I am fighting the lethargy and fatigue of jetlag. It is inevitable that I will fall asleep if I stop moving. However, it is too early to go to bed or I will wake at some unearthly hour and not be able to regain the deliciousness of slumber… So, I have decided to ramble about our whistle stop tour of the UK that is the cause (partly) of my state of exhaustedness!
Eighteen days is not enough. Never again will I attempt to fit a trip to the homeland in such a short length of time. I should have learned from last year’s trip to Spain. But I thought that the fact that I was studying, immersed in a foreign language was the main cause for my exhaustion then. Wrong! It is a causal factor, but the main reason is that two weeks is simply not enough time to travel across the time zones, regulate a body clock, visit as many people and places as possible and then fly back across the time zones and actually feel human. Add to that a twelve week term, with two camps and a full term of teaching and organising Teacher Professional Development…
Nevertheless, I am glad I went. It was wonderful to see my beautiful sisters, my nieces, nephews, great nieces and lots of dear friends. Some things and people never change – how refreshing! Isn’t it amazing how we slip so easily back into friendships as if we had never been away? We lament that we don’t keep in touch often enough, our lives are so busy, we have so much to do, the immediacy of our lives and the issues connected with them impede maintaining contact with those far away. But once together, it is as if we had never been apart. Yes, water has flowed beneath the bridge, but we are the same people with the same interests that bound us and bind us still. We say that we will write more often, speak more often. But we won’t. The reality is that we know each other, we know that our friendships run deep and we will maintain contact ephemerally if not tangibly. We will pick up where we left off the next time we meet.
So where did we get to? Our whistle stop tour took us to Olonzac in France, Ingleton & Kirkby Lonsdale in Cumbria, Harrogate in North Yorkshire, Leeds in West Yorshire, Stanley in Newcastle, the Northumberland coast, and Edinburgh, Scotland. How many people did we meet up with us? 41.
It was a trip full of nostalgia – visiting old haunts – fleetingly. And a reminder of how bloody cold it is in Spring in the UK! We really have acclimatised to NZ weather!
No more writing… here are some images to reflect ouir time away, the people we met and the things we saw.
easegill today 