Wendy’s Diary March 2013

Those of you who follow the blog but are not in touch with us in any other way will have noticed a lack of diary keeping on my part. The last entry I made was 2^nd September – more than 6 months ago.  So here for a potted history of the winter:

View from the marina

Night time in the marina

We both failed to find any work locally so I decided to look further afield and realised that I could earn more in a week than I could in a month in Spain – (even if I could find anything there) so explored the option of returning to the UK. In the meantime we needed to find somewhere to moor up for the winter and decided Ortiguiera – where we had spent several weeks in the summer and John had enjoyed the World Celtic Music Festival whilst I had sojourned to the UK for my mother’s 80^th birthday.  A pontoon birth including water and unlimited electricity is charged at 100 euros per month, regardless of boat size. With shops within easy reach of the marina and a lovely setting amongst mountains made it a no brainer of a place to rest of for the winter months.

There were several job vacancies in London that I felt suitably qualified for so caught a plane to stay with John’s cousin (to whom I am very grateful) in Lewisham in the hope of finding something. I had several interviews with temping agencies in my first few days, two real interviews with 2 different London universities within a week or so and started work with one of them two weeks to the day after I arrived in the UK.

Sun rise at the entrance to the Ria

This set the course for the winter and alternately I returned to the boat for a weekend and John came over to the UK to stay with me. I spent my weekends without John catching up with friends and family around the UK and we spent Christmas with my sister’s family in Birmingham. My son Jason decided to return from foreign lands during this time and joined me in London and immediately got himself a job just off of Oxford Street in an Oriental restaurant. He had left Cornwall for the Far East and Australia the day after we set sail in June 2011 during which time I hadn’t seen him in the flesh, so it was lovely to spend some time with him. It is amazing however how little one can see of each other whilst living in the same house when one is working office hours and the other restaurant hours! By the end of January he was ready and had sufficient money in the bank to return to his favoured island of Phi Phi in Thailand and is now happily running a beach bar there.

A reunion with my children in Cornwall in November

The holes left by the screws
near the top and the 22 staples

At the end of January I finished my job and headed back to Spain and the boat. I didn’t stay there long before moving on to France where I am now writing this, to stay with my friends Annie and Philippe who had taken me in when I broke my ankle 18 months earlier. A conveniently timed stay has included a return visit to the surgeon who last week removed the plate and screws from my ankle, thus hopefully ending the story of that injury.    I am sitting with my feet elevated, 22 staples holding the scar together (very neatly I must say) waiting for next week when the nurse will kindly remove them (ouch x 22) and I can start walking again (I am back on crutches in the meantime).  John is back in Ortiguiera preparing the boat ready to set sail as soon as I am fit enough to do so and the wind and swell are kind enough to go in the desired direction. Watch this space for where we go next.

So that is the short history of our winter, not spent in a way we had imagined before we set sail nearly 2 years ago, but as we have learned, there is no such thing as normal when living this lifestyle!