Springtime in England
Springtime in Wyoming
Springtime (November) in South Africa
At the end of 2021 we spent Christmas and New Year in England where we were able to visit with many of our family and friends. We returned to England in mid-February and stayed until the end of March for a very nice early springtime visit.
In April, we took a driving trip of the American Southwest, visiting Nevada, Arizona, California and New Mexico. On that trip we spent a very pleasant evening with a work colleague of mine at his home in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I hadn’t seen Ed since his retirement over thirty years ago so it was a real treat to catch up and recall old times.
In June/July we spent another six weeks at “our” flat in Ilkley, and the second half of the year saw us re-visiting countries beyond the US and the UK for the first time in three years. We had a beautiful drive around Ireland, visiting Northern Ireland for the first time and enjoying some magnificent scenery and gorgeous weather in both North and South. In October we flew to Milan and spent time there as well as in Florence, Bologna (a first) and Venice and, as usual in Italy, we were impressed at the architecture and fascinated by the history.
To complete a rather full year of travel, we spent most of November in South Africa, driving from Pretoria to Cape Town via Bloemfontein (thereby seeing all three capital cities) and spending time on the Garden Route and covering most of the Wine Route. Unemployment and poverty are still major problems in that country but the people, the magnificent scenery (mountains, plains and coast) and the food and wine make for a most enjoyable trip.
Our journals for each of our trips of the past year are now uploaded to the website. Again, these are often quite lengthy writings prepared for our own use as a memory-jogger, but some aspects may be of interest to a wider audience.