Sorry the Blog has been a bit quiet of late but we have been busy and affected by Jen's dad who is not well at the moment and hence no overseas travel for us. As a result of this we have been to the GYM almost every other day and long walks in the meantime.
We recently followed the River Wey (Canal) from Weybridge to Woking, a walk about 7/8 miles on a bright sunny morning. It's a very nice walk to do and as you get nearer to Woking there are some very nice houses on the River.
After a lot of thought and discussion, we have decided not to follow many of our friends by buying houses overseas, our first choice would be France but quite frankly as we like to move around a bit, we do not know where to buy. And if we did you can bet we would like to be somewhere else. SO, we have decided to leave our French and European travels to our Caravan which is now at the Dealers going through its PDI and we are adding a few extras, like wheels etc.
Piplin House development. We are now awaiting the outcome of our application to extend our current home. This can take quite some time and we originally applied in early January 2007 but the first application was lost in the post- a great start. However by early April we should know the outcome of the Elmbridge Council deliberations. Our plan is to pull down the current garage and utility room, then rebuild the garage with two bedrooms on top together with a new family room, utility room and further additional living area, currently called the space. At the opposite end of the house we will build a large 'atrium' which will be of a similar floor space to our existing lounge. Please see drawings below. If we get permission then we would hope to start the building work some time in May/June/July time subject to availability of people to do the work. We have a young French girl coming to stay will us in August for one month and we hope to be finished by then. We will also carry out some internal changes, by taking out some of the floor of the bedroom above the entrance hall to create a bigger feeling of space and lightness. There will be some other changes but the details are not fully finalised. There is still a long way to go on this and it will no doubt keep us quite busy.
Just to add to our workload, we are in the middle of planning the next Wey Road and Round Oak Road Residents Association Summer Party which is due to take place on the 30th June. This coincides with Wimbledon Tennis fortnight and so our party will have a Wimbledon flavour, strawberries and cream and we also expect to have a live band. This should be a good day as we are holding this on a plot of land owned by a neighbour and it fronts the River Wey. So we expect to have boat rides, tennis games for the kids and plenty of booze for the adults.
Blair is finally on the way out leaving a legacy of a mess in the UK as well as in Iraq. The similarity of problems in Iraq does to a degree mirror the past problems in Northern Ireland by having the army trying to do a policing and PR job which no one wants them to do. Enough of that however. Apart from mispricing the Dome, which cost a few billions pounds, they seem to have done it again with the Olympics for 2012. With an original budget of 2.3 billion suddenly becoming 9.7 billion in less than a year does not auger well. It will probably increase to about 15 billion at this rate.
Boy, we can't wait to get in our caravan in France and keep the radio off!
