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Review of the Year 2002
| The year opened with Rhys' mother, who
lives in Dorset, being admitted to hospital with heart trouble. We
went down to see her a couple of times and she soon went off to London for
a double bypass, which she has slowly recovered from over the months
since.
Jean and
Rhys outside their room in the boathouse at
The Priory hotel in Wareham.
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Jennie and Ian, having settled into their
new home in Diggle, went off on a skiing holiday. They managed to return
with no broken bones and continued doing up the house, and even got into some
gardening.
Rhys started a new contract in March, at
an insurance company in Northampton, as Head of Operations. It was then a
small company - only 30-odd people - but with ambitions for fast growth.
Rhys was back to weekly commuting from Cheshire, staying in hotels - Overstone
Park (a golf "resort") and Sywell (a tiny airport).
Jean and Rhys had been planning a trip to the USA to see
Samantha, Mike and Elizabeth at about the same time so Jean went off on her own
- a flight from Manchester to Chicago then drove a hire-car up to Midland,
Michigan - and she got there and back OK.
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Jean's job at Barclays in
Knutsford was the victim of her department closing down, so she went on
"gardening leave" for several months. She took up a long held
ambition of learning to ride a horse. |
At the end of June Rhys and Jean went
on holiday to Catalonia - the area of the South of France near Perpignan
and Spain around Barcelona. We stayed in the middle of
Barcelona for a few days at first, to unwind and see all the sights.
Barcelona
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By far the most impressive sight (and
site) was the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia - a 'new' cathedral
being built. It was started in 1884 by Antonio Gaudi (when he
was 31) but he died in 1926, leaving plans which are being continued until the building is completed. This is expected to
take another 25 years! So far just the first eight towers have been
built, with the overall shell to an 'ideal' gothic cathedral floor-plan. Gaudi,
of course, has not stuck to classic gothic, but has applied his
idiosyncratic art-nouveau styling and embellished the whole thing,
creating something truly unique, and in many ways bizarre and outlandish;
it will not be liked by all. But building cathedrals is not
something that happens very often and this building will certainly be
something very special - a must see. But don't wait for it to be
completed - go now!
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Jean outside
Gaudi's 'new'' cathedral
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France
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We spent most of our
holiday in France - initially at La Terrasse au Soleil in Céret,
where we have stayed before. Unfortunately they had the builders in
and this ruined the peaceful haven the place was previously, so we moved
to the L'ile de la Lagune at St Cyprien, on the coast not far from
Perpignan. The hotel is the large building in the middle of the
island.
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Hotel L'ile de la Lagune - from
the air on the left, Jean on our balcony on the right |
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Here we are at Carcassonne, where
we went for one of our days out. |
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For our final night we went back to
Barcelona ready for the morning flight back to Manchester, and stayed at
the Grand Marina Hotel - only opened in February this year, it is
Barcelona's newest and grandest hotel, and we managed to get a very
special offer promotional rate through booking via the internet. We
couldn't get a room there at the start of our holiday - Barcelona was full
of 15,000 Rotary Club members holding their international conference, so
all the hotels were full, but for our last night it was terrific, although
driving in and out of Barcelona's traffic system was a bit traumatic. The
motorway goes right through the city centre, in tunnels, and comes up under the
middle of the roundabout you can see on the top left of this picture.
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| The hotel is at Barcelona's World Trade Centre on
the end of a pier where ships - cruise liners and ferries to the Canary
Islands - tie up. Where the pier meets the land is just at the
bottom of 'La Rambla' - the main tourist street/area of the city - you can
see it on the enlargement in the middle at the top of the picture.
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After our holiday we got a cottage in Northamptonshire
- Rhys was getting fed up of hotels and needed somewhere to live more
comfortably. We have taken a small holiday cottage in one of the villages
not far from Althorp, which is very pleasant. It will do very well until
we know what the future holds.
Rhys's mother came to stay for a few days in September
and Jean took her on a visit to Althorp and some of the other tourist places in
Northants.
Also in September Rhys attended a school reunion.
The Friends Reunited website enabled us to find each other and make arrangements
and we had a fine
evening. It is planned to make it a regular event from now on, but whether it
will happen I don't know. It was great to meet up again with some old
friends again.
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David and Lynne had a holiday in
Crete. It doesn't look like they got much time on the beach! |
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Jean's been back to the USA again, and got a new job in
the bank, heading the Management Information department of their credit card
operation in Northampton, which should have been convenient since we got the
cottage, but about a month later Rhys finished his Northampton contract!
He had grown the operation to over 100 staff and put in lots of improvements,
including a proper call centre.
| Following the ending of Rhys' work
contract he thought not much was likely to happen on the contract front
before the end of the year so he booked a
week with one of the sailing schools based in Gibraltar to do a Coastal
Skipper practical course. He sailed from Gibraltar up and down the
Spanish coast in the Mediterranean (as far as Duquesa, near Estepona) and the
Atlantic (as far as Barbate, near Cape Trafalgar), and across the
straits to Ceuta on the Morrocan coast, finishing the week with sailing
exercises in Gibraltar bay on a pleasant sunny day.
Ceuta is a
Spanish enclave/resort/tax-free zone on the North African coast somewhat
like Gibraltar is off their coast, so I don't see why they should want to
take over Gib - they certainly want to keep Ceuta. We had a
beautiful warm sunny day - tee shirts in
December. It wasn't like that the whole week though - the first part
was wet but not always windy and we motored a lot, but the dolphins that
accompanied and escorted us, playing all around the boat, made up for the
poorer weather.
The pictures were taken on Friday and Saturday 20th
& 21st December 2002 -
there was freezing fog etc at home!
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Aboard yacht Poseidon at Ceuta |
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Gibraltar as we were
sailing back across the bay |
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