October 2019. A campsite in Cornwall, the rain lashing down while we sat in the caravan. āYou know what? I want a beach holiday, lets look at heading to the south of France next year when we go. Guaranteed sunshine, white sands, turquoise seas, bliss. Lets do itā Fast forward 2 years, 10 months later. Article 50 has been signed, the UK has left the EU, and a new respiratory virus has changed the world. Weāve lived through unprecedented times, our lives but on hold, milestones for the children ...
The Shed
In France with Isabella
āWhat tone should I set with this Isabella review?ā āDonāt Swearā Editor in chief Mrs EBF doesnāt like colourful language in blog posts. Sheās just asked me to write a post about our holiday to France, a 1000 mile tour, incorporating 3 separate campsite stays, with two different caravan awnings to put up, with no swearing involved. You know what. Itās easy. To really understand what our holiday meant to us I need to take you back 2 years ago. My Dad was diagnosed with incurable ...
Creating a mud free zone – Engineered wood flooring
Laying a new floor in a 400 year old cottage has its challenges. We love living in the countryside (you may have noticed). There are very few downsides to living in a field next to some woods with no neighbours for miles. One of the few, is mud. All it takes is a couple of days of rain, 2 children, a dog and a cat to turn the kitchen into something resembling the front of the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury. When we first moved in the ground floor was a thread bear carpet. ...
Cricket is Summer – a review on behalf of Net world sports
We are very lucky to have space outdoors to play. While Dylan being a typical 10 year old would love nothing more than to be glued to his Xbox for hours, he does, without too much coaxing, love playing out. Heās absolutely football mad, I admit that this may have been nurtured by me, but it wasnāt exactly hard. He knows all the players, follows the gossip and loves to play in goal. While Iāve always loved the game, it was really not my sport in terms of playing. No, my love, was a smaller, ...
Driving me round the bend
This summer, we are spending three weeks towing our Caravan though western France into Spain. We start our journey from home to Portsmouth, then the Ferry to Caan, on down though Le Mann, Ile de Rae, Biarritz and then in Spain and the ferry home from Santander. 860 miles. 860 miles towing 1.75 tonnes with three bikes on the roof, two children in the back, dog in the boot, wife navigating (and mediating!). There has been a recent survey about distractions while ...
Staying connected in the countryside
This year marks our tenth anniversary of moving from the City back to the countryside. When we took the decision to move, we wrote a list, Pros and Cons of living in both the city and the countryside. Lifestyle, freedom, entertainment, employment etc. One of the things we absolutely did not think about was how to stay in touch. In the city we had a choice of mobile networks that all worked, we could choice cable, satellite or broadband, find the best deal and not really consider the ...