Settling In

It's getting on for two weeks in Céret now. We are feeling well-involved in life here again. We have met a number of new people, all ex-pats so far, which hopefully will slowly change as we join a few clubs.

Our French is clearly ahead of last year - all those hours listening to Michel Thomas have paid off. I have had a number of good conversations with random locals we've bumped into, including a gardener, a woman buying fruit and others. It's vital being confident enough to talk in French, as it is the real conversations with locals that improve our skills the most. Karen is understanding a lot more, though not yet at the conversation level.

Having retrieved the scooter on Tuesday, we gave it a good wash and polish before trying the battery on Wednesday morning. Despite being OK to unlock the seat, it had no chance of turning the engine over so we went to Bar Pablo at 10am with the battery, to have a coffee and ask about the nearest place we might charge it. The waiter said no problem, he had a mate with a charger, and if we cared to leave it with him, it would be sorted. By 12am, the battery was hooked up and charging, and by late afternoon it was back home fully charged!

So Thursday was a big day - the return of the Scoot. In the battery went, on went the start button, and after a slightly scary delay, it finally caught. On with the helmets and we were off to Le Boulou to look for some clothes while the sales are on. No real luck finding anything though.

A good find on the way back. Friends had told us of a little lake and picnic area at St Jean Pla de Corts, and we turned in to see it. Really very pleasant. A decent sized lake with wide grassy banks all round, plenty of people picnicking and sunbathing, a massive highwire and zipline adventure course through the trees at one end, pedal boats, and a little café under trees. I can see us going there quite often. Too many ducks and huge carp for the water to be clean enough for us to swim though. At the next lake is a large wakeboarding course, where wakeboarders hold onto a rope and pulley system and board around the lake, over jumps and other obstacles. It was entertaining to watch the acrobatics.

We are so enjoying the fruit. We have rockmelon with our breakfast, apricots and white peaches during the day, strawberries after dinner, and cherries whenever. They are all, as always here, sold at the point of ripeness. The flavours are strong and sweet.

Last night we got talking to and ended up having drinks with a retired couple from Auckland who are cycling from Spain to Nice. Yet again we found links between two sets of New Zealanders. They lived in the same street that Karen's brother Scott used to, they know our swimming friend Derek from Nelson, plus some Sumpter relatives on the North Shore, and they have family where Scott now lives at Birkenhead. Crazy. New Zealand is really a pretty small town.

Must head off now, the market is in full swing and we need to stock up on fresh fruit and veges.

We duly stocked up on a hoard of gorgeous fruit, walked the full circuit of the market (it's grown since last year) and then sat down for a well-earned cafe and to munch on our scrummy pastries. Lo and behold, who should John see in the distance but Valerie, our Irish friend who we home-exchanged with here three years ago and have kept in good contact with. Great delight. She joined us, along with several female friends. We are all set to meet up with them soon for a good old catch-up. While talking with Valerie, a Frenchman at the adjacent table spied John's NZ T-shirt and asked if we were from NZ. He was very excited to hear we are from Nelson. He and his wife spent some time there last year and loved NZ. Miquel is Occitan (perhaps Montpellier area) and she is Basque (southwestern France) and they live in the same little town as Valerie. We exchanged cards and are keen to catch up to get to know each other more. They have invited us out for a walk into the countryside near them. We are thoroughly enjoying meeting lots of new people, and these latest ones are even FRENCH! 

The Scoot is Back!

After a week of leaving poor Scoot languishing in the gloom in its basement (a week since our return, but 10 months for the poor scooter), we thought it really was time we made an honest attempt to get it out. When we left it last year we were in a bit of a rush, and made the mistake of pulling the fuses and closing the seat before we checked that the manual seat release was working. It wasn’t. So we knew on our return to claim Scoot, we’d have to find some other way to get into the seat cavity to replace the fuses to allow us to open the seat cavity to replace the fuses – get the picture?

Today I loaded a backpack with a variety of tools and a torch and set off to see how we’d get on. The manual release cable seemed to be totally locked, and despite managing to get directly at the cable it wouldn’t budge. Next was to see if I could get at the latch somehow by taking off body panels. Three-quarters of an hour later and despite half a dozen panels off, no sign of success. Karen headed back to get some more tools, while I fished about trying desperately to get into the innards of the scooter to get access to either the cable or the latch. Finally with the aid of a trusty torch I spied a cable which looked to be the size and shape of the release cable, so I gave it a good tug. A bit of noise but no real action. Another five minutes of heaving at it, but no more success, so I thought I’d give the seat a push just in case. Yep, released!

