BritCits, Le bike, Sir Dukes, GYS, and Wetherby FoodFest, quite the fortnight.

Okay, Starting with the personal knews,

BRITISH CITIZENSHIP.
Gail and I got Brit Citizened.
For all those who think we are OZ deserters, au contraire mon amie.  We are now DUAL , or as I like to think, WORLD citizens who can pass unmolested in the EU and no longer be non-dom in the UK, removing at the same time a significant cost exposure.

Here are some shots of the dignitaries who gave us our certificates.

 Nice people with nice words and holding a big sword to make sure we behaved.

   We did.



TOUR de FRANCE, le grande departe Yorkshire.
I said in my last post that I would load some pics of Yorkshire's 2014 role in the Tour de France.  I haven't. I know anyone interested in our pics would fall into the estimated 3.6 billion worldwide TV viewers who would have seen or can look at 'tinternet for the far better and more spectacular video coverage.  So I will just load a heap of Leeds shots we took while getting neutralised, to give you the flavour of the spectacle that was such a sunny success for our adopted county, some say, godzone county, Yorkshire.

 

The above shots are of our hotel room wot we stayed in to celebrate the coming of our Britishness.  Its The Queens Hotel Leeds.  A Grand Old Dame of art deco plush. 

For those of you who appreciate things bike, you will know the win colours of the rider's shirts are white for best youngest rider, green for best sprinter, red dots for king of mountain, and yellow for overall champ of day.  These phone booths show typical routs around Yorkshire that would suit these shirt winners.... cute huh?

                    

                                    

 And as usual, the naked women electric lamp light holders  (Alfred Drury's Morn to Even sculptures) in Leeds Square got some modesty shirts for the occasion.  They always get dressed up for Leeds events, any excuse to party.  The Queens Hotel is the building behind.

 The wagamama "Lycra welcome here" tag was a strange touch.  Its not welcome anywhere as far as I am concerned. Puts me off my food.  I learned a new word too.  MAMIL....for middle aged men in lycra. Urk.

 And there was street entertainment, bands, lots of sales in the stores and a general Leeds welcome feeling and good humour all round.
 The Corn Exchange made an effort and the Trinity covered streets had a countdown clock....

 
This is a shot from our Queens hotel room, from one of its windows, it had double aspect, posh huh?  In this pic though you can see the Aire river, the Leeds rail terminus, some offices, apartments and in the distance, and why we love it here, you can see sheep in the fields.  Well, not from this shot, but you can on zoom. We are surrounded by dales and countryside.        
So that was Leeds a day before le bike thing.
The actual tour de france was amazingly better than all this, half of Yorkshire's population (est 2.5 mill) filled the streets, in the sun, it was a blast all day with every village throwing a full on party, but we don't spend all our time taking pictures so you can look all that up on t'interweb. Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-28179818 for a taste.

WETHERBY COCKTAILS....
Yep, a city style cocktail enterprise invited us to a free food and free cocktail night on Monday.  We felt obliged to attend.

 

We have returned since and actually paid for a meal and drinks because we did think it needed our patronage.  I mean a cocktail bar just down the road,  how like our old Tokyo home  is Wetherby getting?

GYS

Every year, except last year when it was too wet, Harrogate hosts the Great Yorkshire Show, England's largest rural event.  Gail was working all three days of it this year so I got her to drop me off one day when she was working in Harrogate Hospital.  I went to see the cars and the machines and the animals.  It is retail heaven if you want to get decked out in tweed and flat caps, buy art, acquire tools, eat yourself fat or buy stuff on special from stall hawkers that you'll never use. If you have ever been to the Royal Easter Show in Sydney, and some of you have, it's like that but with more tweed, bowler hats, and much more animal.

  I got involved and didn't take many shots but here are a few my phone took when I remembered to. 

There were sheep, cattle, pigs, poultry, small animals and dogs but as I said I was enjoying, not photoing.



WETHERBY FOODIES DAY
This weekend was the Wetherby Food Festival, where providors and cooks from around the district were invited to present the locals with a fine couple of days out, I can hear the music playing still as I write this on Sunday afternoon.  It was the first such event for the town and a huge success so I expect it will repeat annually.
A flavour of our Saturday visit follows.

 The traditional

The Organic..... wot's the point?

The delicious, with cream.

The Cuban temptations

The endless snack choices

The dog's delight

 A cider bar for the Morris Dancers


Always remind me of  this Neil Simone painting .  

 




weak American cocktails

Deep and meaningfuls, over a sip.

And a half hour to eat a local (Bay Horse Pub, North Deighton) massive burger.  None succeeded .











