Eat, drink and be merry - a photo journal of my trip to England

Back home!

I arrived home yesterday after a loooooooong 9-hour flight. Since a picture says a thousand words, here's a little photo journal of the trip.

Here's a picture of my cousin Elaine, sister Tracy, other cousin, Jean with Claire and Alistair (Jean's son) on the far right. We are at Basildon, a historic house that was used in the filming of Jean's favorite movie, "Pride and Prejudice".

After that we went to the pub for a family gathering. It was the first time we met a few new members of the family, including Lewis (age 3.5), Amber (age 2) and Theo (just a baby).






Here's another family gathering at the pub. This one is with a different set of cousins (Elaine, in the pink, and her son, Adrian, at the far end of the table), along with Adrian's girlfriend, Shelley, and her two children, Sophie and Cam. My sister and I are in there, too, of course. We stayed at Adrian and Shelley's for the first few days of the trip.


After that, we went to stay with Jean for a few days. She lives up in the Peak District. Here's a photo taken by my sister of me with Jean one night when we were out for dinner.



We also spent a few days with yet another set of cousins in Kent. On our first night with them, they took us out for ...











And even though I was quite full after a large helping of both fish and chips, and declined to have any "pudding", as they like to call it, my dear cousins took the liberty of ordering me a traditional English dessert - spotted dick with warm custard sauce. No, I am not kidding. The photo quality isn't great on this one, but still, I had to provide evidence of this!



My sister came home to Canada a few days before I did. I spent my last day in England with my cousin, Emma having a "girls' day" including lunch at (where else?) the pub! We did eat food, too, including apple and blackberry crumble with custard for pudding.

Sounds like all we did while we were there was spend time at the pub, eh? Well, just to prove that isn't true here's a picture taken at my hosts' home with my two cousins, Rachel and Emma. Believe it or not, we were not just home from the pub!

Guess where I'm going today, now that I'm back home? The gym! And tomorrow I'm hitting the river pathways for a run. Boy, do I need it!