We didn’t want to get the scooter out of storage until we’d got into the seat, as our insurance-required monster lock was under the seat. Now with access to it, we could contemplate getting the scooter out from the cave. Only problem, it was down 5 very steep steps, and it is a large and heavy scooter – some 170kg. It had taken three people to control it down into the cave. No matter. We assembled a crude plywood ramp and heaved. To our surprise we got it up the ramp onto the path, then in four stages interspersed with breathers, back up a little steep road to the town, and an easy push to our door in Place de l’Eglise.

It was very grubby and dusty, so we brought down some warm water and got to work bringing it back to its normal shiny self. Partway through, I plugged in the fuses having looked up what went where, and to my total astonishment when I put the key in, the normal lights came up. And the seat release worked just like it should. Pretty good going for 10 months sitting in a basement.

So tomorrow morning we will kit up, just in case there’s enough battery to start it up, and be ready to zoom off on a little expedition to recharge it fully. Freedom again!

Ex-pats

Compared to last year we seem to be heavily into the ex-pat thing this time round. It's not been our intention, but it's just happened. First off, on Wednesday we re-met our friends Peter and Julie from last year (Aussies). Next was Julie from Birmingham who has been coming here 11 years. Along with Julie were her friends and also long-timers here Maggi and Sam, and with Peter and Julie were Graham and Yvonne from Queensland.

This entire group and we met on Friday and drove up to Hermitage San Ferreol for an ex-pat picnic. It's a lovely spot with great views back down to Céret and out towards Perpignan and the sea. Lunch was excellent but shortened by the arrival of heavy rain.

We bumped into various of this group over the next few days, culminating in 5pm drinks last night before Julie, Sam and Maggi all head back to the UK until the end of August.  Sam and Maggi in particular seem to be on our wavelength as they enjoy getting out into the hills walking. The whole group is very pleasant and we look forward to seeing more of them.

It's odd us being semi-permanent residents, while everyone else comes and goes. The advantages of living in Europe!

Our tenants Derek and Mary dropped in to see us yesterday. We had some trouble recognising them,since we had only met them once for a few minutes in Nelson, but with that worked out we spent a bit of time comparing notes. They had found winter pretty chilly, and had some trouble with our satellite reception recently, but other than that had enjoyed their time in Céret. I think the satellite issue is because the trees around the square to our north are getting taller and are blocking the signal. I will be trying to move the dish this week some 15m east where the trees shouldn't be such a problem.

One very encouraging thing they said was that they had made a number of good French friends. That's certainly one of our plans. Ex-pats are great but we did come here to enjoy France and be as French as possible.

IT Woes

The last couple of days have been immensely frustrating for us, and more particularly me. We have been using (as we did last year with their permission) the neighbours' unlimited wifi broadband. Unfortunately the signal, which was just OK last year, is not as strong this year and keeps breaking up. No good for work or Skype, and even marginal for such as email. I had a multi-pronged attack to get round it.

• Connection via 3G and SFR phone SIM card, or SFR wifi: I ordered a card from SFR, as once you are on SFR you can use the free SFR wifi hotspot I could see as an available network. However, once I had the card swapped in and working, I found that the wifi signal which originally appeared quite strong, really isn't that good. Not only that but SFR's 3G signal proves to be pretty feeble and not enough for 3G connections. Option 1 down.
• New wifi repeater: The new repeater arrived on Saturday, woohoo! I plugged it in, and got it nicely linked up to the neighbour's wifi box. It got the signal strongly, and broadcast onward even more strongly. Only problem, and rather a terminal one, it won't pass through the connection. I tried setting it up a number of times, and all looks perfect except that it doesn't work. Option 2 down for now.
• Our own broadband: We finally decided that since all the other options seemed dead in the water, we'd bite the bullet and get our own broadband box. Onto Free.fr to order it and successfully got through all the pages until it sent me an email to confirm. Only problem, no email arrived, and I can't even re-find the link to order it from. Aaaarrrgggghhhh. I got right through the process up to the confirmation page, and I have no way of knowing if it has actually been ordered or not. Option 3 down, probably. Je ne sais pas.
• We next tried to use the internet at Bar Pablo. Great connection quality, four out of four bars, but nothing was going in or out. Option 4 down. We just can't win.

