Where have I been?

I've been away too long! Summer seems to have taken over and I haven't got round to posting recently. I have in fact just got back from a lovely few days visiting with a friend in Holland. She does not live there, but her family originate from those parts, and so it seemed a good place to catch up with her.

I took a short flight from the local airport to Rotterdam-The Hague. It took less time than it does to go to Bordeaux on the train. We met in a really nice hotel and in the evening walked a few hundred metres to a restaurant, where we had exactly what we had hoped for: a lovely meal of the sort that we could never cook for ourselves, with wonderful wine and good service. All this was because we hadn't seen each other for seven years and we had both lost our mothers in the last year, and so wanted to do something special.

How lovely it is to spend time with those friends that you don't get to see nearly often enough, but yet when you meet them again it is just as if you just left them. The truth is that with the great distance that separates us, who knows when we get to meet again and where that will be. Even with the best intentions, we are only likely to meet a few times more in our lifetimes, so we decided to enjoy it!

We spent a day exploring Rotterdam. The architecture was quite interesting; modern but in a way that seemed to blend in with the style of the port. We walked around the buildings, just looking. This is a picture of the 'red apple' building, or rather the reflection it made in the waters of the canal.

In the afternoon we took a boat trip to kinderdijk, to see some of the famous windmills. It was hot by then and so we were grateful of the chance to sit in the shade for the hour it took each way, even though the trip along the river wasn't very interesting!

We managed to get a quick look at the windmills along with all the other tourists and day trippers, before heading back to Rotterdam and on to Utrecht for the next couple of days. Utrecht was a complete contrast to Rotterdam; old buildings, lots of people, noise, shops and restaurants. We did some shopping, looked at the people, drank coffee, and generally caught up on seven years worth of talking! In the evening we hired a canal bike and explored the waterways that run through Utrecht. It was a warm evening and so the edges of the canal were packed with people eating and drinking and talking.

Summer swimming

Ian's triathlon training continues and yesterday he decided that he wanted to go freshwater swimming, so he collected his wetsuit, I put my bike in the car and we headed off to Leybourne lake.








I think the geese were much more at home than him and I watched them for a bit before heading off around the lake on my bike. The nice weather had brought out the crowds and cycling around required concentration to avoid hitting anyone, however, I managed to find a quieter track and came across this swan family happily swimming in this little stream next to the sewage works! They were obviously used to being fed as they came over to see me as soon as I stopped to look!

After my modest exertion and Ian's more strenuous swim we sat and had bacon sandwiches from a little van that did a fantastic trade to all the divers. (The man explained that scuba diving makes you exceptionally hungry!)

Romney marshes

After taking my drugs I enjoyed our cycle ride on Sunday. Although it was really windy the sun stayed out all day. The ride took us through parts of Kent that are not the most well known, through lovely villages and through part of the Romney marshes. It was really beautiful but as I am one of the slowest riders I didn't get time to stop and take many photos so will have to wait for my fellow cyclists to send me theirs. One of the most spectacular sights was this.

I didn't take the photo but it is of St Thomas a Becket church, Fairfield. You can see a great oil painting of it here.

Fanny's farm

At the time of writing this I am so tired I can barely co-ordinate my fingers on the keyboard. We joined the mountain bike group for a ride around the Reigate hills today. Sounds easy as you may ask 'what hills are there in Reigate?' but in fact there are plenty! I managed to keep up for a while but then as I got more tired the pace stayed the same and my legs and lungs just couldn't stand the pain! Still, I made it until lunchtime and then Ian and I went home shortly after (I think he was tired as well!). Lunch was in one of my favourite places. It is called Fanny's Farm and is not far from Reigate hill, just off the M25. Fanny is an impeccably dressed 'well built' lady of a certain age and class. The farm consists of a few ramshackle buildings, a couple of portable toilets and a kind of garden area. It has no mains power or sewerage so the till is an old fashioned manual one and Fanny adds up the bills on paper. It takes no cheques or credit cards. In the summer and warmer winter days you can sit under the trees in the various bits of the garden and have tea, cakes and light meals. We sat in the tree house garden which is a wonderful little garden with a large tree-house at one end.

(picture from http://www.merstham.co.uk/merstham/Gallery%20Pages/mw44.htm)

You can rent the tree-house for a couple of hours to have your own afternoon tea with friends. The tea is served from a teapot, in china cups and the cakes are homemade. It is served by a bevvy of teenage girls and as it is in Surrey they can at least string a sentence together coherently. You can buy cakes, chutneys, home made jams etc., plants grown on the farm, arts and crafts, teas to take home. The plants are grown in beds (literally; as the raised beds are made out of old bedsteads turned upside down and filled with soil). There are two enormous Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs who ignore all visitors, an inquisitive Jack-Russell terrier who doesn't, chickens (you can buy eggs for 20p each) and other various animals, plants and bric-a-brac. How Fanny manages to meet current health and safety regulations I don't know but in the summer and at many weekends in the winter the place is packed. It looks like it is on the verge of closure but has probably been going for years! (In fact I have just looked on their website and it has been going since 1979)