globalwanderings.co.uk

I’ve just uploaded some videos by our resident film maker Jackie. Not bad, I think you’ll agree. They are primarily for our podcasting site podcastsinenglish.com for our new ‘travelogues’ section. They can also be found in the relevant Globalwanderings pages eg Jerusalem, Turkey and Petra (Jordan).

Jerusalem video.

Istanbul video

Petra, Jordan

Into the last few weeks of our time in Jordan and I’ve just taken a major step – selling the car. Here is a picture of the new proud owner – Abu Selim.

Proud new owner of our old Excel

And of course we had to have a final party…

it was a dark night

...but Philippa lit up the night!

Charlie leading from the front

Now that we’ve got a new house, we’ve got a new blog! Although we are still deliberating on a new name for our house we are sticking with the old name for now: Casa Azul and so I’ll be uploading most of the new posts onto that site. Unless we get up to something interesting here that is and it could be pretty soon! – I’m joining Jackie for a weekend in Jerusalem so hope to put up some photos of that little adventure.

Big news of the day is that the purchase of our farmhouse in Portugal has finally gone through! We are now the proud owners of “Casa Azul” a farmhouse and an acre of land deep in the Portuguese countryside about 40 mins outside Coimbra. We will be moving there in September and it needs a lot of renovating which will be taking up most of our time but we also hope to have a little spare to devote to the story of Casa Azul and how it develops, so I’ll be putting together a new website. Watch this space!

Back in Jordan now and things are hotting up and not just the temperature. We’ve been to the Dead Sea again – so more photos there and are heading down to the Red Sea and Aqaba for a dive weekend so more photos there. But also we are imminently awaiting the purchase of our farmhouse in Portugal!!!

We are just about at the end of our major spring holiday to Portugal and Turkey. We spent a couple of weeks travelling around Portugal (in Lisbon, travelling around central Portugal looking for a house – more on that later and then some days in Porto. Latterly we have come to Istanbul for a few days. So, now comes the big job of putting together the photos and uploading some new pages. If you are a friend of mine on Facebook you may have already seen photos of Lisbon and Porto so now I am busy working on the corresponding Globalwanderings pages. Lots to look forward to!

We were only just getting over the loss of our one year old kittens when the one surviving cat, “mad mummy cat” became pregnant again and dropped another litter on our doorstep (actually in a cardboard box on our bedroom balcony). Here they are just after being born – afterbirth still in evidence in one of the photos!

Boxing Day 2008 saw us getting up at 4am for the quick hop to Cyprus. The weather was cold and wet in Amman when we took off but we were greeted at Larnaca airport by blue skies and an agreeably warm temperature. We weren’t to stay in the Greek part of Cyprus but had arranged an airport pick-up to take us to the North and Carob Cottage in the village of Hisarkoy. Here we stayed for 10 relaxing, enjoyable days. You can catch our exploits on the Cyprus pages. We got back on 5th January ready for the new year, but only to discover our three cats had succumbed probably to rat poison.

We used this video originally on our learning English site: www.podcastsinenglish.com Not for the fainthearted!

And now a year on…August 08. Inside the house looks pretty much the same except for the study.

Here are two photos of the original garden. The white cat is still around, but grown up now, Gerard has moved next door and the cute ginger has disappeared.

Here’s the same patch now – the giant agaves are now surrounded by new plants. And there are new plants on the steps, mainly the ubiquitous geraniums

Getting ready for the traditional weekend barbie.

In March’08 a cat who was determined to live with us, Smokey Jo, had sneaked into the house and gave birth to four kittens on our sofa.

From left to right: Smokey junior, Minou, Azwad (‘black’ in Arabic) and Torres.

Unfortunately a couple of months later Smokey Jo and Smokey Junior died, we think poisoned, but a day later another little tyke turned up in need of lots of TLC. He had lost one eye but we managed to save the other despite it being covered in gunk when he first showed up. ‘Boggle’ despite being a sickly lad is a fighter and although constantly ill is now a close member of the family.

Torres, Boggle and Minou (July ‘08)

There are not just cats in the garden though – we have four tortoises – we are now waiting the arrival of a few more if this photo is anything to go by.

We also have a couple of Palestinian Sunbirds.