French websites tend to be very tricky to manage, and I'm not referring to the language issue, as that isn't a major. It's just that they bury their information in obscure ways, and often require you to ring them up, and are somehow far less intuitive than an equivalent NZ or USA site. Not at all user-friendly.

That brings me onto internet frustration number 5. Our email is no longer arriving properly into Outlook. I can't pin down why, and trying to use Gmail instead is very frustrating when the connection speed is slow, flaky and randomly disconnects.

Without a decent internet connection, trying to solve all these issues by doing research on the internet is unbelievably difficult. I really can't quite believe how many things are all failing to work.

P.S. Some slight light at the end of the tunnel today. I have found two reasons why emails were not coming in as expected, both hopefully now solved and put behind us. I've retrieved the confirmation email about our broadband request too so maybe that will progress. Also, the wifi reception in our bathroom is fine, it's just not that convenient a spot to do work from! At least I can send and receive successfully at a pinch.

ABs, Parisians and the Market

Phew. What an odd time we have had. Yesterday started off brilliantly. We both awoke at 6:30am with an immediate exclamation of ‘oohhhhhhh’. No, it was not what you are thinking. It was actually the ‘très fort odeur du pain frais (strong aroma of fresh bread) that was wafting in on the breeze. What a way to wake up!

After a run and quick breakfast we made a trip to the market (all of 200m away) to buy some apricots, cherries, a melon, home-made quiches, olives and other necessities of life here. Next stop was Café de France to watch the All Blacks play Les Bleus on the big TV. We were too late to see the haka but settled down to have a coffee or two while waving our flag and generally applauding when the ABs finally scored some points.  There was one other Kiwi couple watching (from Chch) but mostly it was young French guys, no doubt rugby players judging by their impressive physiques.  We were all sitting outside in the sun, with the market in full swing not far away. This diluted the ‘rugby atmosphere’ to almost negligible but it was a very pleasant way to spend the morning.

We rushed home in time to catch the postie who was delivering a parcel we had ordered from Perpignan. It contained a signal repeater that John had ordered to try and overcome our internet issues. I won’t say any more except that the day deteriorated at a rapid rate after that, with poor old John sitting at the computer for about 6 hours trying to get things working properly. Thankfully he didn’t take to pulling his hair out – if he had he would be bald by now.  I busied myself by giving the kitchen a good clean and consider I got the easy job.

A welcome interlude to the afternoon was a visit by the Parisian family who have bought the apartment immediately below us. We had bumped into our builder a few days ago, who had told us they were coming to have a look at the apartment, prior to commencing renovating it. We offered to show them around ours, as the two apartments are identical in layout and could show them how we had tackled ours.  They are a lovely couple, around the same age as us, and were accompanied by their son who has recently graduated as an architect. We spent a bit of time going between the two apartments, and we gave them a copy of the plans we have done for ours, both before and after renovation.  While the family lives in Paris, they own a house near Rocamadour and also have part ownership of another family property elsewhere. The wife comes from Céret originally. They have already said they are keen for us to visit them at their place near Rocamadour, so we might see more of them. We visited Rocamadour on our way up to Paris last year. It is an astonishing place, clinging to a hillside, and is extremely attractive.

They had some spare tomettes (our floor tiles) in their apartment - here is the rather lovely reverse of one...

By the end of the day, John fell into bed exhausted by his hours hassling the internet, phone system and Skype and just about everything else in the IT world that can go wrong here.

We got up this morning (Sunday) and visited Bar Pablo at 10am, and not just for a must needed shot of caffeine. We had fixed this time to Skype with Bella and Nic. ‘Zut alors’, now we couldn’t connect with Skype. Oh dear (or stronger words to that effect!).

That aside, life here IS actually very stress-free and very relaxing. We watched some locals playing boule for a little while yesterday (5-6pm seems to be the heure de rigueur). They (all elderly bow-legged men) are incredibly accurate at placing their boules!

The weather here is still not very hot. It’s been in the early to mid-20s, with some rain, though apparently they had an entire week around 30 degrees just before we arrived.  We are not complaining however. From what we hear and read, NZ has been hit by quite a weather bomb, and Nelson is taking its fair share. Hope you are all well hunkered down and safe. 

