Johnblog

Wow, the views are amazing! We are on top of a hill in Terre Di Nano, a lovely old house overlooking its own vineyards and olive trees. Everywhere you look there is a hill with and old walled town on top of it. The two nearest ones are Montepulciano and Monticchiello.
We had to get up at 2am to make our 6.30 Ryanair flight into Pisa. All went well and we grabbed the hire car – a Renault Megane diesel – and headed for the city centre. That was interesting until Bob programmed the satnav and it got us there. We managed to find a parking space near the centre but had to pay a street hawker a couple of euros to give us some change and to look after the car!
The leaning tower is still leaning. We didn’t go up because we would have had to wait four hours for the next available slot. The church was amazing. We refreshed with some gelato and pizza and headed south for a couple of hours drive to our home in the hills. The last couple of kilometres to the house is gravel road so we got a bit dusty.
Faaaabulous place. We are on the top floor of three storeys with a two bedroomed apartment with a little lounge and kitchen/diner. Floors are old terracotta and the ceiling is huge wooden beams and terracotta tiles. Hot – 35 in the day but cooling beautifully at night. Dinner outside on the terrace was fab, as was breakfast. Dip in the pool and now we are relaxing a bit. Did I say the views are amazing?
Wifi here – good to have but slow. Enough to catch up on Australian election news. Will  try to upload pic.
Lots of time to explore here or do nothing. Local wine (Sangiovese) excellent, the good stuff is 10 euros a bottle and the cheaper ones are about six euros. We stocked up on beer and nibbles at the local supermarket – and of course plenty of aqua tonica for the gin bought on the way.

We persuaded Richard and Sarah to take us out to a local pub. The Locomotive in Finedon Road, Wellingborough. Plain English pub – no loud TVs, no pokies, no music. However it does have a model railway layout above the bar, reference to the heritage of the place – it was the pub for the local railway workers.  Excellent range of real beers and, of course, pork scratchings. Very pleasant evening getting slightly hazy towards the end. Love English beer. Love it!

We’re here in England and it hasn’t rained all the time.We’ve even had some sunshine! We grabbed the hire car at Heathrow and Muriel made us very welcome in Higham Ferrers. We met up with Bob and Julie to finalise the details of the Italian holiday (must look up the Italian for gin and tonic).
No wifi anywhere around here so I’m typing this on the local library computer. The adult computers are being fixed so I’m in the kid’s section on a tiny seat with my knees jammed under a low desk.
My first pub visit coming tonight. Whey!

After the flight – it’s a big plane compared  to my little Pitts Special.

Just been for a fly in the Cessna 206 with Jan from Bankstown. Lovely clear winter’s day, about 17 degrees and sunny. Just did a short trip over the edge of the Blue Mountains and Warragamba Dam. I needed to fly to keep current for when I return from the UK trip – I have to fly every 90 days in this aircraft to keep current. It’s a six-seater plane but it’s hard to find other passengers at short notice so there was just the two of us.

Now we shall get busy sorting out the trip to England and Italy. We have found a good and kind house-sitter so the cats will not starve for food or affection (aaah!). Looking forward to some real English beer and some real Italian wine and food.