15 May 2016 Admiral Marina, Malaysia
Being a Sunday, with only three sleeps to go before we fly to the UK, we couldn’t be bothered to do anything, so we stayed on the boat and chilled out.
16 May 2016 Admiral Marina, Malaysia
I felt a bit more motivated this morning, so I started doing an oil service on the engine and generator. My first job was to check the impeller in the sea water pump on the engine, which should have been a quick five minute job. Unfortunately, one of the screws holding the cover snapped off leaving a short 3mm long stub. My five minute job turned into two hours because I had to remove the whole pump assembly.
I managed to get the old screw out, but when I was replacing the pump, I broke the corner off the guard that fits over the water pump belt. After fifteen minutes of messing about, I was able to fit the pump without the guard, but you can bet a new Volvo guard will cost £100.
The rest of the service went okay. I even removed the piece of 3mm string that has been holding the starter motor onto the generator for the past three years. I put this string on because the retained nuts for the starter motor are loose and, to fix it, I need to remove the generator and replace a flange. The bit of string has worked well because the play in the starter motor has remained at 1.2mm. I replaced the piece of string…
17 May 2016 Admiral Marina, Malaysia
I ran out of engine oil yesterday, so I walked down to a garage on the main road to buy some more and then finished off the oil service.
We spent the rest of the day chilling out and waiting to leave tomorrow.
18 May 2016 Admiral Marina to United Kingdom
The day dragged on remorselessly waiting to leave for the airport. Finally six o’clock arrived and we lugged our heavy bags to the taxi. We were at the airport by 19:00 and even though our flight wasn’t until 23:00, we were able to check our bags in. A traditional pre-flight Big Mac and Fries consumed another hour and it wasn’t long until we were boarding the aircraft.
The flight was 13 hours, but it wasn’t too bad. We had a couple of small bottles of wine with dinner (at midnight), then a movie and slept for 4 hours. Watched another two movies, had breakfast at 03:00 and arrived in London Heathrow at 05:00 UK time.
We caught a courtesy bus to the car hire place, where we found out that the UK government has introduced an on-line driving license check, which all hire companies now use. Apparently, because we have UK driving licenses, we were supposed to have pre-registered on the government web site to obtain a reference number to give to the hire company. Fortunately, the guy at the hire company was on the ball and, after I gave him my National Insurance number, he was able to go on-line and get the reference number - it’s bureaucracy gone mad.
We arrive at our son Brett’s house at 07:30 to find them having a day off work to welcome us.
19 May to 14 June 2016 United Kingdom
We had a great time in the UK, staying for 4 weeks to visit family and friends. The first weekend was spent with our two sons (Brett & Craig) and their girlfriends (Tash and Kristen). Brett and Tash were getting married in a couple of weeks, so they were both excited. We went out for a night in Reading town to celebrate my up-coming 60th birthday, which was fun.
While our sons went off to work during the week, we took a short flight to Brittany in France to see Mike and Rona, two old friends, where we had a pleasant three days walking and chilling out in the lovely countryside around St Malo.
Back in UK went to stay in the New Forest with Glenys’s brother Gareth and wife Claire. They had got married a week before we arrived. They’d done it in secret and we only found out a couple of days before we visited them. It was great to catch up.
On the way up to Lancashire, we stopped off at the Indian Visa processing centre in Smethwick, Birmingham - an appropriate place for it because the local population is 80% Sikh. The process was not as smooth as we’d hoped. About four weeks ago, I’d struggled to apply for dual entry Indian Visas using a horrible on-line system. Unfortunately, we were told that it’s very difficult to get dual entry visas without a fixed itinerary and travel tickets, which we don’t have.
The lady behind the counter suggested that we reapply (on-line) for multiple entry visas which, for some bizarre reason have less stringent requirements. We’d need to print out the completed applications and the only way that we could do this was to go to the local library. Using a computer from the 1990’s, it took a couple of hours to fill-in the forms and print them out again. We then had to have new photographs taken because ours were the wrong size, but after that the process was relatively straight forward. A week later, we had our passports back with 12 month, multiple entry visas.
A long drive took us up to Accrington in Lancashire to see my mother and some of my brothers & sisters (Gillian, Andy and Tony). They’d bought me a cake for my 60th Birthday and we had a slap up meal with that northern delicacy of Pudding, Chips and Peas with Gravy. While we were in the area, we spent a night with our old friends Jim & Kath, who are cruisers that we met in the Caribbean four years ago.
Another long drive took us up to Scotland where we stayed with some climbing friends - Andy and Annie. They’ve recently bought a traditional house on the edge of Loch Leven in a stunning location and are going to be running it as a Bed and Breakfast (check them out at http://pierhouse-glencoe.scot/).
On my 60th birthday, Andy and I climbed Aonach Eagach Ridge. It was a long, 8-hour day, but the weather was fabulous and the views from the ridge were stunning. We even bagged a couple of Munros on the way (Meall Dearg & Sgorr nam Fiannaidh). It was a great way to spend my 60th Birthday…
Tired but happy, we travelled back down south to go to Brett and Tash’s wedding, stopping in at Accrington to see my mum again and Congleton to see my sister, Carol.
The wedding was held in a small “country retreat” near Stevenage and it was a fabulous day. Glenys loved dressing up in a posh frock and I felt uncomfortable in a suit with a collar and tie. Tash looked beautiful in a fairy-tail white dress and Brett looked happy and relaxed. It was a great finale to our trip and, two days later, we were on our way back to Malaysia.
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