As I write this, we are listening to singing in the church below. It’s quite lovely hearing the organ. Also, in one of the apartments on the other side of the square, we often hear a man strumming his guitar at around 5pm. We haven’t watched any TV since we have been here. If (when) we get our IT stuff sorted we should be able to get some BBC channels, and maybe even SKY from NZ via the internet. In the meantime we are not missing it at all. I’m keen to get stuck into my book, and hope to launch into it next week, but it depends partly on having access to the internet as well. We shall see. Que sera sera.

First Thoughts - John

We've been in Céret five full days now. There's something very special about where we are, here in the middle of town. It's so nice waking up in the morning to the smell of the bread being taken out of the oven opposite, the sound of the doves, sparrows and swifts, the cathedral bells, and a little later on the sound of people talking French and going about their daily activities. It is so different to Nelson and living in the 'burbs.

It's taken a few days to unwind from the 90th party and all the travel, but by Friday I felt thoroughly relaxed. We've been trying to work out why life here seems so much more relaxing than back in NZ, and we can't really pin it down to any one factor. The apartment is certainly easy. There is so little to look after and tidy, and nothing is more than a few steps away. Things simply take less time, not just inside, but in the town too. We can collect or daily fresh bread from any of 4 bakers all inside 2 minutes' walk. Groceries are only a few minutes' walk. Our café is a minute away. One of the best things is the lack of an agenda - no Monday, Wednesday, Friday gym, no appointments or meetings or deadlines. Work is easier in some ways too, as at home I often have to work evenings when people are off the systems, but here I can do updates during the daytime.

We are again enjoying the quality of the food and drink. Summer has been very slow to arrive, so this year's cherry festival which we missed by a fortnight was notable for the lack of ripe cherries. We didn't miss out on their short season as we thought we might. However there are plenty of apricots, peaches and strawberries available. The cheeses are of course superb. We tend to keep three different varieties in the fridge, at the moment Roquefort, chevre and camembert, to go on our bread of the day. The breads are interesting. Each baker bakes in a slightly different way with different flavours, and both the degree of the cooking and the flavours change a little from day to day. Choosing where to go and which particular size, shape and flavour of loaf is our major daily decision. We've not eaten many pastries yet - they are just too tempting, but of course there has to be the odd exception, such as an amourette. We were told yesterday that the closest baker makes town's best croissants, but he doesn't like actually selling them. Apparently you are best to ask for bread, and then add the croissants on afterwards!

An amourette

The town is in good shape. There are renovations all over the place, and a changeover of some shops. Two new restaurants have opened, with a third on the way. It all gives the impression that Céret is healthy.

We haven't met our 9-month tenants yet as they are away for a week in Provence. However they left the apartment in very good condition, better even than we had hoped. I had imagined it might have got a bit damp over winter, but there is not the slightest sign of mustiness, even in the closed-up storeroom. I've spent an hour or so on maintenance, fixing loose handles and the like, but it was remarkably little considering it's been 9 months since we left. Most pleasing.

Regarding the use of our roofspace, we've had some good news. Speaking to our builder (and fellow member of the body corporate) he told me that the next door attic to ours has recently had a roof terrace installed. That bodes well for our chances with the council. We'll spend some time this weekend looking at our options for using the space.

Yet again we have internet connection issues, but I have gone online and ordered a repeater which should lift our connection speed from barely OK to excellent. I've been able to work but the slow pace has been very frustrating. I had similar issues last year, and had hoped that all would be well this time, but the signal strength is down. All going well, we should end up better off than before, but we do miss having good, fast broadband. Paying for that here for all year doesn't make good sense.

Being Back - Karen

We've been here a few days now and here are some general observations about being back:

• Céret is still gorgeous.
• We have already swung into low-key low-stress mode. The biggest decision of the day is which boulangerie's bread to buy for lunch.
• The coffees at Bar Pablo are extremely tasty, albeit different from NZ coffees. Prices have increased slightly. A ‘short black’ costs about NZ$2.50 and a ‘noisette’ (smallish flattish white) about NZ$2.70.
• The bread is wonderful and the pastries look as mouth-watering as ever.
• John just about swooned with delight when he tasted his first mouthful of Roquefort cheese.
• As with last year, the local council is still spending lots of money upgrading the cobbled streets and paving, and has now embarked on completely refurbishing a local town hall (possibly with a big auditorium judging by the look of it) and have just about completed installing another large fountain near one of the historic ‘gates’ to the town.
• It’s wonderful being surrounded by French people and giving and receiving lots of cheerful bonjours.
• The smell of freshly baked bread that hits us at about 6:30am when the baker across the square opens up his oven is amazing. We get another ‘hit’ at about 8am.
• The council is still fanatical about its street-cleaning regimes and the little sweeping machines buzz around every day. We even had the church square below us completely waterblasted yesterday.
• We love our little apartment. It is so small, uncluttered (trying hard to keep it that way) and very easy to live in in a very simple way. It is a complete contrast to Walters Bluff.

We went on our first run today, around the loop road that takes us up and just out of Céret, through the trees and back into town. It takes about 30 minutes and is a lovely route. There are always a number of groups of French people walking it in the cool of the morning. I received plenty of very cheery bonjours and bravo from a group of older people as they parted for me. No doubt we will see them again on many more occasions. 

We have received warm ‘welcome-backs’ from our elderly neighbour on the other side of the square, our local baker, one of the real estate agents we had a few outings with and some Aussie and British friends. We haven’t seen many other people we know yet, except a couple of the waiters at Bar Pablo and we are not sure they all recognised us. Maybe because we don’t leave large tips compared to many of the ex-pats who go there and therefore we are not quite so noteworthy.

Voyage to Céret

Well, we made it and are very happy to be back in Céret. What a week! We left Nelson in a bit of a whirlwind, handing over the keys to the house to the Haven's agent as she walked in the door (for a final inspection) as we walked out. A little time to spare at the airport before we had to say goodbye to Sally. We had a quiet day on Thursday with my Dad, and borrowed his car on Friday afternoon for a secret rendezvous at Mission Bay with Bella and Nic.

We had an extremely enjoyable afternoon and evening with them and then back home with my father none the wiser that they had flown over from Melbourne for his party.  They collected Alastair from Auckland airport at 5:55am (!) the next morning. 

John and I prepared a proper cooked breakfast for Dad and then my brother collected him in his brother-in-law’s 1938 Chevy with a 8.2 litre modern V8 engine. They had a fun trip out to the birthday venue – a garden café which we had hired for the day. Unfortunately the weather was overcast but at least it had stopped raining and we could get outside to take lots of photos. The afternoon went off extremely well with a jazz band, speeches (including mine), cutting the cake  and so on.  Dad thoroughly enjoyed making his speech, and predictably included many stories and anecdotes about his earlier years, including a hint about when he lost his virginity!

It was really great catching up with lots of cousins, aunts and uncles, and Dad was just blown away that Bella and another grand-daughter had travelled over from Melbourne and Alastair from San Francisco. Ali gave a great speech and it was pretty special – he is Dad’s only grandson.  Back home to watch the All Blacks game and Dad also played some tunes on the piano. 

The next morning was rather slow and pouring with rain. We drove back into Auckland and met up with Bella and Nic to have lunch with them. A teary farewell all around with Bella and Nic heading off (they flew out to Melbourne the next day) and Dad taking us to the airport. Later that evening John and I flew out an hour before Alastair flew back to San Francisco. All-in-all it was a fantastic few days, we got to spend a lot more time with Bella and Alastair than we had expected and Dad had a ball.

Our flights went very well, even the 14 hour flight from Sydney to Dubai. John and I both watched a few movies and slept or dozed for about 7 hours. John then starting watching some Top Gear programmes and commenced to chuckle away quietly for a few hours. I instead, tuned into the TV series Downton Abbey, which I had only ever caught a few glimpses of before. Big mistake. Four episodes of Series 3 later and I was hooked. As soon as we jumped on the 7 hour flight from Dubai to Barcelona I cranked up the screen and watched the next 4 episodes, plus the Xmas special. I paid the price later. Without getting any more sleep, I started to fade rapidly over the next few hours, which included catching the bus from one terminal at the airport to another, a train into town, another train from there to Perpignan, a bus from Perpignan to Céret and finally walking the last 10 minutes to our apartment. I kept falling asleep and jerking awake every few minutes and even started conversations with John that made no sense. It felt really peculiar. End result – a clear recognition that serious sleep deprivation and me do NOT go together. Poor John. During the last few hours he had to deal not just with a whole heap of luggage but also a spaced-out wife.

Note to self: Make sure I am fully up-to-date with Downton Abbey before embarking on any long-haul trip!

