!
Longer, sunny days. Flowers popping out everywhere. Birds singing, plants budding.

Joining with Barb, we went on our Spring Splendour walk.It was so lovely to be out in the sunshine.

And even more interestingly, we saw our first snake in the UK!

Sarah and I stood still, waiting for Alexandra to catch up - and then I heard the hissing-like rustling. A little green/brown head popped out, the body slithered a few inches forward. Stopped. Then curled back on itself, and went back the way it came! Amazing how our first reaction is "Arrgg! A snake!" But standing quietly to watch it, really was amazing! Still, we were glad to be on the other side of the fence - lol

Sadly, we noticed that the silver birch trees outside our flats were seeping sap. 2 of them have had branches  hacked, pruned, cut (by mistake?) and seem to be unhappy :(

(p.s. - all these photos were taken by Sarah and Alexandra)

Easter Goodies

What a beautiful morning - I am sitting in the sunshine - and we have a had a lot of that lately!


And to add to our sense of delicious well-being, our South African Easter eggs arrived today. We just cannot  not have white Beacon eggs

or Beacon Marshmallow eggs!

And so, as soon as the South African shops advertised that they were in store, we ordered! we have used both Susman's as well Bokke Food. Both companies have given us excellent service :)

This time we ordered through Susmans, as they have a

                                                       special for March. 

And so we were able to also buy:

Boerewors

Kudu biltong

Droewors

Sour jellytots

AND

Milo! (Although, I should be able to buy this at Tesco - and I see they have got it from the UK, not SA - but up till now haven't been able to find any)

What a feast :)

Nature walks

Although it is winter, we have had lovely sunny days - well, cold, but sunny :) Freezing sun or sunny freeze? Anyhow, we have been able to go on some lovely walks:

Friends

Frozen in time

London

In the middle of January we took a train to London - we bought a family railcard (on a special at 1/3rd of the price) and this card gives discounts on train trips. We have used it a couple of times and it has already paid its way :)
And we are blessed to have friends in London so that we didn't have to pay for accommodation - we stayed with Judy, a friend we met in Keswick, in Streatham, South West London.
We only went for 3 days. Gary attended John Stott's memorial service at St Pauls Cathedral on Friday the 13th. While he was there, The girls and I went to the SA consulate to renew their passports - good thing we did, as it takes 4 months to get it back - and they expire 15th of May!! You'd think in today's technological age, that they wouldn't have to send them all the way to SA to issue! Ah well, at least the photos were accepted - I thought they'd send us away as we had the photos taken at an ID-photo booth and the lady ahead of us who had done the same had her photos rejected - phew! But we had a lovely chat to the lady behind the counter who comes from Kimberley:)
After that we had a quick visit to the National Art Gallery before meeting Gary at St Pauls.


We then headed to the Tower of London. Thanks to Tesco (our supermarket) we had vouchers that they exchanged for entrance to the Tower - so only paid £25 instead of £55 for a family ticket - that would have been ouch!!


The Tower is a worthwhile place to visit - so much history happened there and of course the Crown Jewels, which include the largest diamond in the world,  South Africa's Cullinan diamond:

Here are some of the photos from our time in London:

Alexandra has declared London her favourite city as there is so much to see and take photos of :)