Sunny sunny England

I figured it was time to expand my horizons and move beyond France, so I booked a flight to Sunny England (Harrogate to be specific). The problem being when I was packing to come here to France I said to my self "will I need a set of cloths for formal dinners? or should I put more climbing gear in?" Of course without thinking, the bow-tie, cravat and tails were thrown on the floor and in went a pile of cunningly shaped scrap metal. Thus I spent the week rushing around Marseille trying to buy clothing suitable for the wedding.

Interestingly I flew via Amsterdam and I cannot speak Dutch any more. I've just forgotten completely. I will start in Dutch and drift into French.

The funniest thing that happened on the flight over was the pilot joking about the English weather. We had left Provence at lovely 28C sunny days, and the pilot jokingly said the arrival at Leeds the weather was "9C with thunderstorms"...ha ha ha ha....unfortunately he was English so didn’t have a sense of humour. It was 9C...now all I needed was warm Ale to bring my image of England into fruition.


Leeds-Bradford Airport: The Sunshine Capitol of England.

The wedding was of Dr. Sebastian Perrier and Rachel Winnington and was held in Ripley Castle, which was spectacular. Seb is a Frenchman who I worked with in Australia and has been working over in England but will return to Australia at the end of the year. Thus the ceremony was conducted half in French and half in English. AND my French is getting much better; I understood and laughed at the French jokes! Wahoooo (even if they are bad "father of the bride" jokes).


The perfect bride and groom

Anyway, the wedding was Fantastic, including the 4hr photo session on the lawn, which was helped by the constant supply of champagne that flowed. Seb admitted this was a ploy because the champagne was cheap and they wanted to minimise the amount of the "good red wine" that was drunk at dinner :-) There was a big contingent of people who had travelled from around the world. Specifically all my old colleagues Tom Davis, Mike Whittaker, Philipp and Nicole Vana, Dr Dave Morsley, Antonio Pantalone, Darren and Mam Foster, Hans Heuts and we spent a lot of time catching up. You can tell a good friend when you haven’t seen each other for 5 years and you can sit and talk like it has been a week.


Castle Ripley with Lina Heuts marching purposefully

After the wedding I caught up with another friend of mine Clare Hayward and spent a day in Leeds at the Royal Armoury. The Armoury was absolutely amazing for me and I spend far too much time looking at the Japanese collection that I’d run out of time for the medieval collection. So I ran through the place taking photos in the hope I could look closely when I got home :-). For my interest in medieval history Europe is just amazing. I’m sure nobody thinks twice about it here :-)

Photos are here

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oh, and as always, amusing english town names: