I'm Home

It's been a long journey.  I've been away over four weeks (but a few days less than the five I anticipated) and driven the best part of 5000 miles or 8000 kilometres.   I haven't done all that I intended to do - I couldn't see my Goddaughter nor her Mum which was a huge minus - but time and things conspired against me at the end.  It's been a wonderful time being part of the extended family of one of my oldest friends who arranged the holiday and brought six people from four countries around the world together in a large and beautiful Tuscan villa  to celebrate her 70th Birthday.  

The journey home took a week.  Mo (friend from Canada who's birthday it was) and Di (her sister in law) and I travelled back to Di's beautiful and restful house near Merseyside in the trusty Nighthawk via The Leaning Tower of Pisa (Di had never seen it), the Cinque Terre (and satisfy Mo's desire to walk between two of the five towns), Albiano near Lucca (to see my dear friends Peter and Sandie from Callander who have a house there) and Antibes (to satisfy my desire to see my son Gaz in situ in his life as Chief Engineer on a super-yacht.

Then I drove up to the Scottish Borders to visit friends in their new home before bringing a friend, Anna, up from Bishopbriggs to stay on Lewis for a few days.  It's been a good journey.  

There have been the occasional hiccups  for example when one hotel booking disappeared into the ether and when our rooms were double allocated in another hotel.  The most irritating problem for me was internet access.  For the most part lack of time meant I wouldn't have been posting much but in Antibes the hotel's internet server provider went down and thereafter in France I couldn't get internet access even on my phone to set up a wireless hot spot for my laptop.  I couldn't link to Di's wifi and after that I managed to answer a few emails but catching up with friends precluded anything more.

So this morning I woke to my old familiar view just before the sun rose across The Minch over the mountains of the Scottish Mainland:

I know that many of you will have seen it all before but to me it was just wonderful to see 'my' view again and to be able to share it with you.

Hopefully I'll manage to catch up over the next few weeks with all the posts of the holiday as well as catching up with all of my friends in Blogland.