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Published: April 17th 2008
After the Basque Country we travelled to Wales and headed to a little seaside town called Gwbert near Cardigan. We visited Gretchen, a kiwi friend, and her Welsh husband Clive and attended daughter Elin’s christening.
My sister Sonja is the Godparent of Elin, so, as she is in NZ, I stood in as a Godparent along with two other Godparents, which was pretty special. When the minister passed the baby to the Godparents, I stayed put, and the other two Godparents stepped back! So even though I was the stand in I got to hold the baby during the service.
Afterwards we had an old session at the local pub. Clive is in a male choir in Wales and unfortunately we’d just missed a concert of his the night before. At the pub we talked him and some of his choir mates into giving us a few tunes. It was excellent! It silenced the pub and had all those that knew the songs joined in. I wish NZ and Oz pubs had that kind of atmosphere.
After Wales we moved on up to Scotland and had a week long catch up with most of our old mates, visited
(and shopped in!) most of our old haunts, and wandered around to see what had changed. We stayed with our friends Dawn and James McDowell in Mid Calder with their two gorgeous wee kids Mainie and Patrick. Mainie was not quite one when we left and we hadn’t met Patrick. It was so good catching up with these guys I could have stayed in their living room for a month!!
On the first day or so we discussed who we had to see while in Edinburgh, because as per usual we decided to go with the flow and plan only at the last minute! It became quite a logistics exercise which required a timetable to be drawn up on Mainie’s art board, and group discussions between Dawn, Damien and I - and James, who was suppose to be working upstairs!! The photo of James at the whiteboard was sent to us by Dawn and shows how James finally took control of the board - his plan all along - but only once we had left the country!
We also spent a night with friends Jo and Alan right in Edinburgh and it was great to see those guys
Wales
Mum and Dadtoo, although too short. Over the course of the week we caught up with as many people as possible including old workmates and friends so our photos are all people shots.
On the Saturday before we left we attended the post-wedding (one year on) celebration of friends Kelly and Geraldine Dornbusch. Gerry is Scottish and Kelly is a kiwi. Kelly managed to find a kilt maker during the week who tailor made a kilt to fit him in time for the Saturday hoolie, and a fine kilt it was as you can see. We had a good old ceilidh dance that night and learnt a few moves along the way.
On 29th January our 6 weeks of travel was up and we headed back to Western Australia. The whole trip was just excellent and what made it was catching up with so many friends and family. It’s a shame that the transporter beams on Star Trek haven’t made it to the production line yet, otherwise we’d be over to visit every other weekend!
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