Adventures of OOMU: December 2008

Our new home for the winter months... A small barn conversion in deepest darkest rural France.

First some essential purchases:

Slippers for everyone... its sooo cold!

...and another pair of wellies (to date- one pair presumed lost overboard, one pair worn out, one pair left on a beach)

...and a REAL xmas tree for the first time

The food in France is amazing. We seem to spend all our time wandering around markets filled with lots of smelly cheese and pate. Foie gras also abounds in this region.

I'm training them young!!

Nutella crêpes have replaced ice cream now...

or Pain au Chocolat.

We are surrounded by woods so we now have lots of wild wood adventures. Wind in the willows is providing lots of inspirations for our adventures.

Silas just checking some last minute details with Père Noël prior to xmas eve, with Steph valiantly translating.

The snow was provided by the mayor via a soap blower machine, looked good though.

The big day...

My prezzie, a wild boar ham, yum yum

Christmas day, lovely

Boxing day, SNOW! Unbelievable! A proper white Christmas. Sledging, snowman and general all round icy fun...

Another clear, very cold day dawns, with nothing but porridge for breakfast. Europeans don't do healthy breakfast cereal, so we are turning into the 3 bears.

We are loving rural France. Friendly people, gorgeous scenery, history round every corner, oh and did I mention the food?

After Chris's return (hurrah!) We all fell into a good routine in the Lagos Marina in Portugal, Steph would go swimming with the ladies while I did strong coffee, breakfasts and home school for Silas.

At last the marina fixed the wifi. We have been having real problems with getting internet access (hence the delay with our blog!) Will try harder, we promise.

Chris also took the opportunity to broaden his cooking repertoire from baked beans on toast and branflakes to apple pie. We were all very impressed but I don't think Jamie Oliver will be holding his breath.

Lagos is a great place. Although the Algarve is very built up and very touristy, some remnants of old buildings and forts remain. There are also some good climbing trees close to the marina which have given the boys a bit of a work out.

Whilst in portugal we managed to acquire a new blow-up canoe, it works surprisingly well. We are now a 2 dinghy household. Means that not all of us have to go ashore at once. We also got to make some more friends who very kindly took us out on their powerboat.

Steph going over to the dark side (motor boating), 32knots.. hang on! (I could get into this - flick a switch and off you go, none of this fiddle faffing with sails and bits of string for hours)

We had to wrestle the helm off Chris. 'Just call me Sonny Crockett...' Thanks Paul and Gill for a great day out.

A bit of masthead maintenance, not for the feint hearted.

At the local pool, both the boys made great progress with their swimming...

...with the help of Yvonne the Swiming instructor. Who I reckon is the best swim teacher ever. Silas has gone from scared of water to jumping in and getting his hair wet. He can do a mean doggy paddle too!

Pirates were spotted out in the bay so along with some other friendly cruisers we had to go out and investigate

We also went for a day out, with the other liveaboards on the replica Caravela Boa Esperança which is also based in Lagos harbour.

Silas learning some knots from some very dodgy salty sea dogs.

Silas meanwhile was really getting into the pleasures of home schooling.

Next, make a tree...

and plant it...

and a lovely rainbow.

Exploring the locality, beats walking anyday

mmm, this feels a bit squishy...

Silas with Scraps his pet toy dog

Hey Little boy, you wanna try a chillie?

After a very pleasant month hanging around Lagos it was time to haul out OOMU for the winter. She needed her annual antifoul paint, and we planned to go on a big roadtrip while she was safety on the hardstanding.