Tag Archives: flights

An afternoon of microlighting.

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Today, a friend offered to take us up in his microlight. The weather was pretty near perfect and we had a beautiful afternoon.

1) Aidan was first to go up – he was so excited (although I do admit to swallowing a few motherly nerves – “am I completely mad to be allowing my small boy (he’s 8) up in that tiny machine?”), and he had such a wonderful time!

2) The view from the microlight was stunning – the river Forth gleamed with sunlight, the water clear and turquoise, the beaches golden, and acres of fields, some ploughed, some speckled with hay bales; towns and villages, castle ruins, power stations, hills.

3) We flew high above the gannet colony on Bass Rock and looked down on the birds as they wheeled and circled around the island. Awesome.

Arrived

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Welcome to my blog…

For some time now I’ve thought about starting a blog, but wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to write about. Now here’s the opportunity: a six-month visit to New Zealand – land of my husband’s birth, but approximately 20000km away from mine.

After a chaotic few weeks, during which K and I barely slept at all, we succeeded in renting out our home in Scotland, finding a friend to car-sit for us during our absence, and then rent a house in Auckland, and be lent a car for the duration of our stay!

We left Scotland on Tuesday, January 27th for what seemed to be a marathon flight – 7.5h to Dubai, 7.75h in Dubai airport, 7.2h to Singapore, 7.5h to Brisbane, then 3.2h to Auckland. In actual fact, helped greatly by Emirates giving us a suite of rooms in their hotel in Dubai (yay for showers and proper beds to sleep in for a couple of hours), we found the journey worked out very well. We all got pretty much a couple of hours sleep per leg of the journey; the kids coped with it all really well (apart from A’s constant questions); and I arrived feeling far more rested than I have on any of our previous visits.

We stayed two nights with my PIL (parents-in-law) and, with some wonderful help from BIL (I leave you to work out what that one means), we moved in to our new place last Saturday, complete with a basic household of stuff thanks to a lot of hard work on the part of both SIL and MIL! Thank you all!