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.