And that was it for the first two weeks of July, rather a full fortnight I think.
Roll on the Yorkshire summer!  
To get our Brit Passports we have to hand in our OZ passports again.... there is a 8 week process time.... we will probably therefore be stuck here enduring this sort of thing all summer.
Don't feel too sorry for us.

it is the summer of 14

There are good months and there are great months to our life here in Yorkshire.  

2014 is the year of the Grande Departe from Leeds of the Tour de France and everything has gone yellow in honour.  There are flags, shirts and bunting decorating our little Wetherby and next weekend will be AMAZING! We are expecting hoards of lycra clad loonies to descend upon us as the route passes within an easy cycle from our little town..  So I may have pics of all that for the next update here.  

Let me tell you some places we have been going to since my last update.   

 Crathorne Manor Hotel is a 1900's country home built in the Georgian style and now operating as a fine hotel in North Yorkshire,off A19 highway.   Yes,  we did lunch.

And we don't just do country homes for our experiences.  Boston Spa is the neighbour town to Wetherby.  We first saw Boston Spa using google earth from our Lane Cove home in Sydney back in 2006, before we even knew we were coming to Yorkshire for sure.  Its a pretty little place and it has a French Restaurant.  One of our great Canadian buddies introduced us to Georges DuBoeuf French wines here in 2009 and low and behold old Georges' grandson turned up in Boston Spa to give a chat and the restaurant cooked some food with his wines.  Adrian was a lovely fella and we spent a good long time educating him about our Aussie wine industry, the existence of which he seemed genuinely surprised about.  Talk about insular.

 Anyway, enough about food and drink.  Summer came and all us white folk in the UK can now roll up our clothes and expose ourselves to the watery sunshine.... like this.  Sometimes without even the ugg boots...

..as Gail is more elegantly displaying her English Summer style in this shot.  Which by the way is in the garden of a lovely little pub in West Tanfield called the Bull Inn, to continue the theme, it is on the Tour de France route.  Nice?

 Speaking of nice, and of the Tour, Karen Downie, an ex-pat Aussie who used to work with Gail before returning to Oz, actually came back to visit us on a world tour she was taking. (she bought us Arnotts Mint Slice biscuits!) Gail got a day off and they went to Tan Hill , England's highest pub and then drove through the Dales to Hawes along more of the TdF's route as Karen has been known to follow the cycling  fraternity.
 Going to be a tough ride that.

 Speaking of tough rides and work mates.  Gail invited me to join her at the Alliance Medical 25th year anniversary ball.  So it was out with the tux and shiny shoes to meet some of the names I have been hearing.  And to partake in some wine food and entertainment.
 

There must be a thousand Ship Inn pubs in Yorkshire.  From a coastal Staithes inlet to the canal banks of industrial valleys you will find them cuddling the local inhabitants.  This one is towards York and gave us a mildly forgettable luncheon and a pleasant stroll.
  

We don't always stay in Yorkshire, the company Ball was in Birmingham and today we returned from Cheltenham where we went to Marco Pierre White's Frogmill Inn.  I had the best steak I have eaten in the UK and Gail still drools at the taste of the tomatoes that were served with her pork steak.  I have otherwise panned the place on Tripadvisor so won't repeat our whine here.  We managed to enjoy ourselves despite the downsides but I thought I'd show you one pic of our room.
  I defy anyone to get to the TV (the remote was for another TV in another room) or to the Wardrobe (to search for the missing hairdryer without banging her head (Gail) or doing his back in while hanging his trousers..

 Gail did find some locals who enjoyed their accommodation though.

 An as a surprising link,  some of you may know I am a member of the Leeds Savage Club, an off shoot of the London Savage Club.  You can research these fine orders at your leisure as this is not the page for that.  Buy my book.  Anyway .  At the Frogmill we found a room dedicated to Savage momorabillia... What a surprise!
 

  

A fun little glimpse back in time and a joy to find a link to my other passion, art and writing.

Being in the area, we then paid a visit to our old Tokyo buddies Peter and Ann who now live in a fantastic old home called Undercliff on the outskirts of Cheltenham and had a fantastic chat, cuppa and catch-up in the sunshine on their spectacular rear terrace. Lovely times.

I presume, but do not guarantee, I may post more tour de France stuff.  It is such a big deal here.
Oh, and while not such a national big deal, Gail and I are going to be formally made Poms on Thursday in Leeds Town Hall.  We retain dual citizenship (forever Oz) but we can now get passports that will enable us to enter and leave this place without the 2 to three hour stuff-around we endure every time at passport control as non EU aliens.   So that'll be a bit of fun.

Also, in this month of June, we sold our Singleton property in the Hunter Valley.  Glad but a little sad.  Glad after 12 years of work to see the sale of it, sad the sale process is being fraught with complications... hope it has sorted itself out by next post.