London

I beamed like a child landing on home ground. So many different and amazing experiences in 70 days away, but after an emotional goodbye in Quito 10 days I was ecstatic to see Sarah at Heathrow arrivals. Driving home in the sun I loved seeing both familiar London sights and new ones (some of the roadworks had moved at least 100 yards since April). Its great to be home!

Sailing the BVI

Arriving in the Caribbean paradise that is the British Virgin Islands 24 hours late, Richard boarded the 47 ft yacht for his Day Skipper course, to meet the English 56 year old Delboy sound-a-like instructor Alan. (Late mainly because flight 1 of 3 was delayed by 14 hours. Admittedly missing flight 3 because I was watching the Ghana-Uruguay thriller didn’t help...oops). The other 3 crew were good fun hearty-laugh-a-minute Caribbeans, especially once I realised that I wasn’t supposed to understand all of things they said in Creole. (Creole sounds a lot like its just heavily accented Caribbean English to the uninitiated. As I was.) The heat was gorgeous when tempered by the constant trade winds on the water during the day, but at night while we enjoyed moorings at picture-postcard white sandy beaches the unrelenting heat with no breeze wasn’t fun, especially when the hatches were closed to keep the light rain out. Although Alan taught us well, he was one of those irritating people who always starts with “no” before explaining to you what you just said, and gems such as “I never really understood centimetres, me” occasionally made me feel like being in one the opening scenes of Casualty. We did a lot of sailing around incredible islands, but also found time to relax in the sun and water. Truly a week in paradise to hold onto when I get back to work.