If it is December then it has to be winter sun in Lanzagrotty

Regular blog readers (you really need to find something more mind improving to do you know!) will fully expect that December involves a trip to Lanzarote / Lanzagrotty for some winter sun. We hate to disappoint so the annual pilgrimage was duly completed thanks to a very full TUI 737 and the rather quiet Bournemouth airport. Tina came along with us (glutton for punishment) and we met up with John and Irene who had arrived a few days earlier and were well into the being pampered / enjoying the warmth and sun routine that seems to overcome you when at the Rubicon Palace hotel.

This year we had to admire the Houdini skills of one cat - surely there are comfier places to stretch out in:

We were impressed with how one family of kittens went for the shared bodily warmth thing on a chillier day:

Tina and the crew did the expected posing at Lagomar, the Omar Sharif / Cesar Manrique house:

shortly before a rather arrogant German magazine photographic crew asked if they could use the room (not booked for them at all) then almost booted us out.

The food in the hotel is universally pretty good but somehow this cheese looked a little bit strange:

Tina was brave enough to try it and survived, relatively undamaged. However, the cheese colour was nothing like as off-putting as the car and boat that we admired at Marina Rubicon:

Cannot imagine either selling well on the used market. 

As usual, a good couple of weeks away enjoying sun, warmth, good company and the chance to do no cooking or boat maintenance or pretty much anything we didn't want to really. We didn't miss the UK much:

gales and stuff up to force 11 were forecast. 4 hours in the cramped and busy little TUI 737 with people trying to sell us scratch cards seemed a price well worth paying to escape all that stuff.

Escaping maintenance and getting culture

All work and no play makes....

Yes, it was time for a little escape. Where to - well not very far up the road really. We headed to a rather nice riverside B and B that we have used before - look at Aberllynfi House website.  On the way we stopped for lunch and a catch-up with Michael and Frances who own Coracle, a Nordhavn 40. The B and B is close to Hay-on-Wye which has the reputation of being the used book capital of the country. We've mentioned it before. It also has a winter festival and our timing was good to go and get immersed in something cultural rather than diesel.

A talk by Max Hastings on the Dambusters raid with an honest appraisal of the approval, planning execution and mixed results / lost opportunities was fascinating and totally sold out:

Another example of how the famous post war film and the reality of the operation diverged a little!

Whilst in the area we had a very good (sunny too!) day in Ludlow. Never been there before and it was one of those rare gems. A proper little town with many local shops, very few empty, a bustling market and many old buildings that had not been wrecked by new facades. OK, car parking spoils it a bit:

Plenty of places like this one to admire made up for the traffic:

We will return sometime - be afraid Ludlow...