We are on our way. This is our 10th return visit to Ceret. It seems hard to believe that we first bought back in 2011, 12 years ago. We first visited Ceret further back in 2009! This trip began on 28 August, and we return to Nelson on 14 December. We start with 2 weeks in San Francisco staying with Alastair and his fiancee Sophie, have 4 nights in Paris and then TGV down to Ceret. We will be leaving via Brno and Prague in wintertime.
We are very glad to be leaving for Europe much later this year than last. A late August departure will be our norm from now on. Last year we had a wedding to attend in July, so had to deal with temperatures in France which were brutal from May until August. This year they have not been quite so unrelenting, but the drought conditions and maximum temperatures in Ceret have been fierce. It reached a new all-time high of 41.1C just last week. It appears that the "heat dome" that caused the latest highs has now gone and it should be back down to the more normal high 20s by the time we arrive in mid-September. We certainly hope so.
We had a one-night stopover at Karen's sister's in Auckland as we are very wary of delays before the international leg of the journey, specially after last year's fog which had us horribly close to missing our outward flight.
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| Leaving Nelson |
Even though we are now in Auckland, and only a few hours away from returning to the airport to board our flight to San Francisco, I still can't quite believe we are actually on our way. Our build up to this departure has been rather frenetic, but all self-inflicted. Two weeks ago we enjoyed five glorious days in Hanmer Springs with Bella, Nic and our grandchildren. Our days were filled with walking various tracks, constructing a snowman, dodging snowballs, barrelling down the hydroslides at the hot pools, and consuming coffees and carrot cake as appropriate. It was absolutely fabulous.
Last week was manic in another way, packing our bags and also catching up with friends and other family members to say farewell. It was a very social and enjoyable time. We are both feeling very ready to sit down on a long flight and chill out (or, even better, sleep).