We finally staggered up the stairs to our little apartment at about 10pm. Fell into bed and I slept for 10 hours. It is now Wed afternoon and we are both now pretty well recovered, with John managing to sleep virtually through an entire mighty thunderstorm last night with hardly batting an eye.

How crazy is this?

Here we are in transit at Sydney, en route to Dubai. In less than a day the entire Warren family will be passing through Auckland airport heading in three different directions - San Francisco, Barcelona and Melbourne. Crazy!

Karen's father's 90th birthday on Saturday went off very well. Ken was in great form, and it was an excellent opportunity to catch up with Karen's extended family - cousins, aunts, uncles and all.

Today saw us doing the last repack, lunch with Alastair, Bella, Nic and Ken, a rather sad goodbye, then out to the airport. A nice time with Alastair before we had to go to board our A380. We'd had a really good family time together for a few days; who knows when the next time will be that we will all be together. Alastair doesn't see himself getting back to New Zealand for some years, Bella loves Melbourne far too much to come back too, and it looks like we will just have to see the children as we pass back and forth. It's not ideal but we are all doing things we really want to do, and there's always Skype.

It's a relief to be on our way. 297 days has been a long time to wait from last time. Our friend from the apartment upstairs just emailed to say bon voyage and to tell us the last few days in Céret have been 28°. Last weekend there was hail, it's apparently been a poor start to summer in 2013.

Finally, on the move

After nearly 300 days of waiting to return to France we are now on the way North. YYYYYEEEESSS! A lovely view of Mt Taranaki peeping through the cloud en route to Auckland. We have found the last few weeks hard work with having to pack up the entire house and squeeze it into the garage, and it has been a bit stressful. We hope never to rent our house unfurnished again! We were always looking for something only to find it had already been safely stored in a box buried deep in the garage. However it will pay the bills and it's behind us now.

Had an exciting last day in Nelson. A message arrived overnight from our Céret syndic (the apartment body corporate) saying they had unanimously approved our proposal to use the attic for a roof terrace and a second bedroom. Awesome news. We still have a number of hurdles to jump, including financial, but it's a great start. Also, we received an acceptable offer for the section down the Coast that we've been trying to sell for several years. Hopefully that will go through.

We have managed to leave carrying some 78 kilos. Ouch! Three bags of 20kgs, the two cabin bags of 4-5kgs and a laptop each (did I mention the four books tucked in the pocket of my winter jacket?). This gross excess is caused by staying over winter this year, hence a whole lot of cold weather clothing. It's not helped by taking some big bags of our home-made muesli, as we are not great fans of French muesli, with its 16-18% sugar content. It's okay if you think we are mad. 

Next up is catching up with Bella and Nic, then Alastair on Saturday morning, and Karen's father's 90th birthday party in the afternoon. It should be lots of fun.

290 Days and Still Counting

Hard to believe, but it's been 290 days since we left our little Céret, and it's just 7 days now until we are on our way to resume the French half of our lives. We've reached the point where we are very keen to be off.

Céret will be very different for us this year. We are so looking forward to just living and working in France, without renovations taking up much of our time. Our command of the language is way ahead of where we started last year, as we have been listening to French lessons at least three times a week, speak only French on our 2-hour-long Saturday walks, and try to think in French as much as possible.

Back in Nelson, almost all of our house contents now live in the garage, and we won't see them again for almost 8 months. Even then it will be only fleetingly, as we return to pick up what we need while we rent in Nelson for the 3 months (February, March & April) until we head back on our 2014 return. Compared to our normal departure for an overseas trip, this one has been hard work. Last year we rented the house furnished, but this time it is rented unfurnished, for at least a year, which has meant a lot of sorting, packing and carrying of boxes.

It does feel very odd to be heading out of our own home for nearly 17 months, after almost 10 years living here! At the same time it is rather exciting, not knowing what the future holds for us next year in Nelson. We are thinking we might rent an apartment on the waterfront.

We can't see ourselves moving permanently from Walters Bluff for some time. Having been away 5 months last year gave us a fresh perspective on Nelson and our home. Nelson's location on the sea, the weather and the feel of the town are really pretty special. We have so enjoyed the gorgeous summer, and the perfect clear days of autumn. On the other hand, Europe is finally warming up after an unusually cold spring, and some hot weather will be most welcome.